We use data from a housing-assistance experiment to estimate a model of neighborhood choice. The experimental variation effectively randomizes the rents which households face and helps identify a key structural parameter. Access to two randomly selected treatment groups and a control group allows for out-of-sample validation of the model. We simulate the effects of changing the subsidy-use constraints implemented in the actual experiment. We find that restricting subsidies to even lower poverty neighborhoods would substantially reduce take-up and actually increase average exposure to poverty. Furthermore, adding restrictions based on neighborhood racial composition would not change average exposure to either race or poverty.

We test two ways to improve revenue collection efficiency for water and sanitation utilities: (i) face-to-face engagement between utility staff and customers and (ii) contract enforcement for service disconnection due to nonpayment in the form of transparent and credible disconnection notices. Engagement has no effect, while enforcement significantly increases payment. We find no effect on access to water, perceptions of the utility, relationships between tenants and property owners, or on tenant mental well-being nine months after the intervention. These results suggest that transparent contract enforcement was effective at improving revenue collection efficiency without incurring significant observed social or political costs.

We examine the average causal impact of catastrophic natural disasters on economic growth by combining information from comparative case studies. For each country affected by a large disaster, we compute the counterfactual by constructing synthetic controls. We find that only extremely large disasters have a negative effect on output in both the short and the long runs. However, we also show that this results from two events where radical political revolutions followed the disasters. Once we control for these political changes, even extremely large disasters do not display any significant effect on economic growth.