Essays on Urban and Public Economics

This dissertation is comprised of three independent essays. Across each essay, I examine the impact of public policies on low-income households and individuals using administrative and survey data in conjunction with quasi-experimental econometric techniques. In Chapter 1, I study the impact of Source of income (SOI) housing policies which prohibit discrimination against prospective renters on the basis of the source of income they report on rental applications. Using county- and housing agency-level data, I exploit time-variation in the implementation of SOI policies across jurisdictions to identify the effects of these policies on renters using housing choice vouchers and the local housing agencies that administer the voucher program. I find that such policies are associated with reductions in average wait times prior to moving into rental units for voucher recipients. Additionally, I provide evidence that SOI policies increase the fraction of vouchers under lease for housing agencies with lower average utilization rates. In Chapter 2, I study the impact of notifications that water systems in California provide to consumers when they detect elevated levels of contaminants in the drinking water they supply. I find little evidence that home prices are affected by public notifications in general. However, public notifications regarding nitrates, a contaminant which is especially relevant to California, and which has received substantial media attention in the state, do appear to negatively affect home prices. Focusing on a sample of community water systems which experienced at least one nitrate notification over the sample period, notifications regarding nitrates are associated with statistically significant declines in home prices of approximately 5 percent in the two years following a notification. In Chapter 3, my co-authors and I examine the impact of state-level policies that give unauthorized immigrants the ability to legally obtain driver’s licenses, known as Unauthorized Immigrant License Policy (UILP). We exploit variation in the timing and location of the implementation of these policies to assess how UILPs affect driving behavior and insurance claims. We find that UILPs are associated with a 1 percent increase in insurance coverage, suggesting that newly licensed unauthorized immigrants do opt to purchase auto insurance. However, we also document a disproportionate increase in insurance claims, and we document a positive relationship between California’s UILP and the number of collisions