A Mixed Index Approach to Identifying Hedonic Price Models
Posted: 17 Jul 2008
There are 2 versions of this paper
A Mixed Index Approach to Identifying Hedonic Price Models
Date Written: May 2008
Abstract
Recent literature suggests identifying house price hedonic regressions by using instrumental variables, spatial statistics, the borders approach, panel data, and other techniques. We present an empirical application of a mixed index model, first proposed by Bowden [Bowden, R.J., 1992. Competitive selection and market data: the mixed-index problem. The Review of Economic Studies 59(3):625-633.] to identify hedonic price regressions. We compare the performance of the mixed index model to a traditional hedonic model and to a hedonic model that includes characteristics of the buyer of each house. We find the mixed index model outperforms the other models based on bootstrap distributions of predicted housing values, prediction variance, and predicted policy effects. The mixed index model distributions are less skewed and kurtotic than the other models, suggesting it more closely satisfies the classical linear regression assumption of normally distributed errors. Compared to the mixed index model, the traditional hedonic overstates the importance of lot size and school quality to house price and understates the importance of environmental quality.
Keywords: House price hedonic Identification, School quality, Environmental quality, Capitalization
JEL Classification: C39, C52, R0
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation