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Title: Essays in Environmental Economics
Citation Type: Dissertation/Thesis
Publication Year: 2016
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Abstract: This dissertation combines three empirical studies of human behaviors as they relate to environmental economics and the valuation of non-market environmental goods like air quality and climate. The first studies the effect of a large-scale program that aimed to improve air quality in New York City, and its effect on people’s valuation of residential real estate. The second explores how people respond differently to heat waves, with multiple consecutive days of high temperatures, than to single days with high temperatures, by increasing their demand for air conditioning and electricity use. In the third, we estimate household preferences over local climates, and use the estimates to project the welfare loss due to climate change by the year 2100. In Chapter 1 I present evidence of inefficiency in the valuation of an important non-market good, air quality, in New York City. Large buildings burning fuel oil for heat are a major contributor to particulate matter and other air pollutants in NYC. A recent NYC policy that rapidly phased out certain types of fuel oil boilers, combined with a randomly-assigned compliance deadline, gives me exogenous variation in air quality. Using the universe of home sales between 2003 and 2014, I test whether the conversion of a dirty oil boiler affects nearby home prices, and furthermore, whether this effect is different during different months of the year. In the absence of information asymmetry and projection bias in the housing market, I would expect to find that an oil boiler conversion increases nearby housing prices, and that this effect is nearly constant across the year. Instead, I find that while there is a positive effect on housing prices, the effect . . .
Url: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7d49w81m
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Authors: Graf, Walter Federico
Institution: UC Berkeley
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Data Collections: IPUMS USA
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