School Quality,Residential Choice,and the U.S. Housing Bubble |
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Authors: | Michael Insler Kurtis Swope |
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Affiliation: | Department of Economics, United States Naval Academy, Annapolis, MD, USA |
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Abstract: | Using data from the American Housing Survey (years 2001–2009), we find that purchase prices for homes selected primarily to access self-identified “good schools” rose (relative to homes selected for other reasons) during the key U.S. housing bubble period, compared with the periods before and after the bubble. We observe a similar pattern in homebuyers' mortgage-to-income ratios. Various regression specifications and propensity score matching techniques show that these trends persist conditional on a range of household, demographic, and economic controls. Our results suggest that the strong, bubble-era pursuit of good schools may have played a role in the housing bubble's expansion. |
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Keywords: | residential choice housing expenditures school quality U.S. housing crisis |
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