Eminent domain and its use as an economic development tool.

摘要

The use of eminent domain for economic development is one of the most controversial topics regarding the use of property in the United States. After the United States Supreme Court's Kelo decision enabling cities to use eminent domain for economic development, some states and municipalities changed their eminent domain laws. Despite the rhetoric generated by the Kelo decision, the available literature and research on the use of eminent domain for economic development is minimal. The dissertation provides an extensive review of court cases and the literature dealing with the topic, and reports on research which analyzed the determinants of cities that use eminent domain for economic development. This research analyzes over 150 uses of eminent domain for economic development between 1998 and 2002 in cities with populations over 25,000 and interviews with economic development officials at the city level in Ohio. The dataset of 1,501 cities contains variables about each city's demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, housing stock, eminent domain law at the state level, economic development programs, type of city government, type of city, and other variables. Binary logistic regression is used to determine if the cities that used eminent domain for economic development are different from cities that have not used eminent domain for economic development. The use of eminent domain for economic development is found to depend more on the age of the housing stock rather than the percentage of the population that is minority, poor, and other characteristics.