To Örebro University

The objective of the thesis is to estimate the health and housing market effects of environmental policies and estimate how these effects are distributed among individuals.

The first essay estimates the health effects of a noise mitigation program that provided dwelling insulation and noise barriers. The analysis is based on hospitalization records and an event study model that compares disease rates for residents in treated homes to residents with similar attributes in untreated homes. Results show that noise mitigation reduced the risk of a cardiovascular disease by 12–14 percent after ten years. Effects are driven by a reduced risk of hypertension and stroke and occur primarily among those with lower income and education levels.

The second essay investigates the impact of the same noise mitigation program on property prices. Using records on sales prices and property attributes in a difference-in-difference model, I estimate the price effect to be 10–12 percent, with larger price effects for homes with poor initial exterior quality. Price gains are smaller for top earners, since they sort to high-quality properties that benefit less from noise mitigation.

The third essay examines how information about pollution affects neighborhood composition and households' choice of housing quality. Combining data on sales prices, property attributes and household demographics, I find that the announcement of an airport concession renewal induced higher-income households to sort away from the area exposed to airport pollution. Higher-income households that located to the area selected homes with better quality. These results help reconcile mixed findings on residential sorting behavior in the literature.

The fourth essay estimates the effect of shipping emission standards on air quality and health. The tightening of the sulfur emission standard reduced concentrations of sulfur dioxide by 22 percent and fine particles by 6 percent. In the subsample with air quality readings, the risk of low birthweight dropped by 7 percent.