Do Housing Prices Reflect Environmental Health Risks? Evidence from More than 1600 Toxic Plant Openings and Closings

Janet Currie, Lucas Davis, Michael Greenstone and Reed Walker

No 18700, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: A ubiquitous and largely unquestioned assumption in studies of housing markets is that there is perfect information about local amenities. This paper measures the housing market and health impacts of 1,600 openings and closings of industrial plants that emit toxic pollutants. We find that housing values within one mile decrease by 1.5 percent when plants open, and increase by 1.5 percent when plants close. This implies an aggregate loss in housing values per plant of about $1.5 million. While the housing value impacts are concentrated within 1/2 mile, we find statistically significant infant health impacts up to one mile away.

JEL-codes: D62 I18 Q51 Q53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env, nep-hea and nep-ure
Note: CH EEE EH LS PE
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (29)

Published as Currie, Janet, Lucas Davis, Michael Greenstone, and Reed Walker. 2015. "Environmental Health Risks and Housing Values: Evidence from 1,600 Toxic Plant Openings and Closings." American Economic Review, 105(2): 678-709.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w18700.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: DO HOUSING PRICES REFLECT ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH RISKS? EVIDENCE FROM MORE THAN 1600 TOXIC PLANT OPENINGS AND CLOSINGS (2013)
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:nbr:nberwo:18700

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w18700

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().