We examine how residential property values are impacted by school shootings, which are crimes that have a very low probability of being repeated in the same location. We exploit the exogenous timing of eleven mass shootings that took place between 1998 and 2014, and use a difference-in-differences framework to estimate the causal effect of these school shootings on property values in the affected school attendance area. We find that house prices decline by an average of around 2.4 percent over the four-year period after a mass school shooting. We also find that enrollment falls in the affected school district, suggesting that families subsequently avoid schools in areas that have experienced such events.
