En el marco de la elección presidencial de Estados Unidos, Edward Glaeser escribió un excelente artículo editorial sobre las promesas irresponsables que hacen los políticos. Creo que las ideas de este economista son aplicables en nuestra tierra, para cosas tan disimbolas como el programa Cero Marginación en Coahuila o el subsidio para el estadio del Santos en Torreón.

No tengo tiempo para traducir… perdón!

WHEN A politician starts talking about a nifty plan to subsidize a sports stadium or a monorail to turn around a troubled city, it pays to be skeptical. Even when attempts at reversing urban decline have reflected the purest motives, they have usually been expensive failures. The powerful economic forces that drive urban change are just too hard to overcome.

Moreover, national policies that try to prop up declining regions must be paid for by residents of growing regions, so these policies implicitly bribe people to live and work in less productive places. Perhaps most important, policies aimed at rejuvenating places take resources away from policies that help people. We can educate a lot of children for the price of a commuter rail line.

If place-based policies are such a mistake, then why are they so popular? Most place-based policies are pushed by place-based politicians who want the rest of the state or country to provide more resources for their constituents. Mayors are elected to represent those constituents, so they can’t be blamed for wanting programs that transfer funds to their cities, any more than mayors can blame economists for questioning those programs.

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Etiquetas: estadio, Glaeser, subsidio

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