House prices and accessibility: evidence from a quasi-experiment in transport infrastructure

This article studies the impact of accessibility on house prices based on a novel quasi-experiment in the Netherlands: the Westerscheldetunnel. We exploit the fact that the opening of the tunnel caused a major shift in accessibility for people and firms in the connected regions. Our results indicate that the accessibility elasticity of house prices is 0.8. We also find support for the idea of anticipation: about half of the accessibility effect already materializes more than 1 year before the opening of the tunnel. Finally, our analyses suggest that the impact of accessibility differs substantially across regions.