School Quality, House Prices and Liquidity

Abstract

This paper develops an empirical framework for taking into account the effects of endogenous liquidity on price capitalization estimates. Changes in school attendance zones in the East Baton Rouge Parish public school district provide a natural experiment for studying how changes in school characteristics affect house prices and liquidity. House price and selling time, or liquidity, are simultaneously determined in search markets. The empirical model exploits variation in the surrounding neighborhood market conditions pertinent to each house to identify the system of price and liquidity equations. The estimates are consistent with search-market theory in that liquidity absorbs part of the capitalization of school quality.

Keywords: capitalization, house price, liquidity, school quality, search market

JEL Classification: D40, D83, H52, I21, R21