This week’s column is drawn from a lecture I gave at the University of Southern California on the occasion of the retirement of urban economist Peter Gordon.One of my heroes is the urbanist Jane Jacobs, who taught me to appreciate the importance for entrepreneurial development of how public … [Read more...]
Visions of Progress: Henry George vs. Jane Jacobs
Henry George and Jane Jacobs each have an enthusiastic following today, including, I’m sure, some readers of The Freeman.For those who might not know, Henry George is the late-19th-century American intellectual best known for his proposal of a “single tax” from which he believed the … [Read more...]
Shut Out: How Land-Use Regulations Hurt the Poor
People sometimes support regulations, often with the best of intentions, but these wind up creating outcomes they don’t like. Land-use regulations are a prime example.My colleague Emily Washington and I are reviewing the literature on how land-use regulations disproportionately raise the cost of … [Read more...]
The Answer to Expensive Housing: Build More
If you restrict the supply of housing, other things equal, what will happen to the price? That’s not a trick question. Any competent Econ 101 student would answer correctly that the price will rise.One reporter for the Washington Post gets it. In a hopeful sign of spreading economic literacy, … [Read more...]
How The Housing Market Works
[Editors note: Sandy Ikeda was an original Market Urbanism writer and is now a regular columnist for the Foundation for Economic Education, or FEE.org. FEE has offered republishing rights, so Sandy's past work will be appearing here every Tuesday at 10am eastern time]People sometimes argue that … [Read more...]
Landmark Incentives
by Sandy IkedaThe other day I was lecturing to my students about externalities and the Coase Theorem. One of the examples I used came directly from the our textbook – Heyne, Boettke, & Prychitko’s The Economic Way of Thinking. It asks what would happen if you tried to declare a large tree … [Read more...]
Talking points on the housing bubble
By Sandy IkedaLast week I spoke to a standing-room-only crowd of students and faculty about the current economic and financial turmoil. I shared the podium with three of my colleagues, who range all the way from far to the left of Barack Obama to very, very far to the left of Barack Obama. … [Read more...]