DC Accepted Papers Paper:
Is White Flight Anecdotal?
*Names in bold indicate Presenter
Massive wishful integration intervention could trigger white flight and thus exacerbate residential segregation rather than promote racial integration. Yet, there is little large-scale empirical evidence of tipping. This paper proposes a refined holistic estimation scheme to explore the breadth and nature of tipping. There are two major innovations in this estimation strategy. First, the revealed integration preferences are elicited from a random coefficient discrete choice model. Second, the restrictive assumption of common tipping point is relaxed, which allows an in-depth investigation of tipping among neighborhoods of different preferences.
Abstract This paper finds that, among households exhibiting moderate exclusionary desire, there is substantial evidence of tipping (around the minority ratio of 12%), which is also documented in Card, Mas & Rothstein (2008). The evidence of neighborhood tipping warrants prudence, when designing racial integration policies.
Abstract Surprisingly, no evidence of tipping is found among neighborhoods with strong exclusionary desires. These neighborhoods are “immune” to tipping, because the black home seekers are tacitly kept out, which keeps the minority ratio below tipping points. Policymakers must be mindful of the “concealed” tipping points.
