The predictive power of pre-sale estimates in comparison with hedonic model of hammer price is tested within Czech painters' dataset in Czech and foreign auctions. It appears that pre-sale estimates do not account for all available information from public database which influence hammer price. The determinants of differences are examined on Czech and foreign auctions separately (OLS with instrumental variable) and in addition bought-in works are included into examination of foreign dataset by Heckit model. The same author appears to be the most viable difference in both datasets (after bought-in works inclusion in foreign data). Techniques and supports with higher hammer prices tend to have higher rate of difference between hammer and estimate prices. The influence of the oldest auction houses to higher hammer prices than estimates was confirmed. In Czech environment this influence of some auction house was not registered.

Cette thèse est composée de quatre chapitres qui s’intéressent à différents aspects des marchés immobiliers. Le premier chapitre considère l’immobilier sous l’angle d’un investissement financier. On analyse l’influence de l’immobilier sur les choix de portefeuille des ménages et plus précisément sur la part d’actifs risqués détenus. On distingue l’effet de la richesse immobilière nette de l’effet de la dette immobilière et on obtient deux effets de signes opposés. Le deuxième chapitre analyse l’immobilier comme bien durable et cherche à expliquer la formation de son prix à partir des caractéristiques propres ainsi qu’à partir des caractéristiques de son environnement. Le troisième chapitre évalue l’impact d’un relèvement des droits de mutation qui a eu lieu entre 2014 et 2016 en France sur les volumes et les prix immobiliers. Cette réforme a eu pour effet une diminution du volume des transactions uniquement dans les zones les moins tendues, suggérant une inélasticité très forte de la demande en marchés tendus. En outre, l’augmentation de la taxe a été entièrement supportée par l’acheteur quel que soit le degré de tension du marché. Le quatrième chapitre est une analyse des effets des Zones Franches Urbaines (programme de subventions localisé) sur les prix immobiliers. Les résultats empiriques suggèrent que l’implémentation de ces zones a eu un effet inflationniste sur l’immobilier d’entreprise et dans une moindre mesure sur l’immobilier résidentiel. En outre, cet effet inflationniste est tiré par les zones à faible élasticité de l’offre immobilière. / This thesis gathers four essays on real estate markets. The first chapter focuses on real estate as a financial asset. It analyses the influence of real estate on portfolio choice and more precisely on the share of risky assets in the household’s portfolio. We distinguish between the effect of property value and the effect of home equity and we obtain two opposite effects. The second chapter analyzes real estate as a durable good and explores the link between the price of the property and its characteristics : intrinsic or extrinsic (neighbourhood attributes). The third chapter estimates the impact of the rise of housing transfer tax in France on real estate volumes and prices. This reform implemented between 2014 and 2016 caused a decrease in the number of transactions only in markets where supply was high relative to demand. This suggests a strong inelasticity of demand in tight markets. Moreover, no effect on pre-tax sales prices is observed, meaning that the burden of the transfer tax rests on the buyer. The fourth chapter analyzes the effects of French Enterprise Zones (place-based policy) on real estate prices. The empirical results show that the zone implementation had an inflationary effect on business real estate and to a lesser extent on residential real estate. This inflationary effect is driven by the zones with low real estate supply elasticity.

Recent studies of the valuation of real estate have concentrated on the use of hedonic pricing techniques in which the implicit prices of the component characteristics of an asset are inferred from the observed sale price using regression analysis. All of these studies include as explanatory variables one or more locational factors, such as distance to the central business district, as proxies for the effect that location has on the utility of land. In this research, the explicit consideration of the location of real estate in terms of the geographic or Cartesian coordinates (spatial attributes) of observed sales is shown to be a potential substitute for such proxies, either wholly or in part. Such use of spatial attributes could improve the usefulness of the hedonic methodology while at the same time significantly reducing cost and eliminating sources of error.

The purpose of this essay is to perform an empirical test of the hypothesis that distance to an operative nuclear power plant will affect property pricing. The focus is on three counties in Sweden that have nuclear power plants. The hedonic pricing method is employed to fulfill the purpose. This involves an econometric cross-section analysis where the price of a property is assumed to be influenced by various housing characteristics, a distance variable, and time specific effects. The data were provided by Svensk Mäklarstatistik and were collected from the period 2005-2021. The material included information regarding property prices and property characteristics. The results suggest that there is a positive statistical relationship between the level of property prices and the distance to an operative nuclear power plant. However, we only find this relationship for Varberg and Oskarshamn. This result is in some contrast to the findings of a few previous studies. / Syftet med denna uppsats är att genomföra ett empiriskt test av hypotesen att avståndet till ett operativt kärnkraftverk påverkar nivån på fastighetspriserna i de tre kommuner i Sverige som har etablerade kärnkraftverk. Detta syfte besvaras genom att tillämpa den så kallade fastighetsvärdemetoden. En ekonometrisk modell specificeras där den beroende variabeln, priset på en fastighet, förklaras av olika karakteristik hos fastigheten samt bostaden, avståndet till närmaste operativa kärnkraftverk, och tidsspecifika effekter. Datamaterialet samlades in från Svensk Mäklarstatistik och innehöll data från tidsperioden 2005 till 2021. Datamaterialet bestod av fastighetspriser samt fastigheternas karaktärsdrag. Resultaten visar att det finns ett positivt statistiskt samband mellan nivån på fastighetspriserna och avståndet till ett operativt kärnkraftverk. Fastighetspriserna tenderar, allt annat lika, att vara lägre på platser som ligger nära kärnkraftverket men detta resultat erhålls endast för Varberg och Oskarshamn. Uppsatsens resultat skiljer sig åt från ett flertal tidigare studier.

In 2012, the Chinese 18th Party Congress identified individual well-being and well-being of the nation as 2 of the most important goals for China. Well-being, the maintenance of a happy and meaningful life, is one of the major psychological health benchmarks in an individual's life. Empirical research on lay conceptions and experiences of well-being has been almost exclusively conducted in Western cultures. Understanding Chinese lay people's conceptions of well-being and the relationship of those conceptions to experienced well-being is important for optimizing individual and social well-being, and for providing a basis for positive social change in China. The primary objective of this correlational study was to investigate the potential relationship among 4 dimensions of well-being and 5 indicators of experienced well-being. A secondary objective was to explore whether the relationship between eudaimonic (meaning in life) aspects of well-being was statistically stronger than the hedonic (happiness) conceptions of well-being. Data were collected from a sample of 548 participants from a medium-sized university in China using a paper-and-pencil survey. The analysis included descriptive statistics and multiple linear regression. The overall results indicated that eudaimonic and hedonic aspects of well-being are highly associated with experience of well-being, but the relationship between eudaimonic aspects of well-being was not statistically stronger than the hedonic aspects. Policymakers can use the findings of this study to help focus policy development and improvement at the organizational level for Chinese society.

During the last few decades, economists have become interested in the wine industry and several of them have focused on the determinants of price. One characteristic that has been identified as an important determinant is expert wine ratings. Much of the previous research on this topic has focused on relating expert grades to the retail price of wine. Using proprietary data, this paper will test whether these grades influence retail prices as well as retailer profits and wholesale pricing. By analyzing an individual wholesale firm in South Florida and their distribution network, this paper determines the effect expert ratings have on these dependent variables. Empirical evidence confirms that expert ratings have a positive effect on wholesale and retail wine prices and that they exhibit a parallel influence on retailer profits. This thesis aims to contribute new information to aid both the end consumers purchasing decisions as well as busi-ness pricing strategies.

Little research has been conducted on the effects of housing price cycles on preferences for environmental landscape attributes over time (Cho, Kim, & Roberts, 2011). If the economic value of scarce resources like water resource amenities depends on consumer preferences, then it is useful to address possible effects of cyclical variation in the housing market on these values. This issue is addressed in the primary research question for this thesis: Did the 2007-2009 recession and consequent real estate bust affect marginal willingness to pay for water resource amenities for properties in proximity to the lower St. Johns River (SJR) in Duval County, FL? Prior published studies on the most recent real estate cycle were used to evaluate the timing of housing market impacts during the most recent recession. Also, sales price and sales volume distributions for Duval County were evaluated to compare trends. Based on prior research and results, three separate hypotheses were generated and tested using the hedonic pricing method for residential properties in Duval County. The first hypothesis was that the recent recession impacted the implicit prices of water resource amenities for residential properties in proximity to the SJR. Two separate regression models were developed to test different recession periods (2007-2012 and 2008-2012) based on sample data. Time fixed effect binary variables were used to construct recession interaction effects with water related amenities (proximity to the SJR as well as tributary and riverfront properties). Results showed that during the recession period, sales prices for houses further away from the river experienced a greater negative impact than those closer to the river. This result is similar to research by Cohen, Coughlin, and Lopez (2012) who suggest that, higher priced or high tier residential houses (in this case, those closer to river) tend to hold their value more than low tier residential houses. Also, consistent with research by Bin, Czajkowski, Jingyuan, and Villarini (2015), sales prices for tributary and riverfront homes were not impacted by the recession. A second hypothesis was developed to test whether sales prices for houses in Duval County recovered to pre-recession levels. A regression model was constructed with a separate recession interaction effect variable for 2013-2015 and results indicated that the housing market did not make a full recovery from the recession. A final hypothesis was developed on the significance of interaction variables water quality indicator Chlorophyll-A and a recession effects binary variable. All water quality interaction variables introduced within the model were not significant at the 1% or 5% levels. Future research might include testing interactions with parcel land area and recession time effects and also examining other water quality indicators including Secchi Disk, dissolved oxygen, or turbidity. It may also be useful in the future to use an alternative method of measuring implicit prices of environmental characteristics, such as the repeat sales method.

This dissertation introduces advanced statistical and econometric methods in two distinct areas of non-market valuation: benefit transfer (BT) and hedonic analysis. While the first and the third chapters address the challenge of estimating the societal benefits of prospective environmental policy changes by adopting locally weighted regression (LWR) technique in an environmental valuation context, the second chapter combines the output from traditional hedonic regression and matching estimators and provides guidance on the choice of model with low risk of bias in housing market studies. The economic and societal benefits associated with various environmental conservation programs, such as improvement in water quality, or increment in wetland acreages, can be directly estimated using primary studies. However, conducting primary studies can be highly resource-intensive and time-consuming as they typically involve extensive data collection, sophisticated models, and a considerable investment of financial and human resources. As a result, BT offers a practical alternative, which involves employing valuation estimates, functions, or models from prior primary studies to predict the societal benefit of conservation policies at a policy site. Existing studies typically fit one single regression model to all observations within the given metadata and generate a single set of coefficients to predict welfare (willingness-to-pay) in a prospective policy site. However, a single set of coefficients may not reflect the true relationship between dependent and independent variables, especially when multiple source studies/locations are involved in the data-generating process which, in turn, degrades the predictive accuracy of the given meta-regression model (MRM). To address this shortcoming, we employ the LWR technique in an environmental valuation context. LWR allows an estimation of a different set of coefficients for each location to be used for BT prediction. However, the empirical exercise carried out in the existing literature is rigorous from a computational perspective and is cumbersome for practical adaptation. In the first chapter, we simplify the experimental setup required for LWR-BT analysis by taking a closer look at the choice of weight variables for different window sizes and weight function settings. We propose a pragmatic solution by suggesting "universal weights" instead of striving to identify the best of thousands of different weight variable settings. We use the water quality metadata employed in the published literature and show that our universal weights generate more efficient and equally plausible BT estimates for policy sites than the best weight variable settings that emerge from a time-consuming cross-validation search over the entire universe of individual variable combinations. The third chapter expands the scope of LWR to wetland meta-data. We use a conceptually similar set of weight variables as in the first chapter and replicate the methodological approach of that chapter. We show that LWR, under our proposed weight settings, generates substantial gain in both predictive accuracy and efficiency compared to the one generated by standard globally-linear MRM. Our second chapter delves into a separate yet interrelated realm of non-market valuation, i.e., hedonic analysis. Here, we explore the combined inferential power of traditional hedonic regression and matching estimators to provide guidance on model choice for housing market studies where researchers aim to estimate an unbiased binary treatment effect in the presence of unobserved spatial and temporal effects. We examine the potential sources of bias within both hedonic regression and basic matching. We discuss the theoretical routes to mitigate these biases and assess their feasibility in practical contexts. We propose a novel route towards unbiasedness, i.e., the "cancellation effect" and illustrate its empirical feasibility while estimating the impact of flood hazards on housing prices. / Doctor of Philosophy / This dissertation introduces novel statistical and econometric methods to better understand the value of environmental resources that do not have an explicit market price, such as the benefits we get from the changes in water quality, size of wetlands, or the impact of flood risk zoning in the sales price of residential properties. The first and third chapters tackle the challenge of estimating the value of environmental changes, such as cleaner water or more wetlands. To figure out how much people benefit from these changes, we can look at how much they would be willing to pay for such improved water quality or increased wetland area. This typically requires conducting a primary survey, which is expensive and time-consuming. Instead, researchers can draw insights from prior studies to predict welfare in a new policy site. This approach is analogous to applying a methodology and/or findings from one research work to another. However, the direct application of findings from one context to another assumes uniformity across the different studies which is unlikely, especially when past studies are associated with different spatial locations. To address this, we propose a ``locally-weighting" technique. This places greater emphasis on the studies that closely align with the characteristics of the new (policy) context. Determining the weight variables/factors that dictate this alignment is a question that requires an empirical investigation. One recent study attempts this locally-weighting technique to estimate the benefits of improved water quality and suggests experimenting with different factors to find the similarity between the past and new studies. However, their approach is computationally intensive, making it impractical for adaptation. In our first chapter, we propose a more pragmatic solution---using a "universal weight" that does not require assessing multiple factors. With our proposed weights in an otherwise similar context, we find more efficient and equally plausible estimates of the benefits as previous studies. We expand the scope of the local weighting to the valuation of gains or losses in wetland areas in the third chapter. We use a conceptually similar set of weight variables and replicate the empirical exercise from the first chapter. We show that the local-weighting technique, under our proposed settings, substantially improves the accuracy and efficiency of estimated benefits associated with the change in wetland acreage. This highlights the diverse potential of the local weighting technique in an environmental valuation context. The second chapter of this dissertation attempts to understand the impact of flood risk on housing prices. We can use "hedonic regression" to understand how different features of a house, like its size, location, sales year, amenities, and flood zone location affect its price. However, if we do not correctly specify this function, then the estimates will be misleading. Alternatively, we can use "matching" technique where we pair the houses inside and outside of the flood zone in all observable characteristics, and differentiate their price to estimate the flood zone impact. However, finding identical houses in all aspects of household and neighborhood characteristics is practically impossible. We propose that any leftover differences in features of the matched houses can be balanced out by considering where the houses are located (school zone, for example) and when they were sold. We refer to this route as the "cancellation effect" and show that this can indeed be achieved in practice especially when we pair a single house in a flood zone with many houses outside that zone. This not only allows us to accurately estimate the effect of flood zones on housing prices but also reduces the uncertainty around our findings.

A replacement female's value is primarily determined by her reproductive potential and the expected value of calves produced. To improve sales revenues, sellers benefit from understanding the buyers' valuation of physical characteristics related to reproductive potential and calf values. The goal of this research is to identify the impact of physical characteristics on the valuation of individual replacement females through a hedonic pricing model. Results suggest all facets of pregnancy (i.e. pregnancy status, months pregnant, expected due-date, and cow-calf pairs) are crucial to the valuation. Particularly, pregnant replacement females are discounted relative to non-pregnant, ascending in value as months pregnant increases and reaching a premium over non-pregnant status at approximately five months. It is suspected that newly pregnant replacements are discounted due to higher abortion risks. Finally, the largest premiums were observed for cow-calf pairs, where risk of abortion is zero and the replacement female has proven her reproductive potential.

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