flooding are expected to have a lower price tag than equivalent properties not exposed to flooding. This price discount can be interpreted as the welfare cost of flood exposure, or in other words the willingness to pay to avoid flooding. Numerous studies which focus on high- or middle- income countries use hedonic price models to calculate the property price discount for location in an area exposed to flooding.<sup>1</sup> This study is one of very few analyses of the relationship between flooding risk and rents in low- and lower-middle income countries. Meta-analysis of 37 published papers and 364 point estimates shows that all of them focus high-income countries, mainly the United States (Beltr ́an et al., 2018). These metaregressions show that properties located in flood plains which suffer from inland flooding are 4.6 percent cheaper on average than a similar property not exposed to flood risk. However, the effects of flooding on property prices in the 37 papers studied by Beltr ́an et al. (2018) vary between a 75.5 discount to a 61 percent price premium. Thus, their study finds very high levels of heterogeneity between the effects of flooding on property prices even in an efficient housing market.

Examples of studies of the relationship between the housing market and flooding in upper-middleincome economies include Rabassa and Zoloa (2016), and Alvarez and Resosudarmo<sup> ́</sup> (2019) who study La Plata, Argentina, and Jakarta, Indonesia respectively. Rabassa and Zoloa (2016) estimate the benefits of a new hydraulic infrastructure based on estimation of the willingness to pay to avoid flood exposure using data on real estate prices and a flood risks map. They find that flood plain areas have a 3.5 percent price discount compared to other areas, and that this discount can be five times higher in areas of higher flood risk and less resilience. ́Alvarez and Resosudarmo (2019) measure the correlation between the water level of floods in Jakarta in 2007 and housing rental prices and find that a 10 percent increase in the flood depth is associated with 1.24 percent lower rents. Using the same data sources as this study, Erman et al. (2020) and (WB, 2017) assess the relationship between rents and reported flood exposure in Accra, Ghana and Antananarivo, Madagascar respectively. Erman et al. (2020) identify a 27 percent price discount on rent among flood-affected households in Accra and (WB, 2017) find that flood-affected households pay 15 percent lower rents in Antananarivo, Madagascar.

Most of the literature uses hazard maps to identify flood plains or high-risk locations. For instance, Bin and Polasky (2004) look at both location within a floodplain and location outside a floodplain in Pitt County, North Carolina, US which was severely impacted by the major floods that followed hurricane Floyd in 1999. They find that properties located in floodplains were cheaper than equivalent properties located in other areas, and that the price discount in floodplains was significantly larger after the hurricane.

This study uses self-reported data from household surveys to assess the willingness to pay to avoid floods. The analysis relies on four household surveys conducted between 2016 and 2018 in four SSA cities that are the most economically and politically relevant in their countries: Accra, Antananarivo, Dar es Salaam, and Addis Ababa. Flood risk is captured in two ways: by having reported being affected by a flood in recent years and respondents’ perceived risk of future flooding. The use of household survey data provides an opportunity to expand the use of the hedonic pricing approach to evaluate the benefits of urban resilience and infrastructure investment in countries that rely heavily on household survey data and where hazard risk and property value data may not be readily available. The household survey data are complemented by information on access to jobs.

> 1See Beltr ́an et al. (2018) for an extensive review of the effect on property prices of housing location in a flood plain.

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