Housing Price Gradients in a Region with One Dominating Center

Abstract

This paper primarily focuses on predicting housing price gradients in a Norwegian region with one dominating center. Spatial separation is represented by a function of the traveling distance from the city center in a traditional hedonic regression equation. Several functions are tested, and some alternatives provide a satisfying goodness-of-fit, consistent coefficient estimates, and intuitively reasonable predictions of housing price gradients. Still, not all commonly used functions are recommended. The findings also indicate that the strength of spatial autocorrelation is reduced when the hedonic function is properly specified.

Keywords: house price gradient, Norway, hedonic regression, spacial authocorrelation

JEL Classification: R11, R12, R31, R21