Eric Fegan’s honors thesis, “The Effects of PFAS Contamination on the Michigan Housing Market”, was awarded the Henry Carter Adams Prize for Excellence in Undergraduate Writing for economics. This honor is presented by the Department of Economics at the University of Michigan for “best undergraduate paper in economics”.  

Eric’s thesis investigates the causal relationship between the discovery of PFAS contamination in groundwater and changes in turnover in the housing market nearby the contamination. Using a combination of difference-in-trends and a hedonics-inspired propensity score weighting method, he finds that there is a downward effect on turnover once contamination over a certain level is discovered in a zip code. While the effect on prices appears insignificant, some interesting correlations between contamination and income arise in building propensity scores.

Eric wrote his thesis under advisor Dr. Martha Bailey of the University of Michigan.

Read the paper here.