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Job market paper

"Who Wins With Up-Zoning? Quasi-Experimental Evidence from California's By-Right Permitting Reforms for Accessory Dwelling Units," 2026, with Gabriel Canedo Riedel.

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Abstract: Can up-zoning small units increase housing supply and who captures the benefits? We study California's 2017 de-regulation of accessory dwelling units (ADUs) through state-preemption of local permitting. We exploit a feature of California's regulatory environment to isolate quasi-random variation in the geography of permitting reform: the California Coastal Zone. Leveraging a regulatory discontinuity at the Coastal Zone boundary and pre-registered designs, we find that permitting reforms increased ADU permitting activity by about 30%, although these effects are small in magnitude. However, the reform did increase land values by 7%. With a simple model, we show that the change in land values reflect the decreased permitting costs associated with the reform package. We also find that permitting reforms are likely not associated with large price spillovers, and the increases in land values are associated with increased property tax collections.

Publications

  1. "Was pandemic fiscal relief effective fiscal stimulus? Evidence from aid to state and local governments," 2025, with Jeffrey Clemens and Stan Veuger. Journal of Macroeconomics 86: 103720. Links to the published version, to the AEI working paper and NBER working paper. Conferences: 11th Annual Brookings Municipal Finance Conference. Coverage: Marginal Revolution, Reason Magazine, The Bond Buyer, Foundation for Economic Education.

  2. "How did federal aid to states and localities affect testing and vaccine delivery?" 2023, with Jeffrey Clemens, John Kearns, and Stan Veuger. Journal of Public Economics 225: 104972. Links to the published version, the AEI working paper and NBER working paper. 

  3. "Moving to density: Half a century of housing costs and wage premia from Queens to King Salmon," 2023, with Stan Veuger and Danny Shoag. Journal of Public Economics 222: 104906. Links to the published version, the PDF, and AEI working paper. Coverage: The New York Times, Business Insider, MIT Work of the Future, The Washington Examiner, Institute for Family Studies, Marginal Revolution, Noahpinion, Fordham Institute, Agglomerations, Economic Innovation Group, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Manhattan Institute.  

  4. "Food aid cargo preference: Impacts on the efficiency and effectiveness of emergency food aid programs," 2022, with Vincent Smith and Stephanie Mercier. The Journal of Law and Economics 65(2): 395-421. Links to the published version and AEI working paper. Coverage: Congressional Record (House, Senate), PBS NewsHour, The Hill (Sen. Jim Risch), The American Prospect, The Cato Institute (2022, 2023), The Cato Institute Blog, Farm Progress, Sen. Joni Ernst and Sen. Chris Coons, Iowa Soybean Association, National Review, Devex, The Cato Institute, Progressive Farmer, National Taxpayers Union.

Working papers

  1. "Intergovernmental grants to school districts and educational outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic," 2026, with Jeffrey Clemens and Stan Veuger. Link to the AEI working paper. Link to the NBER working paper. Coverage: Edward Conard's Macro Roundup. 

  2. "The costs of mandates that waste US international emergency food aid resources: New evidence," 2025, with Vincent Smith and Jehnsen Ahokovi. Link to the AEI working paper. Coverage: The Korean Development Institute.

  3. "Regulatory risk and firm decision-making: Evidence from the Waters of the United States and US farms," 2025, with Vincent Armentano.  Link to the SSRN PDF.

  4. "Industry influence and agency decision making: Evidence from USAID," 2021, with Vincent Smith. Link to the PDF and AEI working paper.

Selected works in progress

  1. "Valuing federal lands for housing," with Jeffrey Clemens, Fabian Eckert, and Heidi Williams.​

  2. "How much does federal land distort cities? A new dataset of undevelopable land," with Jeffrey Clemens, Fabian Eckert, Jimena Keiser, Bridget Smith, and Heidi Williams.

  3. "The incidence of tax reforms for Social Security: Evidence from state pension reforms and longitudinal tax data," joint with Kye Lippold and Angela Gu.

Conference papers

  1. "Living with density: The impacts of California's by-right permitting for accessory dwelling units," 2026, with Gabriel Canedo Riedel. Link to the PDF. Presented at the 63rd meeting of the Public Choice Society, March 13.

  2. "Intergovernmental grants to school districts and educational outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic," 2025, with Jeffrey Clemens and Stan Veuger. Link to the PDF. Presented at the NBER Conference on the Fiscal Dynamics of State and Local Governments, September 11. Link to the presentation video.

  3. "The price of growth: Urbanization in Texas after the Civil War," 2023, with Bea Lee. Link to the PDF. Presented at the Southern California Graduate Student Conference in Applied Economics, November 4. Links to the conference website and link to the slide deck. Presented at the Urban Economics Association North American Meeting, September 20. Link to the conference program.

  4. "Working from density," 2021, with Leah Brooks and Stan Veuger. Presented at the Urban Economics Association North America Meeting, October 16. Link to conference website. 

  5. "What drives migration within Europe? Estimates from a gravity model and from micro data," 2021, with Stan Veuger. Presented at the GESIS 7th European User Conference for EU Microdata, March 26. Link to the conference abstract. 

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