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Distributional Consequences Of Public Policies: An Example From The Management Of Urban Vehicular Travel, Winston Harrington, Elena Safirova, Conrad Coleman, Sébastien Houde, Adam M. Finkel Mar 2014

Distributional Consequences Of Public Policies: An Example From The Management Of Urban Vehicular Travel, Winston Harrington, Elena Safirova, Conrad Coleman, Sébastien Houde, Adam M. Finkel

All Faculty Scholarship

This paper uses a spatially disaggregated computable general equilibrium model of a large US metropolitan area to compare two kinds of policies, “Live Near Your Work” and taxation of vehicular travel, that have been proposed to help further the aims of “smart growth.” Ordinarily, policy comparisons of this sort focus on the net benefits of the two policies; that is, the total monetized net welfare gains or losses to all citizens. While the aggregate net benefits are certainly important, in this analysis we also disaggregate these benefits along two important dimensions: income and location within the metropolitan area. The resulting …


How Often Do Cities Mandate Smart Growth Or Green Building?, Michael Lewyn Jan 2014

How Often Do Cities Mandate Smart Growth Or Green Building?, Michael Lewyn

Scholarly Works

Much has been written about the role of government regulation in facilitating automobile-oriented sprawl. Zoning codes reduce walkability by artificially segregating housing from commerce, forcing businesses and multifamily landlords to surround their buildings with parking, and artificially reducing density. The “smart growth” movement seeks to reverse these policies, both through regulation and through more libertarian, deregulatory policies. The purpose of this paper is to examine to what extent cities have in fact chosen the former path, and to discuss the possible side effects of prescriptive smart growth and green building regulations. In particular, this paper focuses on attempts to make …


Requiem For Regulation, Garrett Power Jan 2014

Requiem For Regulation, Garrett Power

Faculty Scholarship

This comment reviews U.S. Supreme Court decisions over the past 100 years which have considered the constitutional limitations on governmental powers. It finds that at the three-quarter mark of the 20th century, a remarkable set of Court precedents had swollen the regulatory powers of governments while shrinking private rights to property and contract. But since the Reagan years, a more conservative Court has undertaken to curtail governmental activity in general, and to limit federal, state, and local planning in particular. A number of 5-4 decisions expanded private property rights and contracted the scope of the federal “commerce power.” The comment …