Public School Quality Valuation Over the Business Cycle

Stuart Gabriel, Owen Hearey, Matthew Kahn and Ryan Vaughn

No 22668, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Over the years 2000 to 2013, the Los Angeles real estate market featured a boom, a bust, and then another boom. We use this variation to test how the hedonic valuation of school quality varies over the business cycle. Following Black (1999), we exploit a regression discontinuity design at elementary school attendance boundaries to test for how the implicit price of school quality changes. We find that the capitalization of school quality is counter-cyclical. While good schools always command a price premium, this premium grows during the bust. Possible mechanisms for these findings include consumers "trading down" from private to public schools during contractions as well as the effects of reduced household mobility during downturns in raising the value of the public school option.

JEL-codes: R21 R3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-ure
Note: CH ED
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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