School Performance and Housing Values: Using Non-Contiguous District and Incorporation Boundaries to Identify School Effects

This study examines housing value capitalization of the characteristics and tax costs of public education by exploiting the imperfect congruence of the boundaries of public school districts and elementary enrollment areas with the boundaries of incorporated jurisdictions providing other public services in Monroe County, New York. The study finds, after controlling for student body composition, high school characteristics, and other public services, substantively large effects of elementary school output on housing values using both a standard log-linear specification and a multiplicative specification that estimates indexes of quality-adjusted housing quantity and locational price. The empirical results suggest that housing values in the central city are elastic with respect to improvements in elementary school outputs.