Essays on Climate Risks, Policy Shocks, and Housing Markets

Author

Li Ma, CUNY Graduate CenterFollow

Date of Degree

9-2025

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Program

Business

Advisor

Yildiray Yildirim

Committee Members

Linda Allen

Sophia Gilbukh

Karl Lang

Subject Categories

Economics | Environmental Studies | Finance and Financial Management | International Economics | Real Estate | Taxation

Keywords

Real Estate Finance, Housing Market Dynamics, House Prices, Asset Pricing, Climate Change, Extreme Temperature, Foreign Buyer Taxes, Policy Evaluation

Abstract

This dissertation investigates how external shocks, both environmental and regulatory, influence residential real estate markets. By examining climate-related temperature exposures in the United States and foreign buyer tax policies across multiple countries, this research provides critical insights into how housing markets price climate risks and respond to policy interventions. Together, these essays reveal how market participants rapidly capitalize new information about risks and regulatory changes into property values. This research contributes to our understanding of housing market dynamics in an era of increasing climate uncertainty and global capital flows, offering important implications for homeowners, investors, and policymakers navigating these evolving challenges.

Chapter 1 High Temperature, Climate Change, and Real Estate Prices

Combining granular daily data on temperatures across the continental United States with comprehensive listing-level data for residential properties, we study the impact of temperature shocks on real estate prices. We show that temperature exposures are associated with higher climate change concerns. We find that temperature exposures result in a significant decrease in house prices. This impact is more substantial in areas with greater awareness of global warming, during periods of heightened public attention to climate change, and in locations more vulnerable to sea-level rise. An instrumental-variables strategy based on ENSO teleconnections mitigates endogeneity concerns and yields similar conclusions. While temperature exposures influence property sale prices, we find no detectable effect on rental rates, suggesting that the observed price discount from temperature exposures is driven by concerns about long-term climate risks. The discount also persists after accounting for insurance costs. Our results highlight the importance of climate uncertainty in affecting real estate prices.

Chapter 2 Do Foreign Buyer Taxes Affect House Prices?

This paper studies the impact of foreign buyer taxes on house prices using recent policy changes in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. We combine machine learning–based prediction techniques with inference methods from the synthetic control method literature to estimate counterfactual house prices for treated locations. In general, we find that these taxes had large, negative, and persistent effects on house price growth, with stronger effects in areas with higher tax rates and larger immigrant shares. Alternative outcome variables, including population growth, GDP growth, and unemployment rates, were either unaffected or only slightly affected in ways that do not confound our results.

Recommended Citation

Ma, Li, "Essays on Climate Risks, Policy Shocks, and Housing Markets" (2025). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/6450