Browsing by Author "McMillan, R"

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
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    A unified framework for measuring preferences for schools and neighborhoods
    (Journal of Political Economy, 2007-10-23) Bayer, P; Ferreira, F; McMillan, R
    This paper develops a framework for estimating household preferences for school and neighborhood attributes in the presence of sorting. It embeds a boundary discontinuity design in a heterogeneous residential choice model, addressing the endogeneity of school and neighborhood characteristics. The model is estimated using restricted-access Census data from a large metropolitan area, yielding a number of new results. First, households are willing to pay less than 1 percent more in house prices - substantially lower than previous estimates - when the average performance of the local school increases by 5 percent. Second, much of the apparent willingness to pay for more educated and wealthier neighbors is explained by the correlation of these sociodemographic measures with unobserved neighborhood quality. Third, neighborhood race is not capitalized directly into housing prices; instead, the negative correlation of neighborhood percent black and housing prices is due entirely to the fact that blacks live in unobservably lower-quality neighborhoods. Finally, there is considerable heterogeneity in preferences for schools and neighbors, with households preferring to self-segregate on the basis of both race and education. © 2007 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.
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    Estimating Racial Price Differentials in the Housing Market
    (Economic Research Initiatives at Duke (ERID), 2013-03-01) Bayer, P; Casey, M; Ferreira, F; McMillan, R
    This paper uses unique panel data covering over two million repeat-sales housing transactions from four metropolitan areas to test for the presence of racial price differentials in the housing market. Drawing on the strengths of these data, our research design controls carefully for unobserved differences in the quality of neighborhoods and the homes purchased by buyers of each race. We find that black and Hispanic homebuyers pay premiums of about three percent on average across the four cities, differences that are not explained by variation in buyer income, wealth or access to credit. Further, the estimated premiums do not vary significantly with the racial composition of the neighborhood; nor, strikingly, do they vary with the race of the seller. This latter finding suggests that racial prejudice on the part of sellers is not the primary explanation for the robust premiums we uncover. The results have implications for the evolution of racial differences in wealth and home ownership and the persistence of residential segregation.
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    Price Discrimination in the Housing Market
    (Economic Research Initiatives at Duke (ERID), 2012-05-01) Bayer, P; Casey, M; Ferreira, F; McMillan, R
    This paper sets out a new research design to test for price discrimination by sellers in the housing market. The design controls carefully for unobserved differences in the quality of neighborhoods and homes purchased by buyers of each race, using novel panel data from over two million repeat-sales housing transactions in four metropolitan areas. The results indicate that black and Hispanic homebuyers pay premiums of around 3 percent on average across the four cities – differences that are not explained by variation in buyer income, wealth or access to credit. The estimated premiums do not vary significantly with the racial composition of the neighborhood or, most strikingly, the race of the seller. This latter result rules out racial prejudice or animosity on the part of sellers as the primary explanation for the estimated premiums.
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    Racial Sorting and Neighborhood Quality
    (2005) Bayer, P; McMillan, R
    In cities throughout the United States, blacks tend to live in significantly poorer and lower-amenity neighborhoods than whites. An obvious first-order explanation for this is that an individual's race is strongly correlated with socioeconomic status (SES), and poorer households can only afford lower quality neighborhoods. This paper conjectures that another explanation may be as important. The limited supply of high-SES black neighborhoods in most U.S. metropolitan areas means that neighborhood race and neighborhood quality are explicitly bundled together. In the presence of any form of segregating preferences, this bundling raises the implicit price of neighborhood amenities for blacks relative to whites, prompting our conjecture - that racial differences in the consumption of neighborhood amenities are significantly exacerbated by sorting on the basis of race, given the small numbers of blacks and especially high-SES blacks in many cities. To provide evidence on this conjecture, we estimate an equilibrium sorting model with detailed restricted Census microdata and use it to carry out informative counterfactual simulations. Results from these indicate that racial sorting explains a substantial portion of the gap between whites and blacks in the consumption of a wide range of neighborhood amenities - in fact, as much as underlying socioeconomic differences across race. We also show that the adverse effects of racial sorting for blacks are fundamentally related to the small proportion of blacks in the U.S. metropolitan population. These results emphasize the significant role of racial sorting in the inter-generational persistence of racial differences in education, income, and wealth.
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    Separate when equal? Racial inequality and residential segregation
    (Journal of Urban Economics, 2014-01-01) Bayer, P; Fang, H; McMillan, R
    This paper sets out a new mechanism, involving the emergence of middle-class black neighborhoods, that can lead segregation in American cities to increase as racial inequality narrows. The formation of such neighborhoods requires a critical mass of highly educated blacks in the population and leads to an increase in segregation when those communities are attractive for blacks who otherwise would reside in middle-class white neighborhoods. To assess the empirical importance of this "neighborhood formation" mechanism, we propose a two-part research design. First, inequality and segregation should be negatively related in cross section for older blacks if our mechanism operates strongly, as we find using both the 1990 and 2000 Censuses. Second, a negative relationship should also be apparent over time, particularly for older blacks. Here, we show that increased educational attainment of blacks relative to whites in a city between 1990 and 2000 leads to a significant rise in segregation, especially for older blacks, and to a marked increase in the number of middle-class black communities. These findings draw attention to a negative feedback loop between racial inequality and segregation that has implications for the dynamics of both phenomena. © 2014 Elsevier Inc.
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    Tiebout Sorting, Social Multipliers and the Demand for School Quality
    (NBER Working Paper, 2009) Bayer, P; Ferreira, F; McMillan, R