About

Spencer Banzhaf is a professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at NC State University and serves as the Director of the Center for Environmental and Resource Economics Policy (CEnREP). He received his PhD in economics from Duke University. His primary field of study is the economics of environmental policy, with a particular focus on land use. His research often explores the interaction among local environmental quality, local real estate markets, and the demographic composition of cities. His work has been published in prominent journals such as the American Economic Review, History of Political Economy, and the Journal of Political Economy. Additionally, he is the editor of the Review of Environmental Economics and Policy.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Computer Science
• Economics
• Environmental science
• Law
• Economy
• Engineering
• Econometrics
• Philosophy
• Waste management
• Mathematics
• Statistics
• Environmental ethics
• Geography
• Meteorology

Selected publications

• Hell with the Lid Off: Racial Segregation and Environmental Equity in America's Most Polluted City

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Environmental ethics
  • Political Science
  DOI

• Smoke from Factory Chimneys: The Applied Economics of Air Pollution in the Progressive Era

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Engineering
  • Environmental science
  DOI

• Non-Parametric Tests of Behavior in the Commons

  2023

  • Computer Science
  • Political Science
  • Econometrics
  DOI

• Best Practices for Using Hedonic Property Value Models to Measure Willingness to Pay for Environmental Quality

  Review of Environmental Economics and Policy · 2020 · 152 citations

  • Computer Science
  • Economics
  • Econometrics

  The hedonic property-value model has been refined over more than forty years to become one of the premier approaches to valuing environmental amenities. This article presents best practices for hedonic property-value modeling when the goal is to measure households’ willingness to pay (WTP) for a change in a spatially varying amenity. The starting point is a research design that identifies a source of exogenous variation in an amenity that is observable by prospective buyers (e.g., air quality). Data on the sales prices and physical attributes of houses, together with location-specific measures for amenities, are then used to estimate a housing-price function. Under ideal conditions, the derivative of this price function can be interpreted as indicating the amenity’s implicit price, which can then be used to calculate household marginal WTP for the amenity. In principle, this process is straightforward. In practice, modeling decisions must be made to define variables that measure sale prices and amenities and to select an econometric specification. Although the number of issues to address when developing a “best practices” study may seem daunting, the effort is both worthwhile and important for developing accurate measures of the WTP for environmental quality.

  DOI

Frequent coauthors

• Randall Walsh

  University of Pittsburgh

  7 shared

• Holger Sieg

  4 shared

• Wallace E. Oates

  2 shared

• Randy Walsh

  University of Colorado Boulder

  2 shared

• Attila Ambrus

  University of Pecs

  1 shared

• Daniel Paravisini

  University of California, Berkeley

  1 shared

• Adam L. Booth

  University of Louisville

  1 shared

• Evita Pappa

  1 shared

Similar researchers at North Carolina State University

• Jonathan Lindseyh-101
• Edward Breitschwerdth-100
• José Alonsoh-94
• Rob Dunnh-94
• Frances S. Liglerh-92