Spatial Impacts, Local Labour Market Characteristics and Housing Prices

Abstract

This paper takes as a starting-point a model where spatial variation in housing prices is explained by urban attraction and labour market accessibility effects. Using data from a region in south-west Norway, estimation results are found to be encumbered, however, with significant spatial effects. The spatial Durbin model is used to account for this and to provide estimates of direct and indirect impacts. In addition, hypotheses are tested that some of the spatial variation in housing prices reflects local labour market characteristics. Some support is found for a hypothesis that a model specification should account for sub-centres located at some distance from the central parts of the region. The indirect impacts estimated in the spatial Durbin model suggest that spatially related misspecifications of implicit elasticities in the ordinary least squares model are mainly due to negative externalities close to areas of high labour market accessibility.