Maxwell N Sacher

Maxwell N Sacher

Finance PhD student @ UT Austin

About Me

I am a Finance PhD student at the University of Texas at Austin, McCombs School of Business.

Research

Biodiversity Protection Policy and Housing Markets: Supply, Demand, and Speculation

with Shikhar Singla
[Abstract]
Government financing and regulatory actions have been pledged to address biodiversity loss, yet their economic impacts remain unclear. We construct a county-level measure of exposure to potential conservation efforts. Exploiting the 30X30 initiative as a plausibly exogenous shock, we find that a one standard deviation increase in regulatory risk increases house prices by 0.6%. Effects are weaker in counties reliant on nature-intensive industries, but stronger in land-abundant counties, where supply is more elastic and demand for nature amenities is high. Speculative behavior magnifies the price increase. Overall, conservation policies satisfy nature demand but entail trade-offs for growth and housing affordability.