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Social Stigma and Asset Value
Author(s) -
Gourley Patrick
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
southern economic journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.762
H-Index - 58
eISSN - 2325-8012
pISSN - 0038-4038
DOI - 10.1002/soej.12315
Subject(s) - property value , stigma (botany) , value (mathematics) , asset (computer security) , property (philosophy) , psychology , social stigma , economics , social psychology , actuarial science , medicine , computer security , psychiatry , computer science , mathematics , finance , statistics , human immunodeficiency virus (hiv) , philosophy , real estate , epistemology , family medicine
Recent attempts by economists to identify and quantify the effect of social stigma on asset value have often been stymied by confounding mechanisms. I use the unique circumstances surrounding the 1999 Columbine Shooting to estimate the effect of social stigma on asset value. Using a difference‐in‐differences model with property fixed effects, I find the immediate effect of stigma from the Columbine Shooting is 5.7% of a property's value after one year. This implies a $13 million loss from property sales in the year 2000 alone. The results are robust to numerous specifications and synthetic control placebo tests. This suggests that social stigma plays a role in consumer preferences.