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Win or Lose: Residential Sorting After a School Choice Lottery

The Review of Economics and Statistics 2020 102(3), 457-472 open access
We examine residential relocation and opting out of the public school system in response to school choice lottery outcomes. We show that rising kindergartners and sixth graders who lose a school choice lottery are 6 percentage points more likely to exit the district or change neighborhood schools (20% to 30% increase) and make up 0.14 to 0.35 standard deviations in average school test scores between lottery assignment and attendance the following year. Using hedonic-based estimates of land prices, we estimate that lottery losers pay a 9% to 11% housing price premium for access to a school with a 1 standard deviation higher mean test score.

Inferring Tax Compliance from Pass-Through: Evidence from Airbnb Tax Enforcement Agreements

The Review of Economics and Statistics 2021
Abstract Tax enforcement is especially costly when market participants are difficult to observe. The benefits of enforcement depend crucially on pre-enforcement compliance. We de rive an upper bound on pre-enforcement compliance from the pass-through of newly enforced taxes. Using data on Airbnb listings and the platform's voluntary collection agreements, we find that taxes are paid on, at most, 24% of Airbnb transactions prior to enforcement. We also find that demand for Airbnb listings is inelastic, driving three key insights: the tax burden falls disproportionately on renters, the excess burden is small, and tax enforcement is relatively ineffective at reducing local Airbnb activity.