Marginal Cost Pricing and Eminent Domain

There are three separate strands of literature in economics that are related to the efficiency of takings under eminent domain: one addresses the question of optimal compensation for properties that are taken, the second inquires how governments might learn the values of properties that they consider taking, while the third analyzes solutions to the problem of land assembly. This essay reviews these strands of literature and argues that the principle of marginal cost pricing can be used as a unifying principle for integrating them.