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Hazardous Waste Hits Hollywood: Superfund and Housing Prices in Los Angeles

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  • Ralph Mastromonaco

Abstract

This paper contributes to the ongoing debate concerning the effect of various actions taken by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under CERCLA, commonly known as the Superfund Program, on housing prices. This study uses a housing transaction panel dataset encompassing the five major counties of the Los Angeles Combined Statistical Area to estimate the program’s influence on the local housing market. Using house and time-varying census tract fixed effects, I am able to avoid many of the endogeneity problems seen in previous research attempting to measure the Superfund treatment effect. An estimate of the effect on housing prices is given for each of the major events that occur under a typical Superfund remediation. After controlling for confounding correlated unobservables, I find a 7.3 % increase in sales price for houses within 3 km of a site that moves through the complete Superfund program. The analysis gives evidence of positive price appreciation for housing markets and serves as a lower bound for measuring remediation benefits. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Suggested Citation

  • Ralph Mastromonaco, 2014. "Hazardous Waste Hits Hollywood: Superfund and Housing Prices in Los Angeles," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 59(2), pages 207-230, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:enreec:v:59:y:2014:i:2:p:207-230
    DOI: 10.1007/s10640-013-9725-0
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Jacob LaRiviere & Matthew McMahon & Justin Roush, 2019. "Second-Best Prioritization of Environmental Cleanups," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 72(4), pages 1225-1249, April.
    2. Song, Jinbo & Nie, Rong & Yuan, Hehui & Gao, Jingxin, 2023. "Does the renovation of waste-to-energy incineration plants attenuate the housing price gradient? Evidence from a quasi-natural experiment in Shenzhen, China," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).
    3. Moeltner, Klaus & Blinn, Christine E. & Holmes, Thomas P., 2017. "Forest pests and home values: The importance of accuracy in damage assessment and geocoding of properties," Journal of Forest Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 46-55.
    4. Mastromonaco, Ralph & Maniloff, Peter, 2018. "An examination of geographic heterogeneity in price effects of superfund site remediation," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 171(C), pages 23-28.

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