Economic Development and Public Finance Working Paper Series
REP 09-01, The "Plane of Living" and the Recent Evolution of Housing Values in the United States, by John I. Carruthers and Gordon F. Mulligan.
This paper explores the relationship between quality of life differentials and the recent evolution of housing values across the United States with an eye toward implications for public policy. The analysis combines older spatial demographic methods (systematic mapping) with newer spatial econometric methods (autoregressive modeling) to deliver a panoramic view of the contemporary "plane of living" and an evaluation of its influence on housing values. Housing values are inextricably bound to geography — both natural amenities and human amenities matter, but in somewhat different ways. The influence of natural amenities is growing more powerful, but human amenities offer key opportunities to address housing market conditions because they can readily be enhanced via public policy. Several general policy recommendations follow from these findings. Keywords: environmental amenities, quality of life, housing values, economic geography, spatial econometric analysis; JEL Classification: C21, Q51, Q56, R21, R23
|
| 
