When Power Plants Leave Town: Environmental Quality and the Housing Market in China
利用中国某大城市两座主要电厂搬迁作为准自然实验，发现电厂关闭使周边5公里内新房价格上升12-14%，交易量增加13-31%，且高价房涨幅更大。
Abstract Air pollution is a major environmental issue in China. This paper exploits the relocation of two major power plants in a large Chinese city as a quasi-natural experiment to examine the effect of changes in the quality of the environment on the housing market. We use an extensive transaction dataset of new apartment units in the affected and neighboring areas. We find that the plants’ closure is associated with a 12–14% increase in prices and 13–31% rise in the volume of transactions in neighborhoods within five kilometers of the plants. We further observe a higher change in prices among more expensive houses. The estimated monthly aggregate effect of the closures on the local housing market is over 50 million US dollars during the first 2 years after the relocations.