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AIRCRAFT NOISE, HEALTH, AND RESIDENTIAL SORTING: EVIDENCE FROM TWO QUASI‐EXPERIMENTS
Author(s) -
Boes Stefan,
Nüesch Stephan,
Stillman Steven
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
health economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.55
H-Index - 109
eISSN - 1099-1050
pISSN - 1057-9230
DOI - 10.1002/hec.2948
Subject(s) - noise (video) , aircraft noise , sorting , econometrics , panel data , residence , environmental health , computer science , medicine , demographic economics , economics , artificial intelligence , algorithm , noise reduction , image (mathematics)
SUMMARY We explore two unexpected changes in flight regulations to estimate the causal effect of aircraft noise on health. Detailed measures of noise are linked with longitudinal data on individual health outcomes based on the exact address information. Controlling for individual heterogeneity and spatial sorting into different neighborhoods, we find that aircraft noise significantly increases sleeping problems and headaches. Models that do not control for such heterogeneity and sorting substantially underestimate the negative health effects, which suggests that individuals self‐select into residence based on their unobserved sensitivity to noise. Our study demonstrates that the combination of quasi‐experimental variation and panel data is very powerful for identifying causal effects in epidemiological field studies. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.