And The Conference Begins | Feb 12th at 12:53pm
The description of the first panel contains the question, “How can the federal government encourage more sustainable housing development in denser, less-auto-dependent, more energy efficient communities?” There is a big assumption in there, specifically that there’s rough consensus, both among Serious Thinking Elites, and the country generally, that these are important and worthy goals.
The first presenter is Ed Glaeser, someone I actually a bit knew back in my previous life as an economist. He’s laying out 3 policy problems:
1) Failure to tax/price carbon correctly.
2) Federal tax policy encourages people to buy larger houses than the otherwise would
3) “Draconian land use restrictions” do a lot to make housing less affordable.
Duncan Black has been running the blog Eschaton since 2002. He has a Ph. D in economics from Brown University, and lives in Philadelphia with his wife and two cats.
