Policymakers subsidizing health insurance often face uncertainty about future market prices. We study the implications of one policy response: linking subsidies to prices, to target a given post-subsidy premium. We show that these price-linked subsidies weaken competition, raising prices for the...

This paper examines the education literature through the lens of sorting. It argues that how individuals sort across neighborhoods, schools and households (spouses), can have important consequences for the acquisition of human capital and inequality. It discusses the implications of different...

School districts in the U.S. typically have multiple schools, centralized finance, and student assignment determined by neighborhood of residence. In many states, centralization is extending beyond the district level as states assume an increasing role in the finance of education. At the same...

This paper uses a discrete choice approach to estimate the impact of local fiscal and other variables on individual community choices. It employs a combination of a unique micro data set composed of ninety percent of all homeowners in six school districts in Camden County, New Jersey and...

Locational choice is one of the fundamental exercises of consumer sovereignty. When regions (or localities within regions) specify different tax rates or supply different amounts of public goods, they distort individuals' location choices. This paper models and measures for the U.S. and New...

When worker commutes are suboptimal, quits and moves are related. Either a quit, a move, or both can achieve an optimal commute. However, with fixed costs to quitting and moving, a quit or move alone is more likely than both together. Payroll records of a firm which relocated from the central...

We explore the impact of rising incomes at the top of the distribution on spatial sorting patterns within large U.S. cities. We develop and quantify a spatial model of a city with heterogeneous agents and non-homothetic preferences for neighborhoods with endogenous amenity quality. As the rich...

Households "sort" across neighborhoods according to their wealth and their preferences for public goods, social characteristics, and commuting opportunities. The aggregation of these individual choices in markets and in other institutions influences the supply of amenities and local public...

An important element in considering school finance policies is that households are not passive but instead respond to policies. Household behavior is especially important in considering how households affect the spatial structure of metropolitan areas where different jurisdictions incorporate...

An important element in considering school finance policies is that households are not passive. Instead they respond to policies with a combination of modified residential choice and political choice of tax levels. The highly stylized decision models of most existing analyses, however, lead to...