In both economic and legal scholarship, a broad consensus has formed that zoning and other land use laws and regulations in our richest and most productive regions have become too strict. Land use laws, in both suburbs and downtowns, have made it too hard to build housing in the areas with the...

"Scholars writing about how the federal government should respond to state and local fiscal stress fall into roughly two camps. One group argues that federal bailouts create excessive moral hazard. Another group argues that federal aid is instead a necessary form of macroeconomic stimulus given...

Transferable Development Rights (TDRs) were supposed to be a solution to the intractable problems of land use, a bit of institutional design magic that married the interests of development and preservation at no cost to taxpayers and with no legal risk. Under a TDR program, development is...

The economic crisis that accompanied the COVID-19 pandemic has left state and local budgets in tatters, with revenue falling quickly while demands for public services increase. The federal government responded in a number of ways, but the public debate over what it should do if there is an acute...

Whether measured by population or by the size of its economy, Vermont is small. It is the second least populous state, with fewer residents than 28 cities and 107 counties. It has the smallest economy of any state. And there is no reason to believe this will change. It has one of the oldest...

What would happen if the City of Chicago, the Chicago Public Schools, and Cook County all became insolvent at the same time? How should policy-makers and courts respond? This Article argues that the pension and budget crises that have left so many local governments deeply in debt have generated...

A certain breed of economists and techno-futurists regularly point to the potential for innovation in the transportation sector to spur economic growth. Such predictions, however, often fail to discuss why transportation innovation in the past was so central to economic changes. Innovations like...

In many of the biggest and richest cities in America, there is a housing affordability crisis. Housing prices in these cities have appreciated well beyond the cost of construction and even faster than rising incomes. These price increases are a direct result of zoning rules that limit the...

In the past five years, “sharing economy” firms like Uber, ZipCar, AirBnB and TaskRabbit have generated both huge market valuations and fierce regulatory contests in America’s cities. Incumbent firms in the taxi, hotel and other industries, as well consumer protection, labor and...