The elected official next door

Daniel B. Jones, Randall Walsh and Jiangnan Zeng

Regional Science and Urban Economics, 2025, vol. 111, issue C

Abstract: This paper examines whether the election of a city council member generates highly localized benefits within their own neighborhoods. We use housing prices as a summary statistic to capture the numerous and difficult to observe ways in which local government allocates localized amenities. Drawing on data on North Carolina city council elections and the universe of housing transactions, we use a close-elections regression discontinuity strategy. We find that housing prices substantially increase for houses very close (within 0.2 miles) to a newly elected councilmember’s place of residence.

Keywords: Housing; Local politics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166046224001066
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:regeco:v:111:y:2025:i:c:s0166046224001066

DOI: 10.1016/j.regsciurbeco.2024.104075

Access Statistics for this article

Regional Science and Urban Economics is currently edited by D.P McMillen and Y. Zenou

More articles in Regional Science and Urban Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().