Category: Free Markets

The Vast Collateral Damage of Zoning

Robert C. Ellickson exposes in convincing detail the deleterious impact of restrictions on new housing.

“Local zoning measures may be the most consequential regulatory program in the United States. Local barriers to housing production elevate housing costs and distort household migration decisions. Nonetheless, members of the mass media tend to regard anything that happens at a city hall as unworthy of attention.” He characterizes zoning’s reach into private life as “Leviathan gone Local.”

https://www.city-journal.org/the-vast-collateral-damage-of-zoning

My New The Hill Article on How Arlington, VA Battle over “Missing Middle” Housing is a Microcosm of Broader National Struggle Against Exclusionary Zoning

Barack Obama could have been referring to our community, when he said that “[t]he most liberal communities in the country aren’t that liberal when it comes to affordable housing.”

https://reason.com/volokh/2022/10/25/my-new-the-hill-article-on-how-arlington-va-battle-over-missing-middle-housing-is-a-microcosm-of-broader-national-struggle-against-exclusionary-zoning/

A Birthday Appreciation for Trade Economist Henry George — He Wrote Milton Friedman’s Favorite Book on International Trade

Happy Birthday to Henry George — his brilliant and timeless insights about international trade, protectionism, and trade retaliation are just as fresh and relevant today as in the late 1800s, maybe even more so today than ever before given the resurgence during Trump’s presidency of the popularity of the discredited trade “theories” of protectionism, mercantilism, and scarcityism.

A Birthday Appreciation for Trade Economist Henry George — He Wrote Milton Friedman’s Favorite Book on International Trade