CREAT: Census Research Exploration and Analysis Tool

Papers written by Author(s): 'Matthew Freedman'

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Viewing papers 1 through 4 of 4


  • Working Paper

    Combining Rules and Discretion in Economic Development Policy: Evidence on the Impacts of the California Competes Tax Credit

    June 2021

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-21-13

    We evaluate the effects of one of a new generation of economic development programs, the California Competes Tax Credit (CCTC), on local job creation. Incorporating perceived best practices from previous initiatives, the CCTC combines explicit eligibility thresholds with some discretion on the part of program officials to select tax credit recipients. The structure and implementation of the program facilitates rigorous evaluation. We exploit detailed data on accepted and rejected applicants to the CCTC, including information on scoring of applicants with regard to program goals and funding decisions, together with restricted access American Community Survey (ACS) data on local economic conditions. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we find that each CCTC-incentivized job in a census tract increases the number of individuals working in that tract by over two ' a significant local multiplier. We also explore the program's distributional implications and impacts by industry. We find that CCTC awards increase employment among workers residing in both high income and low income communities, and that the local multipliers are larger for non-manufacturing awards than for manufacturing awards.
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  • Working Paper

    The Impacts of Opportunity Zones on Zone Residents

    June 2021

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-21-12

    Created by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017, the Opportunity Zone program was designed to encourage investment in distressed communities across the U.S. We examine the early impacts of the Opportunity Zone program on residents of targeted areas. We leverage restricted-access microdata from the American Community Survey and employ difference-in-differences and matching approaches to estimate causal reduced-form effects of the program. Our results point to modest, if any, positive effects of the Opportunity Zone program on the employment, earnings, or poverty of zone residents.
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  • Working Paper

    THE URBAN DENSITY PREMIUM ACROSS ESTABLISHMENTS

    October 2014

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-14-43

    We use longitudinal microdata to estimate the urban density premium for U.S. establishments, controlling for observed establishment characteristics and dynamic establishment behavior. Consistent with previous studies, we estimate a density premium between 6 and 10 percent, even after controlling for establishment composition, local skill mix, and the endogeneity of location choice. More importantly, we find that the estimated density premium is realized almost entirely at birth and is constant over the life of establishments. We find little evidence that the endogenous entry or exit of establishments can account for any of the estimated density premium. We interpret our results as implying that the returns to agglomeration diffuse within a city through a reallocation channel rather than through an increase in the productivity of existing firms.
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  • Working Paper

    Decomposing the Sources of Earnings Inequality: Assessing the Role of Reallocation

    September 2010

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-10-32

    This paper uses matched employer-employee data from the U.S. Census Bureau to investigate the contribution of worker and firm reallocation to changes in wage inequality within and across industries between 1992 and 2003. We find that the entry and exit of firms and the sorting of workers and firms based on underlying worker skills are important sources of changes in earnings distributions over time. Our results suggest that the underlying dynamics driving changes in earnings inequality are complex and are due to factors that cannot be measured in standard cross-sectional data.
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