Assessing the evidence on neighborhood effects from moving to opportunity

Dionissi Aliprantis

No 12-33R, Working Papers (Old Series) from Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland

Abstract: Trying to learn about neighborhood effects from the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) housing mobility experiment by focusing on its program effects obfuscates the evidence on neighborhood effects from MTO. This paper shows that using Intent-to-Treat (ITT) and Treatment-on-the-Treated (TOT) program effects from MTO to indirectly draw conclusions about neighborhood effects (1) offers no advantage for learning about neighborhood effects over directly estimating neighborhood effects, and (2) answers an ill-posed question as a result of allowing central identifying assumptions to be made implicitly. Focusing attention on directly specifying and estimating models of neighborhood effects, the paper presents empirical evidence that MTO only identifies effects from moves between neighborhoods of low quality. These results have broad implications for the way program effects are used to learn about parameters of other models, and they have not been sufficiently addressed in the literature to interpret the evidence from MTO as a test of Wilson (1987).

Keywords: Housing policy; Poverty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C30 H50 I38 J10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-09-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ure
Note: This paper replaces earlier versions published as working papers 11-01 and 11-22. This version was posted in November 2012. It was revised in May 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Assessing the evidence on neighborhood effects from Moving to Opportunity (2017)
Working Paper: Assessing the Evidence on Neighborhood Effects from Moving to Opportunity (2015)
Working Paper: Assessing the evidence on neighborhood effects from Moving to Opportunity (2012)
Working Paper: Assessing the evidence on neighborhood effects from moving to opportunity (2011)
Working Paper: Assessing the evidence on neighborhood effects from moving to opportunity (2011)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:fedcwp:1233

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DOI: 10.26509/frbc-wp-201233r

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