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.
• Deadweight-loss quantification: with Florenz Plassmann, contributed the chapter "Taxation and the Losses of Nations" to Fred Harrison's The Losses of Nations (1998), fitting an aggregate production function to estimate how much a revenue-neutral shift from conventional taxes to land rent would raise output — by nearly 30% for the 1993 US economy on their figures, and by over 90% in higher-tax European economies.
• General-equilibrium modelling: with Ebere Akobundu, Andrew Johns and Prapaiporn Wutthicharoen, built a dynamic computable general-equilibrium (CGE) model of the US economy in The Avoidable Excess Burden of Broad-Based U.S. Taxes (Public Finance Review, 2002) — the independent, non-Gaffney quantification behind ATCOR/EBCOR, estimating the net welfare gain from shifting taxation onto land at ~14% of net domestic product in 2002, rising to ~26.6% by 2042.
• 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
• Taxation and the Losses of Nations (Tideman & Plassmann, 1998) — the G7 deadweight-loss calculation
• The Avoidable Excess Burden of Broad-Based U.S. Taxes (2002) — the independent CGE quantification behind ATCOR/EBCOR
• Land Value Tax · Henry George Theorem · ATCOR

Sources

1. Plassmann & Tideman (2000), Journal of Urban Economics — used for the split-rate construction evidence (B-claim). wiki summary
2. Tideman & Plassmann (1998), "Taxation and the Losses of Nations," in Fred Harrison (ed.), The Losses of Nations — used for the aggregate production-function deadweight-loss estimate (B-claim; the specific dollar magnitude carries a verification caveat on the wiki's research page). wiki summary
3. Tideman, Akobundu, Johns & Wutthicharoen (2002), "The Avoidable Excess Burden of Broad-Based U.S. Taxes," Public Finance Review 30(5) — used for the CGE-modelled ~14% (2002) to ~26.6% (2042) net-domestic-product welfare-gain estimates (B-claim). wiki summary
4. Nicolaus Tideman et al. (1994), Land and Taxation (book) — used for his editorial role in the modern Georgist literature (A-claim).
5. Tideman & Plassmann (2008), "Providing Incentives for Efficient Land Assembly" — used for the holdout-problem work (B-claim). wiki summary
6. Goodhart, Hudson, Kumhof & Tideman (2021), "Post-Corona Balanced-Budget Super-Stimulus" — used for the macro tax-shift modeling (B-claim). wiki summary