Calendrier du 10 septembre 2019
Applied Economics Lunch Seminar
Du 10/09/2019 de 12:30 à 13:30
Salle R2.01, Campus Jourdan, 48 Bd jourdan 75014 Paris
SCHMUTZ Benoit (Crest,IPP,Polytechnique)
The political economy of public housing"
In many European and Asian countries, public housing accounts for a large share of housing and its allocation is controlled by municipalities. Using French data, we investigate whether mayors use public housing to change the composition of their municipality and attract more favorable voters. We use a regression discontinuity design that exploits close elections to identify a causal effect of electing a left- instead of a right-wing mayor on the population of housing projects. The results indicate that about six years after the initial election, before the next election, municipalities that elected a left-wing mayor have a larger share of immigrants and a lower share of retired natives in public housing. In the medium-run and long-run, the differences in composition are twice as large but also more imprecise. We also find evidence of similar but less intense changes in composition in the population in private housing but only in municipalities with a large public housing supply. In these municipalities, the election of a left-wing mayor is associated with higher incumbency advantage, but also more far-right votes in the first-round and a decline in electoral participation in municipal elections.