American Economic Review Vol. 105 No. 2 2015

Environmental Health Risks and Housing Values: Evidence from 1,600 Toxic Plant Openings and Closings

Janet Currie¹; Lucas W. Davis²; Michael Greenstone³; Reed Walker²

¹ Department of Economics, Princeton University, 316 Wallace Hall, Princeton, NJ 08540 (e-mail: ) · ² Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720 (e-mail: ) · ³ Department of Economics, University of Chicago, 1126 E. 59th Street, Chicago, IL 60637 (e-mail: )

Abstract

Regulatory oversight of toxic emissions from industrial plants and understanding about these emissions' impacts are in their infancy. Applying a research design based on the openings and closings of 1,600 industrial plants to rich data on housing markets and infant health, we find that: toxic air emissions affect air quality only within 1 mile of the plant; plant openings lead to 11 percent declines in housing values within 0.5 mile or a loss of about $4.25 million for these households; and a plant's operation is associated with a roughly 3 percent increase in the probability of low birthweight within 1 mile.

DOI

10.1257/aer.20121656

Volume

105

Issue

2

Pages

678-709

Language

en

Sources

openalex bibtex:phds-export.bib crossref

Cite

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