ABSTRACT
This chapter provides progressivism in light of new insights developed by public choice theorists. It examines the Progressive ideal and its influence on land-use policy and focuses on the fundamental concepts of public choice theory and the challenge they raise to the Progressive paradigm. The chapter reviews land-market theory and examine the incentives that the land market provides for land speculators to attempt to influence land-use policy. It discusses the question whether land-use policy is worth worrying about and, assuming that it is, noting some ways that public choice theory might suggest to improve policy outcomes. A substantial portion of almost every issue of leading journals, like the American Economic Review, carries scholarly work of the highest quality dealing with such important concepts of the new political economy as transaction costs, rational ignorance, and the efficient-market hypothesis. Since the time of the ancients, governments have also explicitly attempted to control land use.
