Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society · 2024

Geographies of discontent: measuring and understanding the feeling of abandonment in the Chilean region of Valparaíso (2019–2021)

with Pedro Fierro, Patricio Aroca and Francisco Rowe

We introduce external political efficacy (EPE) as a measure of political discontent that goes beyond voting, capturing a sense of abandonment and how responsive people feel the political system is to their needs. Using data from Valparaíso, Chile, we find that long-term territorial socio-economic disadvantage — rather than low-paid employment — predicts individual discontent, pointing to lowered beliefs in system responsiveness.

Job market paper

The Price of Violence: The Impact of Social Unrest on Real Estate in Santiago, Chile

This paper estimates the effect of urban violence on real estate markets using the October 2019 social unrest in Santiago, Chile. I combine geocoded violence exposure from prosecutorial records with the universe of residential and commercial property transactions and a large panel of rental listings, in a difference-in-differences design with block, year-month, and municipality-by-year fixed effects. Severely exposed blocks trade at a persistent residential discount of about 5.6% up to six years after the shock, while blocks with low exposure show no effect; applied to the exposed housing stock, this implies a capitalized loss of roughly USD 1.6–1.7 billion. Asking rents fall during the disruption and then recover, so prices and rents diverge, and the implied capitalization rate on exposed property rises by about 30 basis points. Residential transaction activity does not contract — if anything it increases — indicating rotation rather than illiquidity. Commercial markets adjust on the opposite margin: prices are uninformative, but the probability of any transaction falls by roughly 36%. Exposed blocks also lose about 3% of their population. A channel decomposition and triple-difference design attribute these effects to violence rather than to metro-accessibility disruption: blocks near closed stations but without violence show no discount, and greater accessibility disruption is associated with smaller violence discounts. The mechanisms relate to market thickness and to changes in amenities (security) and commercial activity, and the discount concentrates in central, mid- and higher-SES blocks with pre-existing insecurity. Overall, the economic cost of urban violence depends not only on its intensity but on the margin through which each market adjusts.

Working paper

Inclusive but Concentrated: The Impacts of Voluntary Inclusionary Zoning — Evidence from Los Angeles, California

Voluntary inclusionary zoning is widely used to tackle housing affordability, but its market effects are unclear. Studying Los Angeles's Transit Oriented Communities (TOC) program — a tiered voluntary density bonus that exchanges added capacity for on-site affordable units — I exploit sharp eligibility boundaries in a boundary difference-in-differences and boundary-kink design. Near the boundary, TOC raises the annual probability that an area receives any affordable project by about 1.1–1.3 percentage points, roughly a 90% increase over the pre-policy mean. The gains concentrate in lower-rent, higher-tier locations, with weak responses in affluent single-family areas, while nearby market-rate output does not fall. TOC expands affordable supply where the incentive binds, but its benefits are spatially concentrated — implying limited citywide inclusion without complementary tools in high-rent areas.

Working paper

Paying for Integration: The Neighborhood Impacts of a Mixed-Income Housing Demand Voucher — Evidence from Chile

Despite the prominence of social integration in urban policy, credible evidence on whether housing policy reshapes neighborhood composition is limited. I study Chile's DS-19, a homeownership voucher that adds an "integration bonus" for mixed-income developments, most of them in peripheral areas. Matching geocoded project data to Chile's censuses (2002–2024), I use difference-in-differences and propensity-score matching to separate direct effects on treated tracts from spillovers onto adjacent ones. DS-19 raises the presence of higher-educated household heads in treated tracts — with much larger effects in metropolitan areas — and generates spillovers concentrated in immediately adjacent tracts. Pecuniary incentives paired with better housing quality can induce localized demographic change, with limited spillovers beyond the immediate surroundings.

In progress

Upzoning New York: The Impact of Publicly Initiated Rezoning

An event-study analysis of major publicly initiated upzonings in New York City between 2007 and 2013. Treated areas see an overall decline in housing prices, but the effect diverges by location: in peripheral areas upzoning raises prices four to five years after implementation, while in central areas prices fall. Changes in the built environment — new units and buildings centrally, renovations, height, and commercial space peripherally — help explain why supply-side zoning effects can vary sharply even within a single city.

In progress

Valparaíso is Empty: Social Unrest and Commercial Vacancy

A mixed-methods study of how the 2019 social unrest reshaped street-level retail in Valparaíso. Combining block-level data on street-facing stores with neighborhood surveys and focus groups, I document commercial vacancy rising from about 6% to 18% five years after the unrest. Residents point to violence and crime as the main barriers to operating, while the pandemic was a shorter-run shock that many adapted to by moving online or closing temporarily.