THREE ESSAYS ON HOUSING MARKET AND SPATIAL DISAMENITIES

Spatial disamenities can affect neighborhood quality in many ways, and carefully quantifying such effects is essential for policy making. The first chapter of my dissertation focuses on the impact of foreclosures and vacancies on crime. To overcome confounding factors, a difference-in-difference research design is applied to a unique data set containing geocoded foreclosure and crime data from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Results indicate that while foreclosure alone has no effect on crime, violent crime increases by more than 15% once the foreclosed home becomes vacant. The second chapter examines the spillover effects of foreclosures and vacancies on the quantities and prices of properties sold in neighboring areas using the same foreclosure data and similar econometric design. Estimation results show that both foreclosure and vacancy reduce the neighboring houses' probabilities of sale. Also, there is little impact on houses with lower quantity index, and the effects disappear when foreclosed house is reoccupied. This paper is the first study to document the quantity shifts of homes sold at the time of nearby foreclosure in different sections of the housing market as a result of changes in both the demand side and the supply side. The last chapter examines the impact of new shale gas drilling technologies in the Marcellus region on rural residential property values using data from three counties with most drilling activities in Pennsylvania. The results suggest that property values are negatively correlated with the presence of nearby gas wells, though the effects are not statistically significant. Due to mineral right transfer issues, the estimates in this study are the result of two competing effects. The estimated coefficients may be lower-bounds of the actual impact.