Lincoln Institute of Land Policy

Overview

The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy is a non-profit research and education organisation based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is the leading academic institution studying land policy, land economics, and the taxation of land and property, and it produces or funds a large share of the most rigorous empirical work on land value taxation.

Role in the Field

The Institute traces its mission to the ideas of Henry George via its founder, John C. Lincoln, an industrialist influenced by Progress and Poverty. It runs research programmes, publishes policy-focus reports (including the standard reference Assessing the Theory and Practice of Land Value Taxation by Dye & England, which surveys LVT theory and international/US practice across more than 30 countries and municipalities), maintains property-tax databases and state-by-state "Significant Features of the Property Tax" profiles, publishes comparative reports jointly with institutions such as the OECD (the Global Compendium of Land Value Capture Policies, 2022), and hosts the Land Matters podcast, presented by senior fellow Anthony Flint.[1][2][6]

The Institute's working-paper series, funded through named fellowships (the John C. Lincoln Fellowship and the David C. Lincoln Institute Fellowship in Land Value Taxation — the wiki's own held sources cite both names for the same fellowship line, inconsistently, across different papers), is a primary venue for split-rate, assessment, and international land-value-capture research.[3][4] Examples the wiki draws on directly include Zhou Yang's Pennsylvania split-rate studies, Robert Gloudemans's two working papers empirically testing whether computer-assisted mass appraisal can separate land from building value in neighbourhoods with few or no vacant-land sales, Mark Alan Hughes's history of Pennsylvania's split-rate municipalities, and the Institute's 1998 Taiwan land-value-increment-tax case study.[3][4][5]

Why It Matters

For a wiki organised around evidence, the Lincoln Institute matters because so much of the Research catalogued here originates with or is funded by it. It occupies an unusual position: academically credible and methodologically cautious, while institutionally rooted in the Georgist tradition. That dual position cuts both ways for how the wiki should read Institute-funded findings — the Institute has a long-standing institutional interest in land value taxation, and its own working papers state plainly that their findings "are not subject to detailed review and do not necessarily reflect the official views and policies of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy"; that provenance is worth carrying alongside any single Institute-funded finding, without treating it as invalidating the finding itself.[4]

See Also

• Assessing the Theory and Practice of Land Value Taxation (Dye & England, 2010) — the Institute's standard LVT policy reference
• Land Matters Podcast — the Institute's own podcast
• Gloudemans: LVT Assessment Feasibility — two Institute-funded working papers testing mass-appraisal land/building separation
• Land Value Increment Tax — draws on the Institute's 1998 Taiwan case study
• Mass Appraisal Methods — cites the Institute's Estonia and assessment-standards research
• Pennsylvania — the split-rate "natural laboratory" much of the Institute's PA-focused research covers
• Council of Georgist Organizations · Robert Schalkenbach Foundation — the movement's advocacy/education organizations, distinct from the Institute's research role
• Land Value Tax · Henry George

Sources

1. Lincoln Institute of Land Policy — official site & publications. lincolninst.edu — used for the Institute's founding, mission, research programmes, and publication record.
2. Dye & England (2010), Assessing the Theory and Practice of Land Value Taxation, Lincoln Institute. Report — used as the Institute's standard reference report on LVT theory and practice, including its 30+-country and US-municipality coverage. wiki summary
3. Robert J. Gloudemans, Implementing a Land Value Tax in Urban Residential Communities (2000, WP00RG1) and An Empirical Analysis of the Incidence of Location on Land and Building Values (2002, WP02RG1), Lincoln Institute of Land Policy Working Papers — wiki summary, both read in full — used for the Institute's role funding direct empirical tests of CAMA land-value assessment, and for the two papers' inconsistent naming of the funding fellowship (John C. Lincoln Fellowship vs. David C. Lincoln Institute Fellowship in Land Value Taxation) and their shared "not subject to detailed review" disclaimer.
4. Mark Alan Hughes (2006), "Why So Little Georgism in America: Using the Pennsylvania Case Files to Understand the Slow, Uneven Progress of Land Value Taxation," Lincoln Institute of Land Policy Working Paper WP06ZK1 — wiki summary — used for the Institute's role documenting Pennsylvania's split-rate municipality history.
5. Alven H.S. Lam & Steve Wei-cho Tsui (1998), "Policies and Mechanisms on Land Value Capture: Taiwan Case Study," Lincoln Institute of Land Policy Working Paper WP98AL1 — wiki summary — used for the Institute's comparative land-value-capture research on Taiwan's LVIT.
6. OECD & Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, Global Compendium of Land Value Capture Policies (2022) — used for the Institute's joint-publication comparative reports. PDF · wiki summary
7. Land Matters podcast, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, hosted by senior fellow Anthony Flint — wiki summary — used for the podcast's host and framing.