The Lincoln Institute provides a variety of early- and mid-career fellowship opportunities for researchers. In this series, we follow up with our fellows to learn more about their work.

Determining the value of property is a complex and often controversial job, but new tools are making it easier for appraisers to ensure the fairness of their work. Those tools include an approach developed by Paul Bidanset, a doctoral candidate at Ulster University in the United Kingdom and former C. Lowell Harriss Dissertation Fellow. The fellowship, named for a longtime Lincoln Institute of Land Policy board member and Columbia University economics professor, assists PhD students whose research complements the Lincoln Institute’s interests in land and tax policy. As founder and research scientist at the nonprofit Center for Appraisal Research and Technology, Bidanset has now advised officials from the United Kingdom to Moldova. He described his efforts to help democratize and modernize the appraisal field in this interview, which has been edited and condensed for clarity.

JON GOREY: What is the focus of your work, and how did your fellowship help advance that research?

PAUL BIDANSET: I came from a data science background, where I was forecasting anything people wanted—forecasting revenues based on advertising expenditures, forecasting pass-fail rates based on number of hours studied—anything where you could put in some inputs and try to forecast an output. That led into predictive algorithms for appraising property, specifically for property taxes—looking at recent sales and creating models that would estimate how much certain property characteristics determine what a property would sell for, then using those to appraise all the properties within a jurisdiction, so the government can tax them based on their market value.

There’s a quality control that we do in this industry that tests how accurate those models are, and not only if they’re accurate, but if we’re being consistently accurate across all properties. Are we being consistent? Are we being fair? Are we being equitable? A lot of research I do goes into making these predictive models more accurate and more consistent for taxpayers.

In this dissertation, I took an algorithm that was already being used in the industry that brought in a lot of really granular location data, so it’s much more sensitive to local fluctuations across neighborhoods and even within neighborhoods, and I modified it to not only be more accurate with regard to location, but also to the current time of the market. So making sure that old sales, for example, if they happened before COVID, weren’t counted the same way as recent sales.

The research is all done, and all the algorithms were actually improved as far as government standards and property tax standards and governing documents are concerned. I don’t like to brag, but the valuation oversight authority in the UK actually took this algorithm and used it to revalue properties in Wales. So it was cool to see this research taken out and actually used.

JG: What are you working on now, and what are you interested in working on next?

PB: I founded a think tank, it’s a 501(c)(3) called the Center for Appraisal Research and Technology. I’ve been working in Moldova, and in Romania currently; I’ve done some work in Estonia and Ukraine, and I’m starting to work in Asia as well with the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank. A lot of the stuff that I’m teaching or working with them on is more basic modeling and technology, so it’s not directly tied to my thesis or my dissertation, but I think it is a result of my experience in the doctoral program.

And recently our nonprofit partnered with the Lincoln Institute to create this vertical equity app dashboard that governments can use. So when they’re done with their valuations, they can upload their spreadsheets . . . to test to make sure that taxes are fair across those price points. You upload it, you click a couple buttons, and you get this nice generated report that breaks things down for you very simply. We’re looking to get that type of help in the hands of governments all around the world.

JG: What’s the most surprising thing you’ve learned in your research?

PB: I think the most interesting thing to me is it doesn’t matter where you are, the issues and questions are the same. I started in Norfolk, Virginia, working in a government office, that’s where I cut my teeth in this industry. But [there is] continuity from Norfolk, Virginia, to Chişinău, Moldova, to post-Soviet countries, to developing countries in Asia—it’s amazing how similar it all is, when you’re talking about relationships between the government and taxpayers, limited budgets, outdated software, staff being spread too thin. Even the questions that the taxpayers have when they come in, their questions, their protests—I mean, it’s copy and paste. It’s fascinating.

JG: What do you wish more people knew about the appraisal industry?

PB: I wish people knew how much people in local government—at least the governments that we work with—care, and how much they actually do. Because I don’t think people realize that. I used to work for a different nonprofit and when I tell people that we would host conferences where government practitioners would come to learn how to get better at valuing properties and do things more equitably, they’re like, ‘Governments [care] about that? I just thought they threw a dart at the highest number they could get away with.’ I think if people just knew how much your average government assessor cares, how much work goes into this, how much due diligence and continuing education and hard work . . . the majority of them are really trying hard to get better at this and do a good job for the community.

JG: When it comes to your work, what keeps you up at night? And what gives you hope?

PB: Something that keeps me up would be just how much people ignore good statistics and research. It’s very convenient and easy for people to just dismiss something because it doesn’t jibe with their preconceived notions.

Something that gives me hope? I would say the open source ethos. We don’t want to foster a consultancy dependence, we want to empower these countries with limited resources. So in Moldova, for example, we were teaching them how to use free open source software that they don’t have to pay for, and really put the power in their hands, which is going to help them hopefully develop faster and comprehensively across the entire country.

JG: What’s the best book you’ve read lately, or best show you’ve streamed?

PB: As far as shows go, Silicon Valley. I’m a huge Mike Judge fan. The book that I’m reading now is by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, it’s called Fooled By Randomness. He talks a lot about financial markets, but it’s really just a very pragmatic way to look at statistics and make sure we’re not drawing the wrong conclusions or putting false hope in certain things, which I think is massive when it comes to vertical equity and ratio studies. We’ve got to make sure that we’re not drawing false conclusions and thinking we’re good when we’re not, or vice versa. Because it’s a tough job as it is—we don’t need any more confusion.

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Jon Gorey is a staff writer at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Lead image: Paul Bidanset in Beirut, Lebanon. Bidanset traveled to the city for a project with the Lincoln Institute and Beirut Urban Lab. Credit: Courtesy photo.

We can trace the origins of the Lincoln Institute to a chance encounter between a Cleveland inventor and industrialist and a barnstorming political economist in the 1890s. John C. Lincoln, an engineer who invented arc welders, high-torque electric motors, braking systems for streetcars, and even an electric car, was deeply moved by Henry George’s impassioned account of the stubbornness of urban poverty in the face of the unprecedented wealth generated by the Industrial Revolution. Lincoln subsequently devoted years of his life—and a big chunk of his fortune—to advancing George’s ideas for social improvement.

George showed in a powerful and persuasive way that poverty was the result of distributive injustice. The wrong people were benefiting from economic growth. Idle landowners could sit and watch land values increase exponentially, while the productive classes, labor and capital, were taxed to support the government. George proposed replacing corporate and income taxes with a new tax that expropriated the unearned value of land from its owners. He estimated that land tax revenue would be sufficient both to eliminate poverty and to fund the government.

Given his own disposition toward social justice, ethics, efficiency, and basic fairness, this proposition resonated with John Lincoln. But the failure of George’s policy prescriptions to gain any political traction mystified him. One reason he could see was the lack of general academic embrace of George’s analytics and his conclusions. Quite frankly, except for a handful of universities like Columbia, UC–Berkeley, or the University of Chicago, George’s work was marginalized if it was taught at all.

It was never considered a mainstream component of the training of economists or political scientists. Lincoln decided to remedy this by creating the Lincoln Foundation and partnering with universities to establish programs in land economics and taxation. And that’s what the Lincoln Foundation did from 1946 until 1974. In 1974, John’s son, David C. Lincoln, took a hard look at the impact of the foundation’s efforts to mainstream land economics and taxation in the fields of economics and political science. He was underwhelmed. The programs supported with the foundation’s resources were evanescent and land economics remained specialized in a few universities. He decided to try a new approach and established the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy to bring research and training under our own roof. And David was clear about one thing that he often repeated: “Henry George’s work was not about promoting the land tax—it was about eliminating poverty.” Thus, the Lincoln Institute was founded on the notion that land policy was not an end, but a means to solve bigger economic, social, and environmental challenges.

With that clarity, measurable impact quickly followed. In the 1980s, the arrival of Boston lawyer and conservationist Kingsbury Browne as a Lincoln Institute fellow led to the scaling up and national networking of private land conservation in the United States. Today, members of the Land Trust Alliance, an organization that evolved from Browne’s work, have protected more than 57 million acres of private land in perpetuity in the United States. In the 1990s, the Lincoln Institute invented computer-assisted mass appraisal. Systems built on that legacy are now used by local governments everywhere. In the 2000s, new international programs in Latin America supported, tested, and documented modern land value capture tools and techniques. Dozens of countries and thousands of jurisdictions are now studying ways to use these tools to mobilize their own public revenue. In the 2010s, the Lincoln Institute went global, establishing the International Land Conservation Network to promote private land conservation and sharing our work on the global stage at venues like Habitat III.

There is an important point here (and I know I buried the lede): we accomplished decades of significant work even though we could not easily define the discipline in which we operated. Over the last few years, we’ve been trying to rectify that. This spring, the board and management of the Lincoln Institute tried to effectively define land policy. By effectively, I mean clearly, accessibly, and efficiently. We found the task so daunting that we even consulted artificial intelligence. In my spring column, I shared our challenges and asked for your help. I asked you to submit your best definitions of land policy and offered a prize.

I’m delighted to report that we got many submissions. They ranged from the artistic to the theological. They arrived from four continents, with the furthest submission coming from New Zealand. They came mainly from individuals, but included a group effort from a network of 40 practitioners in Latin America. They ranged in length from 12 to 548 words. I even submitted my own definition.

While the judges were duly impressed with the scope and creativity of the submissions, I’m afraid I have unsettling news for the Luddites among us: they did not think we outperformed the AI bot. To remind you, here is the 85-word definition offered by ChatGPT:

Land policy refers to the rules and regulations that govern the use, ownership, and management of land. It involves making decisions about how land should be used, who should have access to it, and what activities are permitted on it. Land policy can affect a wide range of issues, from urban development and environmental conservation to property rights and social equity. Its goal is to balance the interests of different stakeholders and ensure that land is used in ways that benefit society as a whole.

That doesn’t mean, however, that accolades aren’t due. In the view of the judges, the best submission was from Harvey Jacobs:

Land policy is about the rules, the culture that underlies those rules, and the social expectations for the use of land. It draws together government, the market, and private actors. It has formal and informal outputs. Formal outputs are often plans, regulations, and programs. Informal outputs are often socially accepted patterns for how land is to be used and our behavior upon land.

The most economical submission was a haiku written by PD Blumenthal—

Use, control, share land
Protect earth, water, and air
To benefit all

—and the most creative submission was a poem entitled “A More Stealthy Georgist Cat,” by David Harold Chester. It is too long to reprint here, but you can read it in its entirety elsewhere on our site.

The pithiest submission was from Ben Brown:

Land policy is the bundle of rules through which governments formalize wishful thinking for responding to competing demands for land use in a future that is both inevitable and uncertain.

Even though we haven’t yet outperformed artificial intelligence, I am very happy with the outcome of this exercise. It affirms a couple of important things. First, land policy has a vast scope, and it touches many aspects of life. As such, maybe it is okay that it eludes easy definition. Second, it is possible to spend years doing something that you cannot easily explain. I’m guessing land policy experts aren’t the only people who cannot explain at get-togethers with their extended families what exactly they do.

It occurs to me that the problem might be taxonomical. In taxonomy, it might be harder to define a classification than it is to give an example of something in that classification. For the life of me, I can never remember the differences between class, order, family, genus, or species, but if pressed I can give an example of something in each.

In the end, I’m going to give everyone who submitted an entry in the contest a book of their choice from our impressive and ever-expanding library of land policy publications. In addition, I will give the authors of each of the four distinguished submissions above their choice of five books each.

It was a great exercise, and we appreciate the thought and effort put into all the submissions. We appreciate even more your collegiality, and we’re honored to share this hard-to-define endeavor with all of you. What started with a chance encounter between a barnstorming reformer and an inventor more than a century ago is even more relevant today: finding answers in land to improve the quality of life.

Lead image: Devonyu via iStock/ Getty Images Plus.