Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

We estimate the cost over the next 50 years of allowing Delaware’s ocean beaches to retreat inland. Since most of the costs are expected to be land and capital loss, especially in housing, we focus our attention on measuring t hat value. We use a hedonic price regressi on to estimate the value of land and structures in the region using a dat a set on recent housing sales. Then, using historical rat es of erosion along the coast and an inventory of all housing and commercial structures in the threatened coastal area, we predict the value of the land …