🚨New Paper🚨 When should legal rules redistribute?
Goldin & I review 4 economic reasons - & the political constraints - that justify redistributive legal rules.
We hope it's a useful short general explainer of the latest research, including for law teaching.
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
🚨New predoc posting🚨Come work with me at Yale!
We're working on why US infrastructure takes so much time and money to build.
tobin.yale.edu/programs/pre...
Can confirm. 30 years as a federal government employee, 25 of which involved some aspect of procurement of complex goods and services provided experience and expertise in the brokenness of government procurement.
Good paper re current state procurement rules that prioritize procedural transparency enforced by adversarial legalism in an effort to obtain "low bids" over administrative discretion to choose best value.
Potts shows how this has not always been the case and is the result of historic legal drift.
NEW PAPER! (w/ Fox & Love): How to tax business?
1. Corporations are now taxed more efficiently than ever.
2. Partnerships hold >$30T in assets, yet audit rates for large ones have collapsed to 0.27% because of complexity.
➔ Time to shift back to corporate taxation?
Summary: tinyurl.com/376vuztu
Now out @jpube.bsky.social:
-Unrealized gains = 40% of “economic income” for top 1% (29% adjusted for inflation)
-Borrowing is just 1-2% of econ income for them
-Super rich “buy, save, die," not “buy, borrow, die” - they don't need to borrow to consume
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
Attention good government, infrastructure, abundance, and state capacity nerds: here's a terrific new paper on how we arrived at one particularly ineffective (though good-sounding) practice -- lowest-cost bidding -- and what to do about it.
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
Nice story on a new course I'm teaching on why state & local governments don't work as well as they could - and what can be done, using Connecticut as a case study. We talk about state capacity, proceduralism, participation, politics, abundance, etc.
law.yale.edu/yls-today/ne...
We know state capacity works for roads. So why not apply these lessons to rail? #JustTransitionForCaltrans
Great piece by @davidzipper.bsky.social in @bloomberg.com on my work with Slattery & Nober on state capacity challenges building infrastructure -- and how good government workers can pay for themselves many times over.
www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
US highway spending is a mess.
Yale prof @zliscow.bsky.social & colleagues found that South Carolina’s DOT spends $375,500 repaving a mile of highway – more than twice as much as North Carolina.
In @bloomberg.com, I spoke with Liscow about the wild inefficiencies of state DOTs.
Connecticut is going to spend $1 billion on a moveable bridge to serve *one* boat that goes up and down the river.
The Army Corps of Engineers was inflexible on this issue despite the cost bloat. Should be a go to example for “marble cake federalism.”
By @zliscow.bsky.social interviewed by Ruiz
Thanks for pointing that out. I hadn't realized that. So I just put up a version with the appendix on SSRN: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
On Sep 24 (Wednesday), Ed Fox (Michigan), Zach Liscow (Yale) and Michael Love (Columbia), will present the draft paper, “Corporate vs. Pass Through Taxation: the Role of Economic Rents and Legibility”, at the Mizzou Law Tax Policy Colloquium, from 2:00 to 3:15 pm Central Time. 1/
🚨New paper! I propose specific actions to reform permitting, balancing a reduction in back-end litigation with more robust and inclusive front-end planning, preserving core values while adapting to modern needs.
www.brookings.edu/articles/ref...
The US has a lot of lawyers per capita, and unsurprisingly it has a lot of lawsuits per capita, which probably matters for our ability to build things. Info by way of @zliscow.bsky.social
pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/...
I had a great time talking with Santi Ruiz @ifp.bsky.social about how to reduce infrastructure costs. Here's the podcast.
www.statecraft.pub/p/what-is-am...
Fantastic talk on cutting transit construction costs and getting lots more great transit with @zliscow.bsky.social, @stephanie-pollack.bsky.social and @egoldwyn.bsky.social at @yimbytown.bsky.social.
Check out our conversation on Densely Speaking with Zach about this research from earlier this year. @gregshill.com
open.spotify.com/episode/6HcN...
This is a really important paper. American infrastructure is expensive because we outsourced the capacity design (or perhaps even bid) effectively.
The implication of the outsourcing of state capacity loom large over this paper. The results are clear but it’s more impactful if you read between the lines
Investing in competence pays off, another result "cost cutting" conservatives don't understand
Hello!
Tl;dr Engineers print money
Wow, this is fantastic.
Rhetorical question: What do we think is going to result from the culling of experienced engineers (and other subject matter experts) at the Fed level too?
Key point for those of us trying to figure out ST3 costs. State capacity is a key piece of the puzzle.
Probably true in Canada and for more than just highways I would reckon
Hmmm, maybe we should hire in-house civil engineers instead of relying on massive multinational consulting firms to do our work for us?
Imagine that!