In 1975, a federal court ordered the desegregation of public schools in Jefferson County, KY. In order to approximately equalize the share of minorities across schools, students were assigned to a busing schedule that depended on the first letter of their last name. We use the resulting...

In the racially tense late 1960s, Kinloch Missouri was a politically autonomous Black community of nearly 10,000 residents, composed of African-Americans who were free to plan and conduct their own municipal affairs by whatever means they chose to try and improve their conditions. The town was...

During late 2019, reports emerge that a mysterious coronavirus is resulting in high contagion and many deaths in Wuhan, China. In just a few weeks, cases are rising quickly in Seattle, have spread to California, and the first case is reported in New York (from Iran) on March 1, 2020. Apparent...

Disparities in cognition persist between non-Hispanic Black (hereafter, Black) and non-Hispanic White (hereafter, White) older adults, and are possibly influenced by early educational differences stemming from structural racism. However, the relationship between school racial segregation and...

By the 2008/09 school year the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany) abolished binding school catchment areas (SCAs) in all municipalities. The reform has been controversial and it was feared that school choice would increase ethnic segregation. Using data on all primary schools, we...

Rent stabilization is valuable to occupying tenants because it limits rent growth. Assessing the rent discount implied by this policy is challenging because the counterfactual rents that rent-stabilized units would command in the unregulated market are unobservable. Using novel data from 2002 to...

Assessing rent discounts implied by rent regulation is challenging because the counterfactual rents of regulated units in the unregulated market are not observed. We estimate these counterfactual rents and predict the quality-adjusted rent discount for each rent-stabilized unit in New York City...

Historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) pay higher underwriting fees to issue tax-exempt bonds, compared to similar non-HBCUs. This appears to reflect higher costs of finding willing buyers: the effect is three times larger in the far Deep South, where racial animus remains the most...

By the 2008/09 school year the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany) abolished binding school catchment areas (SCAs) in all municipalities. The reform has been controversial and it was feared that school choice would increase ethnic segregation. Using data on all primary schools, we...

Given the critical role of neurocognitive development in early life, this study assesses how racial differences in early-life circumstances are collectively and individually associated with racial disparities in late-life cognition. Leveraging uniquely rich information on life history from the...