This paper examines racial and ethnic differences in high-cost mortgage lending in seven diverse metropolitan areas from 2004 to 2007. Controlling for credit score and other risk factors, AfricanAmerican and Hispanic borrowers are 103% and 78% more likely to receive high-cost mortgages for home purchases. Alarge part of the increase is attributable to sorting across lenders (55%-65%), and this, in turn, can be largely accounted for by the lender’s ex post foreclosure risk. The remaining within-lender differences are also concentrated in high-risk lenders, revealing the central role of these institutions in explaining market-wide racial and ethnic differences.

This article tests whether the correlation between wages and concentration of employment can be explained by unobserved worker productivity. Residential location is used as a proxy for unobserved productivity, and average commute time to workplace is used to test whether location-based productivity differences are compensated away by longer commutes. Analyses using confidential data from the 2000 Decennial Census find that estimates of agglomeration wage premia within metropolitan areas are robust to comparisons within residential location and that estimates do not persist after controlling for commuting costs, suggesting that the productivity differences across locations are due to location, not individual unobservables.

This paper examines racial and ethnic differences in high-cost mortgage lending in seven diverse metropolitan areas from 2004 to 2007. Controlling for credit score and other risk factors, African American and Hispanic borrowers are 103% and 78% more likely to receive high-cost mortgages for home purchases. A large part of the increase is attributable to sorting across lenders (55%-65%), and this, in turn, can be largely accounted for by the lender’s ex post foreclosure risk. The remaining within-lender differences are also concentrated in high-risk lenders, revealing the central role of these institutions in explaining market-wide racial and ethnic differences. Received December, 17 2014; editorial decision January 20, 2017 by Editor Philip Strahan.

Using California ballot proposition returns and exogenous shifts to labor demand, we provide the first large-scale causal evidence of the impact of economic conditions on policy preferences. Consistent with economic theory, we find that positive economic shocks decrease support for redistributive policies. More notably, we find evidence of a need for cognitive consistency in voting behavior as economic shocks have a smaller significant impact on voting on noneconomic ballot issues. While we also demonstrate that positive shocks decrease turnout, we present evidence that our results reflect changes in the electorate's preferences and not simply to its composition.

We use a novel research design to empirically detect the effect of social interactions on labor market outcomes. Using Census data on residential and employment locations, we examine whether individuals residing in the same city block are more likely to work together than those in nearby blocks. We find evidence of significant social interactions. The estimated referral effect is stronger when individuals are similar in sociodemographic characteristics. These findings are robust across specifications intended to address sorting and reverse causation. Further, the increased availability of neighborhood referrals has a significant impact on a wide range of labor market outcomes. (c) 2008 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.

We use data on vote outcomes from a universal voucher initiative to examine whether white households with children in public schools will use vouchers to leave predominantly nonwhite schools, thereby contributing to more racially and ethnically segregated schools. We find that white households are more likely to support vouchers when their children attend schools with larger concentrations of nonwhite schoolchildren, an effect that is absent for nonwhite households and households without children. This result may be driven less by race or ethnicity and more by other characteristics, such as student performance, that are correlated with race or ethnicity.

We examine the effect of attending stand-alone technical high schools in Connecticut using regression discontinuity. Male students are 10 percentage points more likely to graduate from high school and have half a semester less time enrolled in college. Male students have 32% higher average quarterly earnings. Earnings effects may in part reflect general skills: male students have higher attendance rates and test scores, industry fixed effects explain less than one-third of earnings gains, and large earnings gains persist past traditional college going years. Attending a technical high school does not affect the outcomes of female students.

We examine the housing market and residential mobility changes that occur soon after a Title 1 school fails to achieve adequate yearly progress (AYP) in Charlotte, North Carolina. Students within attendance zones of failing schools are given priority in lotteries for oversubscribed schools, potentially increasing the attractiveness of living in a failing school attendance zone. We find that housing prices, home buyer income, and the probability of attending a nonassigned school increase in the highest-quality neighborhoods within failing school attendance zones. Our results are driven largely by the behavior of new residents.