Title of presentation: The Value of Piped Water and Sewers: Evidence from 19th Century Chicago
Abstract:
We estimate the impact of piped water and sewers on property values in late-19th century Chicago. The cost of sewer construction depends sensitively on imperceptible variation in elevation, and such variation delays water and sewer service to part of the city. This delay provides quasi-random variation for causal estimates. We extrapolate ATE estimates from our natural experiment to the area treated with water and sewer service during 1874-1880 using a new estimator. Water and sewer access increases property values by more than a factor of about 2.8. This suggests that total benefits are much larger than the value of averted mortality or construction costs.
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