There is ample evidence that urban trees benefit the physical, mental, and social health of urban residents. The environmental justice hypothesis posits that environmental amenities are inequitably low in poor and minority communities, and predicts these communities experience fewer urban environmental benefits. Some previous research has found that urban forest cover is inequitably distributed...

Using job satisfaction data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, I examine whether people who move to predominantly male jobs are fully compensated through their wages for their new jobs’ disamenities. Estimates from the ordered probit models indicate that women are satisfied with their pay in predominantly male jobs, but dislike the job amenities. In contrast, men appreciate both th...

Recent work has shown that in a labor market with search frictions and wage dispersion, the relationship between wages and amenities may be much di erent than in the classical compensating wage model. This paper generalizes their work, revealing the full range of potential relationships between wages and amenities possible in a labor market with frictions and clarifying the key role of the natu...

This paper examines how the college-educated population—segmented into selective demographic groups, from young adults to the elderly—differentially values quality-of-life (QOL) indicators of metropolitan areas in the United States. Using data from the 2000 Census and the 1997 Places Rated Almanac, out-migration patterns are shown to depend jointly upon stage in the life course, the spatial-dem...

It has long been recognized that average wages vary strikingly across regions and urban areas, in part due to differences in local amenities and fiscal policies. However, analogous differences in wage dispersion remain relatively unexplored. We develop a model suggesting that, after accounting for individual characteristics, wage dispersion across income groups should reflect differences in the...

A large public finance literature argues that taxable income elasticities are a sufficient statistic for the social welfare consequences of taxation. We develop calibrations that show such deadweight loss calculations are overestimates proportional to the quantitative significance of heterogeneity in amenities across job matches. In particular, the endogenous supply of amenities can substantial...