The debate you've been waiting for! Randal O'Toole, Matt Yglesias, Ryan Avent, and Adam Gordon participated yesterday in a discussion at the Cato Institute moderated by Diana Lind from Next American City/Forefront. (How had this never happened before??)Randal O'Toole did not disappoint, arriving … [Read more...]
Walk Score Regression Results
Thanks for the comments on my Walk Score model! Per a few reader requests, here are the full results. I should have thought to provide them initially but didn't realize there would be interest. Also, I don't know a good way to put STATA or Excel charts here, so apologies for the screenshots.Here … [Read more...]
Some Empirical Evidence on Preference for Cities
This semester I took an econometrics class because I got an MA with the bare minimum of quantitative classes. For the class, I wrote a paper asking the question, "Are consumers willing to pay a premium to live in dense urban areas?" It's easy to see that urban density is correlated with higher … [Read more...]
Brookings Study Ties Exclusionary Zoning to Gaps in School Performance
Last week the Brookings Institute released a study by Jonathan Rothwell on the relationship between exclusionary zoning and school performance. He points out that this is the first study linking zoning to educational outcomes. The findings demonstrate that cities with stronger exclusionary zoning … [Read more...]
Detroit’s Financial Future
After flirting with Chapter 9 bankruptcy or a state takeover of its finances, Detroit has reached a deal with the state of Michigan that will allow it to remain independently managed with a requirement for state oversight. The Detroit Free Press reports: The city has seven days to create the … [Read more...]
Cities and the Market Process: Part 4
This series looks at some of the ways that people organize themselves to live alongside each other in cities. Part 1 looks at inherent problems with top-down planning, and this part will expand on this issue with the specific problems of pricing government-owned land.Prices are an emergent order … [Read more...]
More on Parking Prices
At Wabi-sabi, Sandy Ikeda (former Market Urbanism writer) has a great analysis of San Francisco's pricing for parking. He points out that assigning prices to spots is not equivalent to allowing a market to determine a price. For a real price to emerge capital (the parking space) cannot be … [Read more...]
Maryland realtors fight to protect their subsidy
This post originally appeared at Neighborhood Effects, a Mercatus Center blog where we write about the economics of state and local policy.We've already explored Governor O'Malley's proposal for the Maryland budget here and here, but recently, a perhaps unintended consequence of the budget … [Read more...]