Lang, Corey. 2011. Non-Market
Valuation across Space And Time. Doctoral Dissertation, Cornell University.
My dissertation provides new
evidence and a new approach to identify the extent and implications of spatial
and temporal heterogeneity in the valuation of non-market goods. My research
adds dimensions to existing work in economics for pricing goods or features of
goods when they cannot be transacted directly in the market. In two
particularly policy relevant settings, my dissertation uses unusually rich data
and a fine-scale identification strategy to examine the dynamics and spatial
variation of non-market values. Chapter 1 extends existing small-area
estimation techniques to estimate and map spatial variation in marginal returns
to household assets in a developing-country setting; substantial variation
exists indicating that poverty reduction efforts of asset-specific transfer
schemes would improve with a spatially targeted strategy. The second chapter
examines spatial heterogeneity in willingness to pay for air quality and uses
those calculations to determine the distributional impacts of the 1990 CAAA. In
Chapter 3, I exploit exogenous policy variation from the 1990 Clean Air Act
Amendments (CAAA) in order to identify the speed at which air quality
improvements are capitalized into housing prices and how preference-based
sorting is related to that speed. As a whole, my dissertation contributes to
the understanding of non-market values in such a way that can improve empirical
policy evaluation and policy design.
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