What Owners Want and Governments Do - Evidence from the Oregon Experiment
In 2004, Oregonians approved ballot Measure 37 by 61% to 39%. The measure answered the calls of critics of contemporary takings jurisprudence by requiring either compensation for losses caused by land use restrictions imposed after acquisition of the property or waivers of the restrictions. Three years later, voters acted to repeal most of Measure 37 by an even greater margin. Together the birth, brief life, and rapid demise of Measure 37 comprise an unusual natural experiment in property law. The results of this experiment go to the heart of debates about regulatory takings in property law and policy. First, the Oregon experience resulted in a sea change in owners’ understandings of property rights. The 2004 vote reflected the popular understanding of land use restrictions as invasions of property rights. Faced with effective repeal of those restrictions, as reflected in passionate testimony before the Oregon legislature, Oregonians came to see the regulations as in fact an important source of property rights. In effect Measure 37 brought the background government and community support on which property rights depend into the foreground of owners’ consciousness. Second, government responses to Measure 37 challenged arguments that compensation will dispel the fiscal illusion under which governments operate and result in more efficient regulation. Rather than weigh costs and benefits, in all but one of thousands of cases, the government waived the regulations rather than compensate. These decisions were made without analysis of the benefits of the regulations waived, and despite predictably negative results. Finally, the thousands of claims and research catalyzed by these claims complicated questions of the compensation to which owners are justly entitled. While limited, therefore, the Oregon experiment provided valuable grounded evidence for the continuing debate about takings law and the ways that property mediates the relationships between individuals, communities, and the state.
From Nectow to Koontz: The Supreme Court's Supervision of Land-Use Regulation
This is a preliminary chapter of my book in progress, tentatively titled The New Economics of Zoning Laws. This chapter selectively surveys court decisions on zoning over the past century. I offer new evidence on Nectow v. Cambridge (1927), the first case in which the US Supreme Court overturned a non-racial zoning ordinance. The Court got it wrong, at least by modern standards of review, because a master's report mischaracterized the history of the site and the purpose of zoning. The Court after Nectow has usually been deferential to state courts and local decisionmaking on land use, which I submit is appropriate given the Court’s lack of access to local knowledge. It has since 1987 insisted that the states not abandon the regulatory takings doctrine, but it has also put up substantial procedural barriers to moving cases into federal court. Its decisions create a modest price effect for local governments, which do not have to worry much about paying taxpayers’ money for a judgment unless their regulations leave no economically viable use or cause a physical occupation of the property. The Court’s departures from its deferential tradition have been in the exactions cases, most recently Koontz v. St. Johns River Water Management District (2013). These are economically questionable in that they appear to entrench existing regulations, thus lowering the opportunity cost of maintaining them. The decisions may, however, discourage governments from adopting regulations purely for the sake of obtaining general revenue. Zoning and related land-use regulations are highly popular institutions, though, so it seems unlikely that limiting the exactions process will discourage many of their excesses.
Analysis of Potential Contribution to Medical Savings Accounts Based on Out-of-Pocket Health Care Expenses in Poland
The purpose of this paper is to analyze medical savings accounts in the context of their potential use to finance private health care expenses incurred by individuals in Poland. A medical savings account (MSA) represents a financing mechanism which relies on the accumulation of personal savings to cover the costs of health care services at the time of consumption. With the use of actuarial methods an attempt was made to estimate the amount of the MSA contribution based on the discounted value of a person’s health care expenses, age, gender, and investment variants. In the analysis, statistical data from representative household budget surveys conducted by the Central Statistical Office of Poland was used. The obtained results confirm that a medical savings account can be used to finance personal out-of-pocket health care expenses; however it requires systematic and long-term saving for health purposes. Age and gender of an MSA holder have the greatest impact on the amount of contribution, as these factors determine mortality rates and the length of the discounting period. From the individual’s perspective, MSA application requires this financing instrument to be taken into account in decisions related to the intertemporal choice between consumption and saving.