Work in Progress

“Estimating the Impact of an Ethnic Housing Quotas Policy in Singapore on Housing Prices Using a Regression Discontinuity Framework.”
Abstract: In many countries, integration policies take the form of quotas such as ffirmative action quotas, quotas on immigrants as well as quotas on housing. This paper estimates the impact of one such integration policy—the ethnic housing quotas policy in Singapore. The ethnic housing quotas are a set of upper bounds on ethnic proportions to encourage spatial integration across the 3 main ethnic groups in Singapore: the Chinese, Malays and Indians. A direct consequence of the ethnic housing quotas is its effect on equilibrium housing price. Since 92% of Singaporeans are homeowners (Singapore Census, 2000), the policy has a direct impact on the housing wealth of the three ethnic groups. Standard analysis using OLS regressions will bias the treatment effect because of omitted variables (Chinese-constrained areas are more desirable for Chinese buyers). In this paper, I address the omitted variable problem by employing a regression discontinuity design that compares average housing prices above and below the quotas, but close to the quota discontinuity. I find that the quotas increase the average price of Chinese-constrained areas by 6-11% and decrease the average price of Malay- and Indian-constrained areas by 3-4% and 1-3% respectively.

“Seasonality in Consumption in Eastern Indonesia: Evidence from a Field Experiment”, joint with Karna Basu.
Abstract: There is evidence that autarkic savings is insufficient at smoothing consumption across agricultural cycles. Moreover, even within agricultural cycles, when income variation is relatively more predictable, individuals seem to be unable to allocate savings from the harvest season for consumption in lean seasons, which results in large fluctuation in consumption over time. Using extensive data collection and a field experiment, this project will study inter-seasonal consumption and savings behavior in 240 villages (~13,860 households) in Eastern Indonesia from 2008 to 2011. We survey households twice each year for 3 years, during harvest and during the lean season. There are three broad goals in this project. First, we design a series of games to understand time preferences. Second, we evaluate three interventions designed to help farmers smooth consumption: a simple storage technology, a commitment savings product, and a credit product.  The first intervention provides access to a storage technology with a high rate of return while the second intervention provides storage with a commitment technology. A third intervention provides credit access to the poor during the lean season to be repaid during harvest. The combination of the three interventions as well as the detailed data collection will allow us to investigate the reason behind the lack of savings. In particular, the impact and the welfare implication of these interventions will be very different if households have inconsistent time preferences. The savings technology with commitment will improve welfare with sophistication, and credit may reduce welfare if households are tempted to borrow too much.