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Does Hazardous Waste Matter? Evidence from the Housing (2005)
| Venue: | Market and the Superfund Program,” NBER Working Paper No. 11790 |
| Citations: | 86 - 20 self |
BibTeX
@INPROCEEDINGS{Greenstone05doeshazardous,
author = {Michael Greenstone and Justin Gallagher and Michael Greenstone and Justin Gallagher},
title = {Does Hazardous Waste Matter? Evidence from the Housing},
booktitle = {Market and the Superfund Program,” NBER Working Paper No. 11790},
year = {2005}
}
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Abstract
This paper uses the housing market to develop estimates of the local welfare impacts of Superfund sponsored clean-ups of hazardous waste sites. We show that if consumers value the clean-ups, then the hedonic model predicts that they will lead to increases in local housing prices and new home construction, as well as the migration of individuals that place a high value on environmental quality to the areas near the improved sites. We compare housing market outcomes in the areas surrounding the first 400 hazardous waste sites chosen for Superfund clean-ups to the areas surrounding the 290 sites that narrowly missed qualifying for these clean-ups. We find that Superfund clean-ups are associated with economically small and statistically indistinguishable from zero local changes in residential property values, property rental rates, housing supply, total population, and the types of individuals living near the sites. These findings are robust to a series of specification checks, including the application of a regression discontinuity design based on knowledge of the selection rule. Overall, the preferred estimates suggest that the local benefits of Superfund clean-ups are small and appear to be substantially lower than the
Keyphrases
hazardous waste matter superfund clean-ups housing market hazardous waste site housing supply specification check consumer value residential property value local benefit local welfare impact hedonic model predicts selection rule property rental rate high value total population regression discontinuity design environmental quality improved site local change new home construction preferred estimate local housing price
