The Role of Local Amenities in the National Economy
Event Details
Presenter
Nicolai Kuminoff
Assistant Professor, Arizona State University
Abstract
Consumers value nonmarket amenities such as climate, public goods, infrastructure, and pollution. They pay for these localized amenities indirectly, through spatial variation in housing prices and wages. In this paper, we develop a macroeconomic measure of indirect amenity expenditures that is consistent with microeconomic fundamentals of spatial equilibrium and principles of national income accounting. We construct a county-level database of 75 amenities, match it to location choices made by 5 million households, and develop the first estimates for aggregate amenity expenditures in the United States. We find amenities accounted for 6% of personal consumption expenditures in 2000 ($422 billion).
Date
Thursday, October 25, 2012
12:00 - 1:30 p.m. Lunch will be provided. Location
7th Floor Conference Room
1616 P St. NW
Washington, DC 20036 All seminars will be in the 7th Floor Conference Room at RFF, 1616 P Street NW unless otherwise noted. Attendance is open, but involves pre-registration no later than two days prior to the event. For questions and to register to an event, please contact Khadija Hill at [email protected] (tel. 202-328-5174). Updates to our academic seminars schedule will be posted at www.rff.org/academicseminarseries.
