Using Co-Ordinate Systems in Hedonic Housing Regressions

Abstract

Hedonic house price studies typically incorporate information about location by including either a set of dummy variables to represent individual locations called “neighborhoods” or by using a set of distance (or travel time) variables to characterize locations in terms of proximity to amenities and dis-amenities. As an alternative to these, relatively recent research advocates a latitude–longitude co-ordinate system for incorporating distance information into hedonic house price regressions. This study shows that many of the claims made in this research, particularly those referencing the elimination or diminution of “biases of coefficients of non-distance variables”, are given the particulars of the Monte Carlo experiments, not possible to investigate. We further show, both analytically and with our simulations, that there is no omitted variable bias present in their simulations because their randomly generated non-distance variable is uncorrelated with any of the other variables used in their regression models.