The Value of Climate Amenities: Evidence from US Migration Decisions

Abstract

At least one co-author has disclosed a financial relationship of potential relevance for this research. Further information is available online at http://www.nber.org/papers/w18756.ack NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peerreviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

Some Like it (Less) Hot: Extracting Tradeoff Measures for Physically Coupled Amenities

“…7 5 A small number of other studies have also considered weather's role. See Albouy et al [2013]; Cragg and Kahn [1997]; Maddison and Bigano [2003]; Rehdanz and Maddison [2009]; Sinha and Cropper [2013]. 6 A simpler migration analysis by Evans et al [2014] using the 2004 and 2006 waves together with confidential records identifying the census tract of respondents to evaluate residential choices in 2006 confirms the importance of weather variables.…”

“… See Albouy et al [2013]; Biere et al[ 2014];Cragg and Kahn [1997];Maddison and Bigano [2003];Rehdanz and Maddison [2009];Sinha and Cropper [2013].…”

Temperature and Human Capital in the Short- and Long-Run

“…1 These include impacts on such wide ranging outcomes as agriculture, human health, and economic growth. See, for example, Mendelsohn et al, 1994;Schlenker et al, 2006;Deschenes and Greenstone, 2007;Burke et al, 2009;Schlenker and Roberts, 2009;Feng et al, 2010;Hsiang, 2010;Nordhaus, 2010;Deschenes and Greenstone, 2011;Dell et al, 2012;Graff Zivin and Neidell, 2013;Barreca et al, 2013;Sinha and Cropper, 2013. 2 A similar approach has been taken to examine adaptation in the context of agriculture (Burke and Emerick, 2012), though as we describe below our approach differs due to the dynamic accumulation of impacts in the human capital context.…”

Estimates of Changes in County-Level Housing Prices in the United States Under Scenarios of Future Climate Change

“…A number of housing market and wage/earning studies in the US include temperature variables, such as annual average temperature, January and July temperatures, heating and cooling degree days, and precipitation variables, such as annual or seasonal rainfall or snowfall (Hoch and Drake, 1974;Cropper and Arriaga-Salinas, 1980;Cropper, 1981;Roback, 1982;Cosgrove, 1990, 1991;Gyourko and Tracy, 1991). More recently, studies by Koirala and Bohara (2014), Albouy et al (2013), and Sinha and Cropper (2013) have used micro-level housing data similar to this study and analyzed the amenity effects of climate. Collectively, these studies provide evidence for a statistically significant role of climate in determining housing prices and wages, although studies differ in the magnitude, and sometimes direction of the effect.…”

“…The dataset covers over 1.3 million households in large and small cities, excluding only rural, sparsely populated counties. The use of household-level data (rather than county averages) as has also been the case in several recent studies (for example, Sinha and Cropper, 2013;Albouy et al, 2013) enables modeling direct relationships between climate and household preferences as reflected in house price. Covering a broad geographic area provides variation in climate to estimate the hedonic relationship for a range of conditions.…”