Traffic noise is one of the leading environmental externalities, yet no study has recovered a causal price for a dB of railway noise. This thesis estimates that price using the staggered rollout of noise barriers under Switzerland’s federal rail noise abatement program (BGLE). A difference-in-differences design compares rents near a barrier, before and after construction, with a control area farther away. Rents near a barrier rise by 4.4% within 100m relative to the control band, with smaller gains at greater distances, implying that tenants are willing to pay a substantial premium for the quiet. A counterfactual acoustic simulation quantifies the noise reduction at each individual apartment, a measure that accounts for local conditions and is more accurate than the distance proxies used elsewhere. Scaling the rent effect by the average noise reduction implies a noise depreciation index of 1.0% of rent per dB, or about CHF 17 a month. Contrary to standard urban models, this value is not captured by the owners of the shielded buildings: their asking rents do not rise in absolute terms, while rents in the surrounding control area fall, so the gain goes to tenants instead. The resulting price gives future noise-abatement measures a monetary benchmark to be judged against.
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