How do pandemics affect urban housing markets? This paper studies historical outbreaks of the plague in 17th-century Amsterdam and cholera in 19th-century Paris to answer this question. Based on micro-level transaction data, we show outbreaks resulted in large declines in house prices, and smaller declines in rent prices. We find particularly large reductions in house prices during the first six months of an epidemic, and in heavily-affected areas. However, these price shocks were only transitory, and both cities quickly reverted to their initial price paths. Our findings suggest these two cities were very resilient to major shocks originating from epidemics.

大流行病如何影响城市住房市场？本文研究了17世纪阿姆斯特丹的鼠疫和19世纪巴黎的霍乱疫情的历史爆发，以回答这一问题。根据微观交易数据，我们发现疫情暴发导致房价大幅下跌，而租金价格下跌幅度较小。我们发现，在流行的头六个月以及受灾严重的地区，房价下降幅度特别大。但是，这些价格冲击只是暂时的，两个城市很快都恢复了其最初的价格路径。我们的研究结果表明，这两个城市对流行病造成的重大冲击具有很强的抵抗力。