Nicolaus Tideman

Overview

T. Nicolaus Tideman is an American economist, long at Virginia Tech, and the most prominent living scholar of land value taxation. His work spans the theoretical case for LVT, its empirical effects, and the mechanism-design problems of implementing it fairly.

Contributions

• Empirical: co-authored Plassmann & Tideman (2000), the multi-municipality Pennsylvania study showing split-rate taxation raises construction.
• Theoretical: edited Land and Taxation (1994), the leading academic anthology making the case for land-based public revenue, and wrote "The Ultimate Tax Reform: Public Revenue from Land Rent."
• Macro policy: co-authored the 2021 CEPR "super-stimulus" paper with Goodhart, Hudson, and Kumhof, calibrating a shift toward land taxation.
• Mechanism design: work on demand-revealing processes and fair land-assembly auctions, addressing practical implementation — see Tideman & Plassmann (2008) on auction mechanisms for the holdout problem.

Significance

Tideman bridges the Georgist tradition and rigorous modern economics — he is the figure most responsible for keeping land value taxation a live, technically serious research program rather than a historical curiosity.

See Also

• Open Letter to Gorbachev (1990) — the letter he organized
• Land Value Tax · Henry George Theorem

Sources

1. Plassmann & Tideman (2000), Journal of Urban Economics — used for the split-rate construction evidence (B-claim). wiki summary
2. Nicolaus Tideman et al. (1994), Land and Taxation (book) — used for his editorial role in the modern Georgist literature (A-claim).
3. Tideman & Plassmann (2008), "Providing Incentives for Efficient Land Assembly" — used for the holdout-problem work (B-claim). wiki summary
4. Goodhart, Hudson, Kumhof & Tideman (2021), "Post-Corona Balanced-Budget Super-Stimulus" — used for the macro tax-shift modeling (B-claim). wiki summary