University of ChicagoThe Cost of Species Protection
The Housing Market Impacts of the Endangered Species ActZoom Meeting
Abstract: Protecting species' habitats is globally adopted as the main policy tool to reduce biodiversity losses, yet these protections are hypothesized to conflict with private landowners' interests. We study the economic consequences of such regulation in the context of the Endangered Species Act (ESA), the most extensive conservation and controversial piece of environmental legislation in US history. Using the most comprehensive data on species conservation efforts, land transactions, and building permits to date, we show evidence that the ESA affects land markets in measurable and economically significant ways. Our findings highlight that the impacts on land values depend on the timing of statutory protection enactment, and the land-use in question. We also find no evidence of the ESA affecting building activity as measured by construction permits.
Bio: Eyal Frank is an Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. As an environmental economist, he works at the intersection of ecology and economics. His work addresses three broad questions: (i) how do natural inputs, namely animals, contribute to different production functions of interest, (ii) how do market dynamics reduce natural habitats and lead to declining wildlife population levels, and (iii) what are the costs, indirect ones in particular, of conservation policies.
Prior to the University of Chicago, Frank was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. He received his Ph.D. in Sustainable Development from Columbia University, and earned his M.A. in Economics and B.Sc. in Environmental Sciences and Economics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.