A Valuation of Restored Streams Using Repeat Sales and Instrumental Variables

Charles Towe (), Henry Klaiber, Joe Maher and Will Georgic
Additional contact information
Joe Maher: US Government Accountability Office
Will Georgic: Ohio Wesleyan University

Environmental & Resource Economics, 2021, vol. 80, issue 2, No 2, 199-219

Abstract: Abstract Urban streams provide use and non-use value to local stakeholders and distant beneficiaries, alike, and play a critical role in maintaining ecosystem health. Due to dense residential development and associated stormwater infrastructure, the services these streams provide are at risk and likely to degrade as additional urban growth occurs. To combat degraded stream services and improve environmental quality, significant efforts to restore impaired streams are increasingly common. However, these restorations are costly, making estimates of the associated benefits critical to evaluating restoration policies. Using a repeat sales approach and instrumenting for the endogeneity of site selection we provide causal evidence of housing value capitalization of stream restoration projects to nearby property values. We find a local average treatment effect of 11% in property appreciation for our most inclusive distance buffer and show that ignoring endogenous assignment of restoration leads to bias on the scale of an order of magnitude in these estimates.

Keywords: Stream restoration; Non-market valuation; Repeat sales; Instrumental variables (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10640-021-00575-9 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:enreec:v:80:y:2021:i:2:d:10.1007_s10640-021-00575-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... al/journal/10640/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10640-021-00575-9

Access Statistics for this article

Environmental & Resource Economics is currently edited by Ian J. Bateman

More articles in Environmental & Resource Economics from Springer, European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().