Panel data estimates of the effects of different types of crime on housing prices

One of the most studied effects of crime is the impact that neighborhood crime has on housing values. A major drawback of these studies is that, although crime is undoubtedly endogenous in property value models because of either simultaneity, omitted variables or measurement error, the vast majority of studies treat crime measures as exogenous independent variables. We exploit a unique nine-year crime panel at the neighborhood level to estimate models that properly address the endogeneity of crime and allow us to overcome other specification errors that have plagued previous studies. Of the seven different types of crime we investigate, only robbery and aggravated assault crimes (per acre) exert a meaningful influence upon neighborhood housing values.