Chamna Yoon

The purpose of this study is to quantify the marginal willingness to pay (MWTP) for clean air in China. We provide the first estimate of MWTP for clean air by implementing a hedonic method using housing price and air quality data from Shanghai. Our estimates imply that air pollution has a significant and negative impact on housing price. We also find that the willingness to pay for better air quality varies significantly across different income groups. This paper helps to deepen our understandin

Abstract We develop and estimate a spatial overlapping generations model with heterogeneous households to study the feasibility of a recently proposed reform of internal migration policies that offers the potential of decreasing inequality within China. We find that this policy change significantly increases the college attainment of migrant children born in rural areas and, therefore, promises to increase the number of high‐skill workers. However, it requires significant tax increases to offset

This paper shows how to identify and estimate, using standard semi-parametric techniques, a class of dynamic games with perfect monitoring, that have been at the frontier of recent research in political economy. The empirical analysis provides novel quantitative insights into the trade-off that voters face between ideology and ability, the differences in ability and ideology among parties and states, and the differences in preferences between political candidates and voters. We analyze the conse

This article develops and estimates a new dynamic spatial equilibrium model to study the regional transition dynamics and its impact on individual and aggregate welfare. The model consists of a multiregion, multisector economy comprised of overlapping generations of individuals with heterogeneous skills and mobility costs. The empirical findings suggest that a large fraction of the decline of the Rust Belt can be attributed to the reduction in its region‐specific comparative advantage in the goo

The purpose of this dissertation is to study the causes, welfare effects, and policy implications of the decline of the Rust Belt. I develop a dynamic spatial equilibrium model which consists of a multi-region, multi-sector economy comprised of overlapping generations of heterogeneous individuals. Using several data sets that cover the time period from 1960-2010, I estimate the structural parameters of the model based on a simulated method of moments estimator. The empirical findings suggest tha

Using newly available data, we document that internal migrants do not enjoy the same access to local public goods and services as city residents in China. We estimate a spatial overlapping generations model with heterogeneous households to quantify the impact of the Hukou system on urban fiscal policies and access to educational opportunities. We find that migrants provide large fiscal externalities to all major cities. We show the feasibility of alternative internal migration policies that offe

Leveraging a combination of analytical frameworks and empirical assessments, this study investigates the effects of wait-for-free (WFF) pricing schemes on the monetization of serialized, digital entertainment content, which has become increasingly pervasive on online platforms. WFF pricing is a strategy in which consumers are given the option to either wait a certain amount of time to acquire digital content at no cost or pay to consume it immediately. We evaluate the extent to which habit forma

The authors present suggestions by graduate students from a range of economics departments for improving the first-year core sequence in economics. The students identified a number of elements that should be added to the core: more training in building microeconomic models, a discussion of the methodological foundations of model-building, more emphasis on institutions to motivate and contextualize macroeconomic models, and greater focus on econometric practice rather than theory. The authors hop

We consider a dynamic game of electoral competition with adverse selection, moral hazard, and imperfect monitoring. We show that this dynamic game can be estimated using a flexible maximum likelihood estimator. We implement the estimator using data from recent mayoral elections in large US cities with binding two-term limits. Our empirical findings suggest that there are large differences in performance among different types of mayors. We find an economically important degree of policy responsiv

Using a novel data set of U.S. residential land developments, we document that the average time to develop residential properties—which includes both the time spent preparing land infrastructures and construction—is about three years, consistent with sizable lags in housing investment projects. We show that the time to develop is highly dispersed across locations, a finding that helps quantify the housing supply elasticity that is relevant for assessing local housing variations over the business

We develop a new dynamic equilibrium model with heterogeneous households that captures the most important frictions that arise in housing rental markets and explains the political popularity of affordable housing policies.We estimate the model using data collected by the New York Housing Vacancy Survey in 2011.We find that there are significant adjustment costs in all markets as well as serious search frictions in the market for affordable housing.Moreover, there are large queuing frictions in t

This study evaluates the effect of an inclusionary housing program – specifically, the 421-a tax exemption program – on rent burden among households in New York City. This programme required developers of housing projects in Geographic Exclusion Areas (GEA) to set aside 20% of newly built units as affordable housing to receive a tax benefit. Using New York City Housing Vacancy Survey data, we estimate a difference-in-differences (DID) design with a continuous treatment variable. We find that thi