Understanding the Effects of Policy Uncertainty, Public Land Use Change and Public School Gun Violence: Three Essays in Applied Microeconomics and Environmental Economics

This dissertation consists of three essays utilizing property markets to evaluate three distinct questions relating to policy uncertainty, land use change and public school gun violence. The first essay examines how developers respond to expected changes in regulations related to sea-level rise and coastal construction. Results suggest that housing developers respond to expected future regulations by increasing housing production in the current unregulated period. Contrary to the regulator’s goal of reducing risk to property from expected sea-level rise, new information signaling more stringent future regulations resulted in more homes being constructed in high-risk coastal zones. The second essay estimates willingness to pay for public land use change where open space is converted to a greenway. Results provide evidence that converting open space to a greenway corridor has different property value effects according to neighborhood income, with low income areas having a higher willingness to pay for greenway construction and few benefits accruing to homes in high income areas. Furthermore, homes near undesirable open spaces experience larger property value gains after a greenway is constructed. The third essay measures the effect of public school gun violence on property values in the surrounding area. Analyzing five mass school shootings, evidence is found of large and persistent negative effects for homes assigned to a school where a shooting occurred. Moreover, an analysis of strategies for spatially defining treatment and control groups in the hedonic framework suggests that identification requires careful consideration of individual housing market characteristics. Together these three essays contribute to the literature on non-market valuation and the effects of public policies on developer behavior and consumer welfare.