Date of Award
5-2023
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Economics
Committee Chair/Advisor
Curtis Simon
Committee Member
Raymond Sauer
Committee Member
Andrew Hanssen
Committee Member
Kenneth Whaley
Abstract
My dissertation focuses on the impact of housing demand shocks on neighborhood change and internal migration. My first chapter uses house prices to measure the amenity value households place on new stadium construction in a hosting city. The second chapter studies the impact of two amendments to California’s Proposition 13. Namely, Proposition 60 and Proposition 90 allowed individuals over age 55 to transfer the assessed value of their homes to a replacement dwelling of equal or lesser value in the same county or different county, respectively, without a change of ownership reassessment. In this chapter, I study the removal of this lock-in effect and its impact on internal migration rates in California.
Chapter 1 is titled ”A Synthetic Control Analysis of the Effect of Stadium Construction on House Prices, Rents, and Income Composition.” The United States has experienced a boom in professional sports venue construction over the past 25 years. Cities built fifty-seven new sporting venues between 2000 and 2020 and will likely construct many more new facilities over the next 15 years. When policymakers invest in urban infrastructure, they provide infrastructure to a place, not particular people. This raises a significant challenge: if people are mobile within cities, an improvement in one neighborhood may lead to an inflow of more affluent people who push up local prices and displace the poor. This process of infrastructure-induced neighborhood change has led to much debate about the proper design and impact of urban investment. On average, teams have replaced their existing stadiums every 27 years, suggesting another wave of stadium construction should come within the next decade.
This chapter contributes to the literature researching the impact of sports venues on property values, which, overall, contains mixed results. In the paper, I use a data-driven approach to estimate the impact of stadium construction at various distance measures using GIS software. I find positive effects on the home prices in Minneapolis, Minnesota; Santa Clara, California; Atlanta,
Georgia; Las Vegas, Nevada; and Inglewood, California. I find null effects in Arlington, Texas, and Rutherford, New Jersey. Among the cities with positive home price effects, I find the most prominent effect in Inglewood, California, which I suggest is because it was uniquely accompanied by ancillary construction: industrial, residential, business, and other activities. In this chapter, I also analyze local demographic changes in each city. I find that in cities where home prices increased the most in their respective treatment zone (Census tracts within 5 miles), the degree of neighborhood change is the strongest as measured by household income, the share of college graduates, and the black population share.
Chapter 2 is titled “The Impact of California’s Proposition 13 on Internal Migration.” I analyze the impact of two amendments to Proposition 13 in California. Proposition 13 was one of the most significant tax changes initiated by voters in the United States. In 1978, Proposition 13 transformed California’s property tax from a market-value-based to an acquisition-value-based tax. This change gives rise to an implicit tax break enjoyed by homeowners living in the same house for extended periods resulting in a lock-in effect. Two amendments later passed, Proposition 60 and Proposition 90, which allowed persons over age 55 to transfer the assessed value of their homes to a replacement dwelling of equal or lesser value in the same county or different county, respectively, without a change of ownership reassessment. In this paper, I study the removal of this lock-in effect and estimate its impact on internal migration rates in California. Empirical results show no effect of Proposition 60 and Proposition 90 on internal migration rates in California from 1986-1996. One limitation of the study is that it currently uses state-level data. I argue for two potential mechanisms that could explain this null finding. First, during this time, California experienced a prolonged recession. Second only a few, yet relatively large, counties in California adopted Proposition 90 immediately after approval of the law.
Recommended Citation
Jewell, Terrence, "Essays in Urban Economics" (2023). All Dissertations. 3277.
https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/all_dissertations/3277