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I study the job impacts of the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG), a federal program
which provides local governments with block grants to flexibly invest in low-income neighborhoods.
I leverage a one-time shock to the formula allocation process which permanently re-shuffled
grant generosity, simultaneously creating large funding shocks in both directions. While job counts
increased in positively shocked localities relative to unaffected localities, job counts remained steady
in negatively shocked localities. I document asymmetric effects on local public finance mechanisms
to support these findings. I also leverage itemized CDBG expenditure data to uncover correlates of
high-impact place-based investments.
