Jeffrey GROESBECK's PhD Thesis, july 11th, 2023

July 11, 2023 Research

  Jeffrey GROESBECK will defend his thesis on Tueday 11 July at 16:00 (Auditorium 5 + zoom)
«Essays on health and housing in cities, past and present »
Supervisors: Stéphane Straub and Mohamed Saleh

To attend the conference, please contact the secretariat Christelle Fotso Tatchum

Memberships are:

  • Stéphane Straub : Professor Université Toulouse Capitole Supervisor
  • Mohamed Saleh : Professor London School of Economics Co-supervisor
  • Karine Van Der Straeten : Senior Researcher CRNS/TSE-R Présidente
  • Katherine Eriksson : Associate professor University of California Rapporteure
  • Elisabeth Viladecans-Marsal : Professor Universitat de Barcelona Rapporteure
  • Eric Schneider : Professor London School of Economics Examinateur

Abstract :

In response to the Great Depression and the corresponding foreclosure crisis, the U.S. government created the Home Owner’s Loan Corporation, which purchased and refinanced foreclosed home mortgages. After this pro- gram was complete, the HOLC then conducted the “City Survey Program”, which evaluated the residential housing market in a number cities and created what are infamously known as “redlining” maps. Every neighborhood in each city was evaluated on multiple criteria and given a grade, with the race of its residents a primary input. Due to insufficient records and data, it is difficult to ascertain how widely the maps were shared, and what kind of effect they had, if any, on the housing market. We seek to answer these questions simultaneously with a Regression Discontinuity Design, utilizing the fact that maps were only created for cities with a population above 40,000. We estimate the effect of a city having a redlining map utilizing both linear and nonparametric approaches. The results give strong evidence that these redlining maps had a negative effect on black homeownership.