The Benefits: what geoist policy measurably delivers

What this page is

This page indexes what geoist policies have been measured to deliver — the empirical companion to The Problems. Every entry is a falsifiable claim with its own page, an honest evidence grade, and at least two independent anchor studies. Where the evidence is mixed, the grade says so; an advocate quoting this list should never be over-claiming.

Grades: Strong (replicated or real-world-proven), Moderate (solid but thinner), Mixed (parts well-supported, parts not — split out on the page), Contested (real disagreement — stated on the page).

The claims

Efficiency and incidence — the core case

• Taxing land and rents increases productivity — Moderate. The least-harmful-tax half is well-supported; the direct raises-productivity half is model-based with contested magnitudes, and the page grades the two claims separately.
• LVT can replace capital taxes without efficiency loss — Strong. Theory plus calibrated empirical models: taxing land forgoes the deadweight loss that other taxes impose.
• Landlords cannot pass a land value tax on to tenants — Strong on theory (near-unanimous for the land component); direct rental-market measurement is supportive but thinner, and the page says so.
• A land value tax can be progressive — Strong. Follows from the concentration of land ownership.
• Rent-targeting corporate taxes reduce debt bias without penalizing marginal investment — Strong quasi-experimental for the leverage effect; contested for multinationals' real investment.

Cities and housing

• Split-rate taxation increases urban construction — Moderate–strong. Multiple empirical studies, consistent direction.
• Land value taxation dampens land speculation — Moderate. Strong theory; suggestive empirics.
• Land value taxation reduces urban sprawl — Moderate for the density mechanism; the metro-level sprawl claim is inferential, with the Bentick–Mills critique carried as counter-evidence.
• Land value taxation can improve housing affordability — Mixed. Lower land prices are well-supported; effects on rents paid are mixed, and affordability gains depend on permissive land-use policy — the page keeps the prices-vs-rents distinction explicit.

Rents beyond land — congestion, carbon, resources

• Congestion pricing reduces traffic and congestion — Strong. Repeated real-world quasi-experiments plus measured cost-benefit analysis.
• Carbon pricing cuts emissions — modestly, and without wrecking growth — Moderate-to-strong for real reductions; magnitudes are modest and the flagship case's aggregate effect is debated.
• Capturing resource rent works — where institutions are strong — Strong for the flagship case (Norway); conditional in general — the resource curse is real where institutions are weak.
• Resource-rent dividends are workable and durable — Strong. Decades of real-world operation (Alaska's Permanent Fund Dividend).
• Higher property-tax rates raise welfare in developing countries — Moderate. Rigorous but single-country causal evidence.
• Rent dividends reduce poverty and inequality — Moderate. Direct poverty evidence is descriptive or simulated; the causal work rules out an employment offset rather than measuring poverty, and one econometric study finds inequality worsened — the page keeps the three evidence classes distinct.

Honest limits

Every entry here cleared the bar: at least two independent big-name anchors, claim-level verified, counter-evidence documented. Where the evidence supports "reduces land prices" but not yet "reduces rents paid", or "least-harmful tax" but not yet "raises productivity", the pages keep those distinctions rather than blurring them — quote the graded claim, not the slogan.

See also

• The Problems — the diagnosis these policies answer
• Land value tax and Citizens' dividend — the instruments
• Georgism and Geoism — the traditions