Why Participation? Institutions and Inequality in Urban Politics

Foster, David S.; Warren, Joseph

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3768213

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…Multiple existing models analyze the relationship between housing development, prices, and land use regulations. In another paper, we study a political setting in which an official chooses among alternative land use regulatory regimes across heterogeneous neighborhoods (Foster and Warren 2021). One of these possible land-use regimes allows for participation by local residents and thus roughly corresponds to the institutions that we analyze in this paper.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…But there are multiple explanations for why policymakers would have established institutions that enable obstruction. In a related paper, we argue that interaction between inequality across neighborhoods and uncertainty over the local costs of policies in each neighborhood creates an incentive for policymakers to establish participatory institutions that are otherwise inefficient (Foster and Warren 2021). Additionally, in Supplemental Appendix B, we allow the opponent's cost coefficient to be strategically selected by politicians and explore the incentives for a legislature either to delegate the choice of this coefficient locally or to set it centrally.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The NIMBY problem

Foster

Warren

2021

Journal of Theoretical Politics

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Nimbyism is widely thought to arise from an inherent tradeoff between localism and efficiency in government: because many development projects have spatially concentrated costs and diffuse benefits, local residents naturally oppose proposed projects. But why cannot project developers (with large potential profits) compensate local residents? We argue that local regulatory institutions effectively require developers to expend resources that cannot be used to compensate residents. Not being compensated for local costs, residents therefore oppose development. Using a formal model, we show that when these transaction costs are high, voters consistently oppose development regardless of compensation from developers. But when transaction costs are low, developers provide compensation to residents and local support for development increases. We conclude that nimbyism arises from a bargaining problem between developers and local residents, not the relationship between local decision-making and the spatial structure of costs and benefits. We suggest policy reforms implied by this theory.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%