Browsing by Author "Filippova, Olga"

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Open Access
Preventing buildings from falling down: Challenges for earthquake-strengthening policy in small-town New Zealand
(Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, 2018) Filippova, Olga; Noy, Ilan
The Canterbury earthquakes of 2010-11 and the announcement of the national earthquake prone building strengthening policy in New Zealand has apparently hindered activity in the property market affecting especially the older stock requiring seismic upgrade. The purpose of this paper is to focus on lower-value regional urban centres and the economic hardship they face for strengthening their building stock. Our investigation focuses on one town, Whanganui, but, the picture we paint of this town, the cases we analyse, and the incentives we detail, apply equally to dozens of other towns in New Zealand. These difficulties are not unique to New Zealand, as many places, globally, face the need to upgrade their infrastructure for protection against disasters and where governments have been struggling with similar difficulties in initiating earthquake strengthening of existing buildings. We analyse the current incentive schemes that can assist in achieving the policy goals and suggest alternative incentive schemes that can be implemented.
Open Access
Who cares? Future sea-level-rise and house prices
(Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, 2019) Filippova, Olga; Nguyen, Cuong; Noy, Ilan; Rehm, Michael
Globally, the single-most observable, predictable, and certain impact of climate change is sea level rise. Using a case study from the Kapiti Coast District in New Zealand, we pose a simple question: Do people factor in the warnings provided by scientists and governments about the risk of sea-level rise when making their investment decisions? We examine the single most important financial decision that most people make – purchasing a home, to see whether prices of coastal property change when more/less information becomes available about property-specific consequences of future sea level rise. The Kapiti Coast District Council published detailed projected erosion risk maps for the district’s coastline in 2012 and was forced to remove them by the courts in 2014. About 1,800 properties were affected. We estimate the impact of this information on home prices using data from all real estate transactions in the district with a difference-in-differences framework embedded in a hedonic pricing model. We find that the posting of this information had a very small and statistically insignificant impact on house prices, suggesting people do not care much about the long-term risks of sea-level rise as they do not incorporate these risks in their investment decisions.