A Meta‐Analysis of School Quality Capitalization in U.S. House Prices

Abstract

Abstract School quality capitalization studies report widely mixed results. This article conducts meta‐analysis to identify the data characteristics and research methods that explain this variation. The way the school quality is measured matters but no single measure clearly dominates. Both boundary and neighborhood fixed effects significantly control for the influence of neighborhood amenities. Increasing the number of quality variables reduces the capitalization significance of each. Regional differences also appear to matter; studies using data drawn from the South exhibit weaker capitalization. Also, it is surprising that econometric methods do not appear to be driving results.