South Mountain is the largest municipal park in the nation. It is a bundled amenity, providing a series of linked services to the surrounding communities. A dataset of 19,209 homes in 155 neighborhoods within three miles of the park was utilized in order to complete a hedonic estimation for two nearby urban villages, Ahwatukee Foothills and South Mountain Village. Measures of access include proximity to the park, trailhead access, and adjacency to the park. Two regressions were estimated, the first including lot characteristics and subdivision fixed effects and the second using the coefficients for each subdivision as the dependent variable. These estimates describe how the location of a house in a subdivision contributes to its conditional mean price. As a result they offer a direct basis for capturing amenities measured at the neighborhood scale on home values. Park proximity, trailhead access and adjacency were found to significantly influence the price of homes at the 5% confidence level in Ahwatukee, but not in South Mountain Village. The results of this study can be applied to issues of environmental justice and park access in determining which areas and attributes of the park are associated with a high premium. Though South Mountain was preserved some time ago, development and future preservation in the City of Phoenix can be informed by such studies.

This dissertation outlines the role that futures markets for tradable permits can play in improving the performance of incentive based policies for environmental externalities. An extensive literature on tradable permits exists. However, to my knowledge, the role of futures contracts as an instrument for responding to permit price uncertainty has not been considered, nor has their pricing performance in this role been examined. This research provides a theoretical description of how futures can be used to manage the price uncertainty associated with permit purchases. It then evaluates if the futures contract performance for the former U.S. Sulfur Dioxide (SO2) and the existing EU Carbon Dioxide (CO2) futures markets are consistent with the theoretical constructs. Overall, for the short time horizons examined, futures are the best information source regarding later permit prices for both markets examined. Consistent with the theoretical model presented, this implies futures markets can be looked to as a forecast of the incremental costs of emission control. The theory illustrates that firms can then use futures to eliminate the negative effects of permit price uncertainty and restore policy compliance cost minimization. These results demonstrate that an ideal futures market for emission permits can enhance policy performance.