Abstract:
The impact of 39 swine confined or concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) in Black Hawk County, Iowa on 5,822 house sales is explored by introducing a new variable that more accurately captures the effects of prevailing winds, exploring potential adverse effects within concentric circles around each CAFO, managing selection bias, and incorporating spatial correlation into the error term of the empirical model. Large adverse impacts suffered by houses that are within 3 miles and directly downwind from a CAFO are found. Beyond 3 miles, CAFOs have a generally decreasing adverse impact on house prices as distance to the CAFO increases. Copyright (c) 2008 International Association of Agricultural Economists.