Loss in the Time of Cholera: Long-Run Impact of a Disease Epidemic on the Urban Landscape

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Ambrus, Attila; Field, Erica; Gonzalez, Robert
• 署名单位: Duke University; University of South Carolina System; University of South Carolina Columbia
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0002-8282
• DOI: 10.1257/aer.20190759
• 发表日期: 2020
• 页码: 475-525
• 关键词: regression discontinuity designs; dynamic oligopoly; models; COMPETITION; valuation; schools; CHOICE

摘要

How do geographically concentrated income shocks influence the long-run spatial distribution of poverty within a city? We examine the impact on housing prices of a cholera epidemic in one neighborhood of nineteenth century London. Ten years after the epidemic, housing prices are significantly lower just inside the catchment area of the water pump that transmitted the disease. Moreover, differences in housing prices persist over the following 160 years. We make sense of these patterns by building a model of a rental market with frictions in which poor tenants exert a negative externality on their neighbors. This showcases how a locally concentrated income shock can persistently change the tenant composition of a block. (JEL D62, O18, R21, R31)