Empowerment zones and the housing market in paris inner city

Abstract

We test for the impact of local enterprise zones on house prices in inner Paris. In 1997, a new urban policy program was launched in France which created three kinds of Enterprise Zones (ZUS, ZRU and ZFU). Notably, 9 first tier EZs (ZUS) were created in Paris. We use this natural experiment and compare the evolution of flat prices in these areas to that in a control group of neighboring areas (that could also have been converted into ZUS). We develop a new semi-parametric spatial matching methodology. Each sale observed be-fore the reform is matched with a similar post-reform counterfactual. This matching procedure is done for housing units within the EZ, as well as for units in the vicinity of the EZ. In contrast to what have been evidenced in other ad-ministrative districts of the Paris Region and for other kinds of EZs (i.e., ZFUs), we detect no significant effect of this expensive EZ program implementation on housing values.

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Reference

Stéphane Gregoir, and Tristan-Pierre Maury, “Empowerment zones and the housing market in paris inner city”, Région et Développement, n. 40, 2014.