CAREER: A Quantitative Analysis of Spatial Inequality and Place-based Policies

摘要这项提案阐明了地理不平等的一些原因、后果和政策影响。第一个项目将支持基于居住地的再分配制度的理论论点正式化，除了收入。然后，该项目评估了这种基于地点的再分配在美国的收益。第二个项目研究城市内部的地理不平等以及相应的邻里层面的以地方为基础的政策的影响。特别是，它联合分析了美国过去几十年的三个趋势：收入不平等加剧，高收入向大城市的市中心转移，以及这些城市的社区变化。第三个项目开发并描述了一个新的理论模型，该模型纳入了取决于收入的区位偏好，并审查了人口增长对按技能选择区位的变化以及对地理不平等的影响。近年来，经济地理学领域见证了一场量化革命，这是因为框架结合了理论上的可操作性、与数据的密切联系以及进行有助于政策评估的基于量化模型的一般均衡反事实的能力。到目前为止，这些工具主要集中在研究具有同质试剂的模型中的效率。这一建议扩展了框架及其应用，以分析具有异质代理人的空间均衡，其中家庭在技能和收入方面不平等，导致不同的地点选择。这些理论扩展是分析关注空间不平等和空间政策的分配后果以及它们对效率的影响的必要起点。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

AbstractThis proposal sheds light on some of the causes, consequences and policy implications of geographic inequality. The first project formalizes the theoretical argument in favor of a redistribution system based on place of residence, in addition to income. The project then assesses the gains of such place-based redistribution in the United States. The second project studies within-city geographic inequality and the impact of corresponding neighborhood-level place-based policies. In particular, it analyzes jointly three trends of the past few decades in the United States: increased income inequality, high incomes moving to the downtowns of large cities, and neighborhood change in these cities. The third project develops and characterizes a new theoretical model that incorporates preferences for location that depend on income, and examines the impact of population growth on changes in location choice by skill, and on geographic inequality. The field of Economic Geography has witnessed a quantitative revolution in the recent years due to the frameworks that combine theoretical tractability, close connection to data, and the ability to undertake quantitative model-based general equilibrium counterfactuals that are useful for policy assessment. These tools have been primarily focused so far on studying efficiency in models with homogeneous agents. This proposal extends the framework and its applications to analyze spatial equilibria with heterogeneous agents, where households are unequal in skill and income, leading to different location choices. These theoretical extensions are a necessary starting point for the analysis to focus on spatial inequality and the distributional consequences of spatial policies, in addition to their impact on efficiency.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.