Working Paper: NBER ID: w20296
Authors: Kevin Haininger; Lala Ma; Christopher Timmins
Abstract: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Brownfields Program awards grants to redevelop contaminated lands known as brownfields. This paper estimates cleanup benefits by combining administrative records for a nationally representative sample of brownfields with high-resolution, high-frequency housing data. We find property value increases accompanying cleanup averaging from 5.0% to 11.5%; for a welfare interpretation that does not rely on the intertemporal stability of the hedonic price function, a double-difference matching estimator finds even larger effects of up to 15.2%. Our various specifications lead to the common conclusion that Brownfields Program cleanups yield positive, statistically significant, but highly-localized effects on housing prices.
Keywords: brownfields; remediation; property values; hedonic pricing
JEL Codes: Q51; R11
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| brownfield remediation (L72) | housing prices (R31) |
| brownfield remediation (L72) | homeowner willingness to pay (R21) |