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In the past fifty years, a voluminous literature estimating the value of schools through capitalization in home prices has emerged. Prior research has identified capitalized value using various approaches including discontinuities caused by boundaries. We use changes in school boundaries and the proposal of a new school. Our findings from redistricting in the Fayette county school district (KY) show that prices for homes redistricted from a lower-performing (based on test scores) school into the proposed school catchment area increase by six percent. For houses in higher-performing school catchment areas redistricted to the proposed new school district, there is a smaller increase in value. Houses redistricted from higher-performing schools to lower-performing schools decrease in value by three to five percent. However, many of the redistricted properties see little or no significant change, suggesting that only extreme changes in school quality are capitalized. We estimate that homes in the redistricted areas increased by $108 million relative to homes that were not redistricted.

A growing literature finds evidence that flood risk salience varies over time, spiking directly following a flood and then falling off individuals' cognitive radar in the following years. In this article, we provide new evidence of salience exploiting a hurricane cluster impacting Florida that was preceded and followed by periods of unusual calm. Utilizing residential property sales across the state from 2002 through 2012, our main estimate finds a salience impact of −8%, on average. The salience effect persists when we base estimation only on spatial variation in prices to limit confounding from other simultaneous changes due to shifting hedonic equilibria over time. These effects range from housing prices decreases of 5.4–12.3% depending on the year of sale. Understanding flood risk salience has important implications for flood insurance and disaster policy, the benefits transfer literature, and, more broadly, our understanding of natural disaster resilience. JEL Classification: Q51, Q54, R21

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