Can you pay off the NIMBYs?

A forthcoming paper by Michael Hankinson, Edward Glaeser, Joseph Gyourko, and Morris Davis surveyed roughly 1,700 residents of expensive areas and found that most people do have a price. Over 80 percent accepted at least one hypothetical housing proposal when offered cash compensation. The amount depended heavily on density: residents in dense urban areas needed only a few hundred dollars, moderate-density neighborhoods required low thousands, and low-density suburbs needed well above $5,000. Proximity and project type mattered too: proposals next door doubled the price, higher-density projects quadrupled it, and low-income-designated housing multiplied it fivefold. I was surprised to learn that when compensation was offered as a parks-and-streets fund rather than direct cash, residents demanded ten times more. As Rogé Karma writes in the Atlantic, this has prompted several think tanks to propose direct payments to residents in communities that hit housing production targets. What we'd love to see is similar research on infrastructure (in particular, transmission lines, wind farms, and industrial facilities). The evidence base there is almost nonexistent, even though siting opposition is just as central to those fights.