Working Papers
“Housing Cycles, Delinquent Taxes, and U.S. City Budgets during the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression” [paper]
Abstract: Heavily reliant on property taxes, U.S. city coffers swelled in the 1920s before contracting with the Great Depression. Using financial data assembled from historical reports, this paper studies municipal budgets between 1923 and 1936 as they relate to the boom and bust of the housing market and the growth in property tax delinquency that began in 1930. Overall, city revenue and spending patterns were positively associated with changes in house prices and residential construction activity, especially in the boom years of the 1920s. But the budget challenges of the 1930s were mostly driven by rising property tax delinquency: 70 percent of the nominal decline in property tax revenue during the Depression was due to the rise in unpaid taxes, and a one-standard deviation increase in the delinquency rate was associated with a 4 percent decline in real per capita total revenue. As taxes went unpaid, local governments cut spending on police and fire protection, sanitation, and health, thus reducing support for local communities at a time when the national economy was cratering.
Publications
“Clean Slate: Land-Use Changes in San Francisco after the 1906 Disaster,” 2017. Explorations in Economic History, 65 (July): 1-16. [link]
- Awarded the 2018 Larry Neal Prize for best article in Explorations in Economic History
- Mentioned on Marginal Revolution (April 21, 2017)
“Razing San Francisco: The 1906 Disaster as a Natural Experiment in Urban Redevelopment,” 2015. Journal of Urban Economics, 89 (September): 48-61. [link]
- Featured on Skynomics Blog (October 2, 2018)
- Featured on LSE USAPP (December 15, 2015)
Work in Progress
“The 1906 San Francisco Disaster and Business Agglomeration in the City”
“Local Origins and Implications of the 1930s Urban Debt Crisis” (with Samara Gunter)
“The (Golden) Gated City: The Great Fire, the Cost of Zoning, and San Francisco Housing Prices” (with Devin Bunten)
