Gaffney (1994): Land as a Distinctive Factor of Production

Overview

Mason Gaffney's 1994 essay, published as a chapter in Nicolaus Tideman's edited volume Land and Taxation (London: Shepheard-Walwyn), catalogues the respects in which land differs economically from produced capital: it is not produced or reproducible, its aggregate supply is fixed, it is immobile in space, and — unlike capital goods — it does not wear out or depreciate through use.[1] Gaffney argues that mainstream economics, by folding land into a generic "capital" category, erased distinctions that matter directly for tax and land policy — land rent responds to market forces different from the return on capital, and taxing land rent does not discourage the supply of land the way taxing capital discourages investment.[1] The essay is a companion piece to Gaffney's better-known account of how land was written out of neoclassical textbook economics.[2]

See Also

• Mason Gaffney — the author
• The Neoclassical Stratagem — Gaffney's companion argument on how land was purged from economic theory
• Missemer & Pottier, Land, Labor, Capital — related scholarship on the three-factor framework
• Law of Rent — the classical mechanism this essay defends
• Economic Rent

Sources

1. Mason Gaffney (1994), "Land as a Distinctive Factor of Production," in Nicolaus Tideman, ed., Land and Taxation, Shepheard-Walwyn — used for the catalogue of land's distinguishing economic properties and its consequences for tax policy. Archived, later-updated text by Gaffney hosted by the School of Cooperative Individualism (this is Gaffney's own expanded 2004 web version of the argument; the original 1994 book-chapter text itself was not independently located this session, so its exact pagination and wording were not confirmed against the 1994 Shepheard-Walwyn print edition — a future editor with that edition should verify them).
2. Wiki summary: The Neoclassical Stratagem — used for cross-reference to Gaffney's related critique of how land disappeared from economic theory.