PostDoctoral Research Fellowship

Casey Marcus D, Raleigh NC

Investigators

Abstract

This National Science Foundation Minority Postdoctoral Fellowship will foster the development of new knowledge in the analysis of neighborhood transition and the concomitant issue of persistent racial segregation. Specically, this project will construct a dynamic model of housing choice in which expectations over neighborhood attributes is explicitly introduced into the individual deci- sion process. This research will overcome current limitations in standard models of housing choice. Furthermore, the results will yield new insights into the mechanism behind the persistence of seg-regation and potentially inform development of new public policy aimed at mitigating segregation. The Fellow will conduct his postdoctoral research under the supervision of Dr. Patrick Bayer in the Duke University Department of Economics. Dr. Bayer's work is in the vanguard of innovative re-search on urban economics, racial sorting, and segregation. In particular, his contributions include theoretical research on neighborhood sorting, tractable estimation of static behavioral models of neighborhood choice, and new methodology to overcome endogeneity of neighborhood racial and socioeconomic composition with unobservable quality. Moreover, Duke University is an ideal location to achieve the fellow's proposed research and training goals chiefy because of the comparative strength of its Economics Department, ample research and computing resources, and emphasis on interdisciplinary research. The social science literature has established both the persistence of high levels of segregation in US cities and its social and economic consequences. Less research, however, has been devoted to studying why segregation persists. The persistence of pervasive segregation is particularly puzzling given the decline in racist attitudes and the convergence in minority-white socioeconomic outcomes. Understanding this phenomenon requires identication of the relevant behavioral mechanisms underlying this process. Standard models are largely unsuccessful in explaining this behavior because they can not accommodate dynamics. To address this shortcoming, this project will exploit the availability of new longitudinal data on housing transactions and demographics and recent break-throughs in econometric modeling of dynamic optimization models to construct a tractable dynamic model of housing choice. Once estimated, the model will reveal how expectations over future hous- ing appreciation and racial preferences interact to spur neighborhood transition and the persistence of racial segregation. In particular, the model will assess the extent to which beliefs about housing price appreciation as opposed to racial preferences lead to the observed migration behavior. Moreover, through policy simulations, the model will yield predictions about responses to potential policy options aimed at fostering integration. Overall, this research will improve knowledge about the determinants neighborhood transition and segregation across the social scientic disciplines and potentially foster new methodological advances in this eld of research. The Fellow's training objectives are to invest in new theoretical and econometric modeling skills for the study of housing market behavior. In addition to completing his fellowship project, these skills will aid the Fellow in attaining a tenure-track position at a research university. In addition, the fellow's training will include attending seminars and lectures by researchers involved in developing behavioral and statistical methodology in economics, sociology, and related elds. Furthermore, the Fellow will develop skills that complement his research output by taking advantage of opportunities to present to and interact with scholars in his eld. In sum, the Fellow's research and training will generate new methodological and substantive knowledge in the study of racial segregation and invest him with the relevant skills for future contributions in this important area of research.