A Unified Framework for Measuring Preferences for Schools and Neighborhoods
构建了一个估计家庭对学校和社区属性偏好的框架，利用大都市区人口普查数据发现，家庭对学校成绩提升的支付意愿远低于以往估计，且社区种族特征对房价的影响完全由不可观测的社区质量差异解释。
This paper develops a framework for estimating household preferences for school and neighborhood attributes in the presence of sorting. It embeds a boundary discontinuity design in a heterogeneous residential choice model, addressing the endogeneity of school and neighborhood characteristics. The model is estimated using restricted-access Census data from a large metropolitan area, yielding a number of new results. First, households are willing to pay less than 1 percent more in house prices-substantially lower than previous estimates-when the average performance of the local school increases by 5 percent. Second, much of the apparent willingness to pay for more educated and wealthier neighbors is explained by the correlation of these sociodemographic measures with unobserved neighborhood quality. Third, neighborhood race is not capitalized directly into housing prices; instead, the negative correlation of neighborhood percent black and housing prices is due entirely to the fact that blacks live in unobservably lower-quality neighborhoods. Finally, there is considerable heterogeneity in preferences for schools and neighbors, with households preferring to self-segregate on the basis of both race and education. (c) 2007 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.