Time: Friday September 15, 10:30 AM – 11:30 AM

Venue: IB #1011

Speaker: Dr. Nathan Schiff, Associate Professor at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics

Moderator: Dr. Gergely Horváth, Associate Professor of Economics, Duke Kunshan University

Maps of ethnic neighborhoods: https://nathanschiff.shinyapps.io/ee_maps_deployed/

(Author: Tianran Dai, SUFE and Nathan Schiff, SUFE)

Abstract: We introduce a new statistical definition of an immigrant ethnic neighborhood based on a choice model and using the location distribution of natives as a benchmark. We then examine the characteristics of ethnic neighborhoods in the United States using decadal census tract data from 1970-2010. We estimate that 43% of the foreign-born population lived in ethnic neighborhoods in 1970, increasing to 67% by 2010. Ethnic neighborhoods have lower average incomes and housing values, and a higher percentage of residents living in rental housing and commuting without a car, than other locations in the city where the same group lives. Neighborhoods vary greatly in size and the population distribution across neighborhoods within a group follows a power law. Most neighborhoods disappear within one or two decades but larger neighborhoods persist longer. Large neighborhoods have a well-defined spatial structure with negative population gradients and growth occurs primarily through spatial expansion into adjacent locations.

Speaker’s bio: Nathan Schiff is an associate professor at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, School of Economics. His work spans the fields of urban economics, industrial organization, and public economics, with a general focus on how geography affects competition and the characteristics of markets. Some of his papers have been published in the Journal of Political Economy, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, and the Journal of Urban Economics.