UCLA

This dissertation comprises three essays in urban economics that study the causes and consequences of travel and migration decisions. In Chapter 1, I study the effect of e-commerce on in-person shopping and daily travel patterns. I combine National Household Travel Data with data on the network of Amazon warehouses to provide new causal estimates for the impact of online shopping on in-person shopping trips. I use an instrumental variables strategy to show that the two are substitutes and find little evidence of reallocation towards different types of trips by households who substitute away from in-person shopping. In Chapter 2, co-authored with Stuart Gabriel and Gregor Schubert, we study the role of political partisanship on domestic migration within the United States. We leverage voter registration data and a spatial equilibrium framework to show that partisan migrants prefer destinations that align with their political views. Furthermore, we document that this preference has grown stronger since 2012, particularly for migrants affiliated with the Democratic Party. In Chapter 3, co-authored with Jose Antonio Inguanzo, we study the impact of gentrification on local economic activity in Mexico City. We focus on the post-pandemic influx of American remote workers and use geographically granular Airbnb and business establishment data to document a positive effect on local employment and business creation.