Sunday, October 11, 2009

Jan Brueckner and Bob Helsley find that subsidized sprawl produces urban blight

Jan presented the paper at the first annual UCLA-UCI-USC real estate research day. The finding was straightforward but still interesting: if congestion for commuting to the suburbs is not priced at marginal cost, the urban center will be maintained at less than the social optimum, so the housing stock in the center will deteriorate below the social optimum.

For those who worry about whether this implies that taxing sprawl will reduce the stock of affordable housing, Jan points out that the mechanism for making housing cheaper is greater residential density: with optimal taxation of congestion, one gets very small high quality housing units in the center city.

5 comments:

rjs said...

curious translation: Taiwan Department subtropical best suited for its reproduction, affected families termites and big and termites.Every year from April to September rooms, a large group of termites collective flying out of the nest of Typhoon or Chase (rain), male and female pairing quickly after shedding wings, ... in Taiwan, though the House to reinforced concrete, but early living wooden house, often affected by the erosion of termites.

commercial real estate said...

it sounds good...we'll see if this can have a big impact..

Unknown said...

Richard,

Is the paper (or presentation) available anywhere?

Thanks.

Richard Green said...

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1479477

Sotogrande Estate said...

with optimal taxation of congestion, one gets very small high quality housing units in the center city.Thanks for this suggestion.