The Moving to Opportunity for Fair Housing Demonstration (MTO) randomly assigned housing vouchers to public housing residents in an experimental test of the effect of neighborhood and location on household outcomes. In terms of adult employment outcomes, the 2 treatment groups did not significantly differ from the control group. We use MTO data to examine whether spatial proximity to jobs and job growth explains this lack of treatment effect. We first estimate differences in access to jobs and job growth for the 3 MTO groups. We then use 2-stage least squares models to test relationships between employment accessibility and 2 key outcomes: employment status and earned income. We find that employment accessibility declined for all groups, and these declines were strongest for the 2 treatment groups. However, our results show essentially no effect of employment proximity on earnings or employment status for MTO participants.

The Moving to Opportunity for Fair Housing Demonstration (MTO) randomly assigned housing vouchers to public housing residents in an experimental test of the effect of neighborhood and location on household outcomes. In terms of adult employment outcomes, the 2 treatment groups did not significantly differ from the control group. We use MTO data to examine whether spatial proximity to jobs and job growth explains this lack of treatment effect. We first estimate differences in access to jobs and job growth for the 3 MTO groups. We then use 2-stage least squares models to test relationships between employment accessibility and 2 key outcomes: employment status and earned income. We find that employment accessibility declined for all groups, and these declines were strongest for the 2 treatment groups. However, our results show essentially no effect of employment proximity on earnings or employment status for MTO participants.

We estimated the off-street parking supply of the seven most economically productive cities in Santa Clara County, California, better known as Silicon Valley. Using assessor data, municipal zoning data, and visual inspection with aerial imagery, we estimated that about 14 percent of the land area in these cities is devoted to parking, and that over half the average commercial parcel are parking spaces. This latter fact suggested that minimum parking requirements, if binding, could depress Silicon Valley’s commercial and industrial densities, and; thus, its productivity. In an exploratory empirical exercise, we simulated a reduction in parking requirements from the year 2000 forward, and showed that under conservative assumptions, the region could have added space for an additional 12,886 jobs, which is 43 percent of the actual job growth that occurred during that time. These additional jobs would be disproportionately located in the region’s highest-wage zip codes, further implying a large productivity gain.