LVT and Urban Agglomeration Dynamics

Summary

"The implications of a land value tax on urban agglomeration dynamics: efficiency and equity" models the effect of land value taxation on urban agglomeration — how cities form, grow, and allocate people and firms across space. It was posted as an SSRN working paper in 2025 by Stefania Fiorentino and Adam Moogan, both of the University of Cambridge's Department of Land Economy, and is now published, peer-reviewed, in Cities 144 (2026), DOI 10.1016/j.cities.2026.107294 — an upgrade from preprint to journal publication; the tier is raised from Supplementary to Important accordingly. The published version carries a hybrid CC BY licence, but its full text was not publicly accessible at last review (2026-08-10); this entry rests on the working paper's reference apparatus and an abstract-level characterization rather than on a full read of the published argument.

Key Finding

The authors find that an LVT can improve both efficiency and equity in agglomeration: by dynamically aligning landowner and occupier incentives with the surrounding agglomeration, taxing location rent eases the way for productive activity to concentrate where it is most valuable, while distributing the gains more broadly, rather than letting them accrue solely to incumbent landowners. This complements the productivity channel documented by Bakker (2023) — high privately-captured land rents distort urban allocation, and taxing them helps. The working paper's extensive reference list (174 sources) draws on the core agglomeration-economics literature (Glaeser, Duranton, Fujita), grounding the argument in mainstream urban economics rather than purely Georgist theory. Cambridge's own Department of Land Economy news announcement of the published paper quotes Fiorentino stating the paper's argument that "a LVT aligns landowner incentives with agglomeration productivity gains," and that "taxing land value mitigates holdouts, reduces urban sprawl and fosters responsive development and optimal urban density" — a slightly more specific mechanism list (holdout mitigation, sprawl reduction) than the working-paper-level characterization above, though still short of the model and results themselves.

Bears On

• Agglomeration Economies
• Outcome: High land rents suppress productivity

What the Paper Builds On

Crossref carries the publisher-deposited reference list for the published Cities version in full — 184 entries (a larger list than the 174-source working-paper apparatus described above, consistent with normal expansion through peer review). No abstract is deposited at Crossref for this DOI; the "Key Finding" section's quotations are sourced to the Cambridge Land Economy department's news announcement, not to Crossref. The reference list groups into three broad themes. First, mainstream urban-agglomeration economics: Edward Glaeser, Gilles Duranton, Paul Krugman ("Increasing Returns and Economic Geography," 1991), Masahisa Fujita, Stuart Rosenthal, Pierre-Philippe Combes, Glenn Ellison, and Ronald Coase — the disciplinary grounding the wiki's summary already describes. Second, a substantial cluster on the Henry George Theorem specifically — Lee (2005) "Land Taxation and the Henry George Theorem Under Uncertainty," Moss (2010) "The Henry George Theorem and the Entrepreneurial Process," Mishra (2019) "Henry George and Mohring–Harwitz Theorems," Brunetti (2024) "Credit Market Imperfections, Urban Land Rents and the Henry George Theorem," and Webster (2025) "City-Size Tax, Henry George and Urban Scaling" — plus Jane Jacobs read alongside George (Ellerman 2015). Third, the empirical land/split-rate-tax literature the wiki already carries in its own right: Oates & Schwab (1997) on Pittsburgh, Banzhaf & Lavery (2010) on Pennsylvania sprawl, Plassmann & Tideman (2000) on construction, Yang & Hawley (2022) on the tax base, Rognlie (2015) on the net capital share, Gaffney (2009) on the hidden taxable capacity of land, and Andelson (2004), Critics of Henry George — the same source underlying the wiki's own page of that name. This is reference-list evidence only: it shows what the paper cites, not how it uses or evaluates each source, and it does not establish what the paper argues.

Honest Limits

• The paper's full model and results sections remain unread here; this entry rests on its working-paper framing (via SSRN's bibliographic metadata), an abstract-level description, and a direct quotation from the Cambridge Land Economy department's own news announcement. The "Key Finding" above should be read as a characterization of the paper's stated contribution, not a verified summary of its formal results. Unpaywall records the published Cities article as genuinely hybrid open-access (CC-BY), but the publisher's page was not publicly accessible at last review (2026-08-10) and no independent aggregator has indexed a copy. The publisher-deposited reference list (184 entries) has been read in full — see "What the Paper Builds On" above — which narrows the gap to the body text and formal results specifically, not the paper's scope or scholarly context; Crossref deposits no abstract for this DOI, so even the abstract-level text remains unread from that channel. The paper's exact modelling approach, calibration and any quantitative results are therefore not documented on this page.
• This is a theoretical/modelling paper, not an empirical estimate — its supports_outcomes wiring should be read as theoretical support, alongside the empirical evidence already carried on those outcome pages.

Sources

1. Stefania Fiorentino & Adam Moogan (2026), "The implications of a land value tax on urban agglomeration dynamics: efficiency and equity," Cities 144: 107294. DOI — the published, peer-reviewed version; full text not publicly accessible at last review (2026-08-10).
2. Stefania Fiorentino & Adam Moogan (2025), "The Implications of a Land Value Tax on Urban Agglomeration Dynamics: efficiency and equity," SSRN Working Paper, DOI 10.2139/ssrn.5588585 — the preprint this wiki entry originally cited — used for the authors' affiliation (University of Cambridge, Department of Land Economy) and the reference-list characterization above. Paper
3. Crossref record for doi:10.1016/j.cities.2026.107294 — used for the published version's deposited reference list (184 entries), read 2026-08-25; no abstract is deposited at this DOI. https://api.crossref.org/works/10.1016/j.cities.2026.107294