The academic path — from advocacy numbers to independent proof
2026-07-18 · wave 6 · ACADEMIC lane. The claims that need proof, each as a falsifiable question with data and method; the credibility standards; a working-paper skeleton; candidate collaborators and venues (outreach itself is Floyd's call — nothing here has been sent to anyone).
Why this lane exists
Groundshare's numbers currently trace to StatCan aggregates joined by our own assumptions, and to an advocacy organization's capitalization rate. That is a starting point, not a foundation. The site promises "a campaign that funds its own proof"; this file is the specification of that proof.
The six questions (falsifiable, with data and method)
Q1 — What is Canada's annual land rent? Claim at risk: ≈$430B/yr (5.5% of $7.86T). Falsification: a rental-value build-up materially below the cap-rate estimate. Method: estimate rental value directly instead of price × rate — residential ground rent from CMHC rent data net of structure returns; commercial from cap-rate surveys (CBRE/Colliers) applied to assessment land shares; agricultural from farmland cash-rent surveys (FCC). Reconcile against both CWC methods and publish the spread. Data: StatCan 36-10-0580-01; CMHC Rental Market Survey; BC Assessment/MPAC rolls; FCC farmland reports.
Q2 — Who holds Canada's land, by household? Claim at risk: "four of five wealth quintiles are net recipients" (our DHEA × economy-wide land-share approximation). Falsification: microdata showing the recipient share materially below ~75%, or large regional pockets of median-income net payers. Method: SFS public-use microdata (real estate by household, region, tenure) × region-specific land shares from assessment rolls (BC Assessment publishes land/improvement splits parcel-by-parcel; MPAC on request); compute the full net distribution under per-resident and per-adult designs; separate cuts for Metro Vancouver/Toronto homeowners and farm households (Census of Agriculture). This is the single highest-value study — it converts our strongest talking point into a defensible number.
Q3 — Does a land charge reach renters? Claim at risk: "renters receive the full dividend and don't eat the charge." Method: the international evidence is strong (the wiki's verified page: https://www.progress.org/wiki/landlords-cannot-pass-lvt-to-tenants/ — including the Danish quasi-experiment); a Canadian test exists in BC's Speculation and Vacancy Tax and Vancouver's Empty Homes Tax (both effectively land-holding charges with published evaluations). Commission a replication on Canadian rent microdata.
Q4 — What happens to land prices on announcement? Claim at risk: the transition path (objections.md §1, §3). Method: asset-pricing model of the capitalization drop under the rent-basis settlement with phase-in vs grandfather-on-sale variants; calibrate against event studies of property-tax reforms (Denmark 2021 housing-tax reform; Pennsylvania split-rate adoptions — wiki-documented). Output: the honest "what happens to my home's price" table the campaign will eventually be asked for under oath.
Q5 — How much of a parcel's value is site vs agglomeration? Purpose: the container question (analysis/container-question.md) — the layered design needs the split between nature-given site value and community-created increments. Method: hedonic land-value gradients across metro/rural transects using assessment-roll land values; compare to the Henry George Theorem's local-public-goods accounting. Genuinely novel Canadian research; publishable regardless of Groundshare.
Q6 — Is the settlement behaviorally neutral? Claim at risk: "nothing distorts" (the no-kink argument). Method: the theory is standard; the empirical check is land-use response to existing land-holding charges (BC SVT evaluations found conversion of vacant units to rental — a positive supply response). Assemble the Canadian evidence into one review.
Credibility standards (non-negotiable, from the wiki's own constitution)
- Pre-register methods for Q2–Q4 before results are known; publish data and code.
- Invite adversarial review from credentialed skeptics before publication — the goal is to survive the Fraser Institute's referee, not to avoid them.
- Advocacy funding disclosed on page one of everything.
- No Groundshare site claim may cite a study the program itself hasn't survived — the site keeps quoting StatCan directly until then.
Working-paper skeleton (commissionable)
"The Equal Land Share: Measurement and Household Incidence of a Predistributive Land-Rent Settlement in Canada" 1. Institutional setting and the settlement design (rent-basis specification) 2. Measurement: Canada's land rent, three methods reconciled (Q1) 3. Incidence: household net positions from microdata (Q2), regional and farm cuts 4. Dynamics: capitalization path and transition instruments (Q4) 5. Neutrality evidence (Q3, Q6) 6. Design parameters left to politics (rate, container, who counts)
Candidate collaborators and venues (public record; outreach = Floyd's decision)
Academics with directly relevant published work: Nicolaus Tideman (Virginia Tech — the dean of formal Georgist economics); Gregor Schwerhoff & Ottmar Edenhofer (IMF/PIK — the 2020–22 land-rent-taxation papers the wiki carries); Thomas Davidoff (UBC Sauder — BC housing-tax design); Kevin Milligan (UBC — Canadian public finance, tax microsimulation); Josh Ryan-Collins (UCL IIPP — land economics). Practitioner/allied: Gary Flomenhoft and Brent Ranalli (already acknowledged in CWC's report); Karl Fitzgerald (Grounded/Prosper Australia — total-rents methodology); Lars Doucet (the ACX Georgism series; land-value assessment writing). Venues: Canadian Tax Journal; Canadian Public Policy; Land Economics; Regional Science & Urban Economics. Policy shops for the incidence study: IRPP; the PBO (has costed basic-income designs on SPSM — the same tool Vivic used for CWC). Simulation: Statistics Canada's SPSM/SPSD microsimulation — the standard, credible vehicle for the Q2 incidence table; CWC has used Vivic Research for SPSM work before.
Cost and sequencing (Floyd-level)
Q2 (incidence microsimulation) first — highest campaign value, standard tooling, commissionable at modest cost through the SPSM ecosystem. Q1 second (measurement paper). Q4-Q5 are academic collaborations rather than commissions. Budget and any outreach: Floyd's decisions; this file only stages them.