Research

Abstract

This paper provides new empirical evidence on the economic impact of climate

change. We investigate the e ect of the recent increase in the number of dust storms and

exposure to dust emissions on the housing market in Iran. We combine the individual

level data from almost two million housing transactions in the Iranian housing market

and data on dust storm exposure from on-the-ground weather stations over recent

decades. Our results show that the increase in the number of dust storms since 2008,

is associated with a 5.5 percentage point decrease in the city-level average of housing

prices. This research is among the  rst papers to investigate the recent impact of

environmental degradation on the housing market.