IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hcx/wpaper/0607.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Environmental Contamination and House Values: A Study of Market Adjustment

Author

Listed:
  • Katherine Kiel

    () (Department of Economics, College of the Holy Cross)

Abstract

In many communities throughout the United States, contaminated sites are identified and addressed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In each of these communities, the EPA presents a plan of action and provides the community with information about progress being made. Does the housing market adjust quickly after announcements by EPA concerning the existence and toxicity of Superfund sites? Other studies have shown that the levels of house prices fall when people suspect there is a problem, and again when the EPA announces that the site is toxic (e.g. Kiel, 1995), but how can we tell when or if the market has completely adjusted to the existence of such a site? If the site is always perceived as an externality, then the coefficient on distance from the house to the site in the hedonic regression on house values should remain statistically significant and negative. Thus merely looking at the coefficient does not aid in determining when, or if, the market has cleared.

Suggested Citation

  • Katherine Kiel, 2006. "Environmental Contamination and House Values: A Study of Market Adjustment," Working Papers 0607, College of the Holy Cross, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:hcx:wpaper:0607
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://web.holycross.edu/RePEc/hcx/HC0607-Kiel_Woburn.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jill J. McCluskey & Gordon C. Rausser, 2003. "Stigmatized Asset Value: Is It Temporary or Long-Term?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 85(2), pages 276-285, May.
    2. Farber, Stephen, 1998. "Undesirable facilities and property values: a summary of empirical studies," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 1-14, January.
    3. Greenberg, M & Hughes, J, 1992. "The Impact of Hazardous Waste Superfund Sites on the Value of Houses Sold in New Jersey," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 26(2), pages 147-153, June.
    4. Kiel Katherine A. & McClain Katherine T., 1995. "House Prices during Siting Decision Stages: The Case of an Incinerator from Rumor through Operation," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 241-255, March.
    5. McCluskey, Jill J. & Rausser, Gordon C., 2003. "Hazardous waste sites and housing appreciation rates," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 45(2), pages 166-176, March.
    6. Kiel Katherine A. & McClain Katherine T., 1995. "The Effect of an Incinerator Siting on Housing Appreciation Rates," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 311-323, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    More about this item

    Keywords

    hedonic models; environmental prices; housing; adjustment process;

    JEL classification:

    • Q51 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Valuation of Environmental Effects
    • Q53 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Air Pollution; Water Pollution; Noise; Hazardous Waste; Solid Waste; Recycling
    • R2 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hcx:wpaper:0607. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Victor Matheson). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/deholus.html .

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.