Research

Job Market Paper

Transport Infrastructure Improvements and Spatial Sorting: Evidence from Buenos Aires

Awarded a research grant from the CAF - Development Bank of Latin America ($15,000).

How do improvements in the urban transport infrastructure affect the spatial sorting of residents with different levels of income and education within a city? What are the welfare effects of improving urban transit once we take into account these patterns of spatial sorting? In this paper, I study the effects of the construction of a bus rapid transit system (BRT) on the spatial reorganization of residents within the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina. To do so, I leverage an individual level panel data set of more than two million residents with which I can describe intra-city migration patterns. I first find reduced form evidence that the construction of the BRT increased the spatial segregation between high and low-skilled residents within the city. I then develop a dynamic quantitative spatial equilibrium model of a city with heterogeneous workers that allows me to quantify the welfare effects of this BRT system while taking into account these spatial sorting patterns. With this quantitative framework, I can measure the average welfare gains for residents that were living near the BRT lines before these were built. I find that welfare gains were very similar between high- and low-skilled workers living in the same locations, but very different within skill levels across locations. Residents living near a BRT line in neighborhoods with the lowest share of high-skilled residents saw welfare gains close to 1% on average, while residents living near a BRT line in neighborhoods with the highest high-skilled share saw welfare gains around 0.5% on average.

Works in Progress

• Welfare and Political Consequences of Public Investment in Amenities. Evidence from Spatial Data in Argentina (with Teresa Esteban-Casanelles), 2020.
• The Effects of Advertising On Product Appeal: A Spatial Discontinuity Approach, 2019.

Publications

Published Papers

• Intergenerational Field Transitions in Economics (with Facundo Albornoz, Antonio Cabrales, and Esther Hauk), Economics Letters, 2017.
• Diferencias educativas entre escuelas privadas y públicas en Argentina [Educational Differences between Private and Public Schools in Argentina] (with Facundo Albornoz, Melina Furman, Paula Razquin and María Eugenia Podesta), Desarrollo Económico, 2016.
• Country Risk and the Cost of Equity in Emerging Markets (with Ignacio Warnes), Journal of Multinational Financial Management, 2014.

Other publications in Spanish

• Resultados PISA en Iberoamérica: desempeños similares, distintos contextos [Results from PISA in Ibero-America: similar outcomes, different backgrounds] (with Facundo Albornoz) in El Estado de la Ciencia. Principales indicadores de ciencia y tecnología iberoamericanos / interamericanos, RICyT, 2013.
• Esfuerzos en Educación en Iberoamérica y su vínculo con la investigación y el desarrollo [Educational efforts in Ibero-America and its relationship with Research and Development] (with Facundo Albornoz) in El Estado de la Ciencia. Principales indicadores de ciencia y tecnología iberoamericanos / interamericanos, RICyT, 2012.