Suburban Cook County Land Value Responses to Highway Openings
Location
Golden Eagles
Department
Economics
Abstract
In this paper we investigate unimproved land in Cook County, Illinois to see if land values experienced changes due to highway construction in the 1950s. Theory suggests transportation investment should increase land values but assembling supportive data for analysis has been problematic . Previous case studies on the issue have proven contradictory. Our goal here is to illuminate the influence of new highway infrastructure on land values and to use appropriate methodologies to help clarify and confirm our observations. We utilize a two-way fixed effect event study model and we find evidence that land values increase in response to a highway being built in quarter sections within 0.5 miles of newly opened interstate sections and that these increases diminish over time. Our work sheds light on how land values responded to new transportation infrastructure and raises valuable questions for further research.
Faculty Sponsor
Ryan Gallagher, Northeastern Illinois University
Suburban Cook County Land Value Responses to Highway Openings
Golden Eagles
In this paper we investigate unimproved land in Cook County, Illinois to see if land values experienced changes due to highway construction in the 1950s. Theory suggests transportation investment should increase land values but assembling supportive data for analysis has been problematic . Previous case studies on the issue have proven contradictory. Our goal here is to illuminate the influence of new highway infrastructure on land values and to use appropriate methodologies to help clarify and confirm our observations. We utilize a two-way fixed effect event study model and we find evidence that land values increase in response to a highway being built in quarter sections within 0.5 miles of newly opened interstate sections and that these increases diminish over time. Our work sheds light on how land values responded to new transportation infrastructure and raises valuable questions for further research.