Patents and Homelessness

The question: does innovation drive homelessness? The intuition is that patents signal economic growth, which drives up cost of living and displaces lower-income residents. Working with Jaden Richardson, this study tests it across 51 US states from 2014–2018 (n=254) using OLS regression with controls for population, GDP, education, and home prices. The headline result holds: +0.902 homeless people per additional patent filed (p<0.001). The surprise is what doesn't matter — home prices lose statistical significance entirely once other factors are controlled, which cuts against the obvious narrative. High school graduation rate carries the strongest standardized effect and is the most actionable policy lever in the model.

Course: EC 15 Econometrics | Collaborator: Jaden Richardson