Toxic Assets: How the Housing Market Responds to Environmental Information Shocks

Nicholas Sanders

No 128, Working Papers from Department of Economics, College of William and Mary

Abstract: In 1998, a number of polluting industries, including fossil fuel power plants, were added to the list of firms publicly reporting pollution releases in the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI). This caused a large increase in reported toxic pollution, and a corresponding decrease in median housing prices of 2-3 percent in impacted areas. Contrary to prior findings that TRI information does not influence household actions, I find the additional TRI data caused households to revise priors on ambient pollution levels. This implies that, even with market-based environmental regulation, there remains a role for government as provider of information on environmental conditions.

Keywords: pollution; hedonic estimation; Toxics Release Inventory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D62 H23 Q50 Q53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 53 pages
Date: 2012-12-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-env and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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Journal Article: Toxic Assets: How the Housing Market Responds to Environmental Information Shocks (2024)
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