Term Paper Proposal
Title of the paper: Air Pollution
I: A brief description of the project
Despite the dramatic progress of cleaning over the past years, the reduction of air quality is high on the global agenda and is recognized as not only a threat to public health but also the economic progress of a country. According to the WHO, air pollution is estimated to result in 4.2 million deaths on an annual basis and is a huge indicator of the quality of air in healthcare (Shaddick, Thomas, Mudu, Ruggeri, & Gumy, 2020). The impact of poor quality of air goes beyond public health as researchers have also observed its influence on the global economy. This project focuses on the influence of air quality on the economy by examining the impact of air pollution on housing prices. Besides, this project will focus particularly on the United States and draw conclusions based on the data between 2010 and 2020.
II: Why you find this project interesting and important?
The aim of this project is to explore the impact of air quality on the prices of houses in the United States. According to a recent CNBC report, the typical home in the United States is up 13.2% as of 2021 May from 2020 (Adamcyzk, 2021). While researchers have often linked the rise in housing prices to factors such as an increase in the mortgage rates and the aspect of low supply and high demand of houses, there is still a need for exploration of the possible connection between air pollution and house prices. With the rise in prices of houses, the country has also witnessed an increase in homelessness. As such, the results from the research will play an essential role in identifying the connection between house prices and the quality of air. Besides, the results can also serve as a basis for developing a foundation that can help in reducing the rising house prices in the United States.
III: Data: How you will obtain data? Mention specific data sources from where you are going to collect data for your analysis.
The data to be used in the assessment of this proposal will be obtained from the world data bank platform and the OECD data platform. The World Bank data platform offers an array of information that can be used in the assessment of the economies of different countries across the globe. As such, this platform will be used to obtain CO2 emissions in the United States between the years 2010 and 2020. Besides, the OECD platform will be used to obtain information on housing prices between 2010 and 2020. Similar to the world bank data, the OECD platform offers a myriad of information that can be used in the assessment of economies of different countries.
IV: Methodology you will be using to compare costs and benefits.
To examine the relationship between air quality and housing prices, this project will use the hedonic methodology. This method is a regression technique that is used to examine the prices of components in the market and how they can be influenced by various factors in the economy (Chay & Greenstone, 2005). In this case, the project will perform a regression analysis to assess the relationship between housing prices and CO2 emissions. The relationship between the two components will be identified from the coefficients from the regressions, T statistics, standard errors, and the P-values. As such, the output from this methodology will help in identifying the impact of CO2 emissions on housing prices in the United States between 2010 and 2020.
References
Adamcyzk, A. (2021). The typical home price is up a record 13.2% compared to last year, according to Zillow. CNBC. From:https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/16/typical-us-home-price-up-record-13point2percent-compared-to-last-year.html.
Chay, K. Y., & Greenstone, M. (2005). Does air quality matter? Evidence from the housing market. Journal of Political Economy, 113(2), 376-424.
Shaddick, G., Thomas, M. L., Mudu, P., Ruggeri, G., & Gumy, S. (2020). Half the world’s population are exposed to increasing air pollution. NPJ Climate and Atmospheric Science, 3(1), 1-5.