Overview

25 new runways would eliminate most air travel delays in America. Why cant we build them? 50 patent owners are blocking a major drug maker from creating a cancer cure. Why wont they get out of the way? 90% of our broadcast spectrum sits idle while American cell phone service lags far behind Japans and Koreas. Why are we wasting our airwaves? 98% of African American-owned farms have been sold off over the last century. Why cant we stop the loss? All these problems are really the same problem-one whose solution would jump-start innovation, release trillions in productivity, and help revive our slumping economy. Every so often an idea comes along that transforms our understanding of how the world works. Michael Heller has discovered a market dynamic that no one knew existed. Usually, private ownership creates wealth, but too much ownership has the opposite effect-it creates gridlock. When too many people own pieces of one thing, whether a physical or intellectual resource, cooperation breaks down, wealth disappears, and everybody loses. Hellers paradox is at the center of The Gridlock Economy. Todays leading edge of innovation-in high tech, biomedicine, music, film, real estate-requires the assembly of separately owned resources. But gridlock is blocking economic growth all along the wealth creation frontier. A thousand scholars have applied and verified Hellers paradox. Now he takes readers on a lively tour of gridlock battlegrounds. Heller zips from medieval robber barons to modern-day broadcast spectrum squatters; from Mississippi courts selling African-American family farms to troubling New York City land confiscations; and from Chesapeake Bay oyster pirates to todays gene patent and music mash-up outlaws. Each tale offers insights into how to spot gridlock in operation and how we can overcome it. The Gridlock Economy is a startling, accessible biography of an idea. Nothing is inevitable about gridlock. It results from choices we make about how to control the resources we value most. We can unlock the grid; this book shows us where to start.

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9780465029167

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Slate Magazine The last decade has produced enough books challenging received wisdom to fill a small--and stupendously popular--library called the Compendium of Counter-intuition, [including Malcolm Gladwell's Blink, James Surowiecki's Wisdom of Crowds, Chris Anderson's Long Tail ]. The newest addition to the collection is The Gridlock Economy, . . . The difference is that Heller, unlike most of the authors of counterintuitive books, is actually a leader in the academic field he is scrutinizing. . . . Heller has managed to pull off one of the most perceptive popular books on property since Das Kapital,

Slate Magazine <br> The last decade has produced enough books challenging received wisdom to fill a small--and stupendously popular--library called the Compendium of Counter-intuition, [including Malcolm Gladwell's Blink, James Surowiecki's Wisdom of Crowds, Chris Anderson's Long Tail ]. The newest addition to the collection is The Gridlock Economy, . . . The difference is that Heller, unlike most of the authors of counterintuitive books, is actually a leader in the academic field he is scrutinizing. . . . Heller has managed to pull off one of the most perceptive popular books on property since Das Kapital,

Author Information

Michael Heller is one of America's leading authorities on ownership. He is the Lawrence A. Wien Professor of Real Estate Law at Columbia Law School and has served as the school's Vice Dean for Intellectual Life. He lives in New York and Los Angeles.

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