TY  - JOUR
AU  - Fernandez,Raquel
AU  - Rogerson,Richard
TI  - Keeping People Out: Income Distribution, Zoning and the Quality of Public Education
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 4333
PY  - 1993
Y2  - April 1993
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w4333
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w4333.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Raquel Fernández
Department of Economics
New York University
19 West 4th Street, 6th Floor
New York, NY  10012
Tel: 212/998-8908
Fax: 212/995-4186
E-Mail: raquel.fernandez@nyu.edu

Richard Rogerson
Woodrow Wilson School of
Public and International Affairs
323 Bendheim Hall
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ 08544
Tel: 609-258-4839
Fax: 609-258-5349
E-Mail: rdr@princeton.edu
AB  - This paper examines the effect of community zoning regulations on allocations and welfare in a two-community model. Each community uses a local property tax to finance public education. Tax rates are determined by majority vote within each community, and individuals choose in which community to reside. We study exogenously imposed zoning regulations as well as the case where the regulator is endogenously determined by majority vote. Our analysis indicates that a number of outcomes are theoretically possible. Several interesting results emerge from simulations of the model. Although zoning tends to make the rich community more exclusive, this need not increase the quality of education in the rich community relative to the poor community. Welfare effects are not monotone in income; some lower income individuals benefit and some higher income individuals are made worse off when zoning is introduced.
ER  -