Estimates of the Impact of Crime Risk on Property Values from Megan's Laws

摘要

We use the hedonic estimation methodology to measure the impact of crime risk on property values. Using very detailed data on the locations of convicted sex offenders (whose identities and residential locations are made public on the North Carolina Sex Offender Registry) and the dates on which they move into a neighborhood, we estimate that, on average, the values of homes within 0.1 miles of an offender fall by roughly 4 percent. This effect dissipates quickly with distance of homes from the offender; homes between 0.1 and 0.3 miles away show no effect. Because we exploit the quasi-random process that introduces a convicted criminal into a very specific geographic area at a very specific time, we believe these results are a significant improvement upon the existing literature that attempts to identify the causal relationship between the risk of crime and changes in property values.