We examine short-run impacts of changes in residential neighborhoods on the well-being of families residing in high-poverty public housing projects who received Section 8 housing vouchers through a random lottery. Households offered vouchers experienced improvements in multiple measures of well-being relative to a control group, including increased safety, improved health among household heads, and fewer behavior problems among boys. There were no significant short-run impacts of vouchers on the employment, earnings, or welfare receipt of household heads. Children in households offered vouchers valid only in low poverty neighborhoods also had reduced likelihood of injuries, asthma attacks, and victimizations by crime.

The Moving to Opportunity (MTO) demonstration assigned housing vouchers via random lottery to public housing residents in five cities. We use the exogenous variation in residential locations generated by MTO to estimate neighborhood effects on youth crime and delinquency. The offer to relocate to lower-poverty areas reduces arrests among female youth for violent and property crimes, relative to a control group. For males the offer to relocate reduces arrests for violent crime, at least in the short run, but increases problem behaviors and property crime arrests. The gender difference in treatment effects seems to reflect differences in how male and female youths from disadvantaged backgrounds adapt and respond to similar new neighborhood environments.

Consumers need information to compare alternatives for markets to function efficiently. Recognizing this, public policies often pair competition with easy access to comparative information. The implicit assumption is that comparison friction—the wedge between the availability of comparative information and consumers' use of it—is inconsequential because when information is readily available, consumers will access this information and make effective choices. We examine the extent of comparison friction in the market for Medicare Part D prescription drug plans in the United States. In a randomized field experiment, an intervention group received a letter with personalized cost information. That information was readily available for free and widely advertised. However, this additional step—providing the information rather than having consumers actively access it—had an impact. Plan switching was 28% in the intervention group, versus 17% in the comparison group, and the intervention caused an average decline in predicted consumer cost of about $100 a year among letter recipients—roughly 5% of the cost in the comparison group. Our results suggest that comparison friction can be large even when the cost of acquiring information is small and may be relevant for a wide range of public policies that incorporate consumer choice.