Journal of Economic Literature
Book Reviews
2026-09-01
Raymond B. Palmquist of North Carolina State University reviews “Hedonic Methods in Housing Markets: Pricing Environmental Amenities and Segregation” by Andrea Baranzini, Jose Ramirez, Caroline Schaerer, Philippe Thalmann,. The EconLit Abstract of the reviewed work begins “Ten papers, resulting from a workshop held at the Geneva School of Business Administration in June 2007, consider the use and advancement of the hedonic approach to analyze and quantify the sources of rent and property price differentials in the housing market. Papers discuss theoretical foundations and empirical developments in hedonic modeling; hedonic modeling of the home selling process; hedonic property value studies of transportation noise--aircraft and road traffic; pricing the homebuyer’s countryside view; semiparametric tools for spatial hedonic models--an introduction to mixed geographically weighted regression and geoadditive models; estimating hedonic models of consumer demand with an application to urban sprawl; conceptual and operational issues in incorporating segregation measurements in hedonic price modeling; using hedonic models to measure racial discrimination and prejudice in the U.S. housing market; the problem with environmental justice studies, and how hedonics can help; and distinguishing racial preferences in the housing market--theory and evidence. Baranzini, Ramirez, and Schaerer are in the Geneva School of Business Administration at the University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland. Thalmann is at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne. Name and subject indexes.”