The Noisy City

Recently Charlottesville has passed a new noise ordinance making the violations pricey for student organizations. The permanent residents of Charlottesville argued that they were experiencing large negative externalities because of student parties. The primary externality was noise pollution, however Erica Goldfarb also emphasizes an ironically understated externality "Police have more important crimes to worry about on the weekends, they can't always be running around to fraternity or house parties trying to quiet the students down," Goldfarb says.

I believe that Erica Goldfarb has just pinpointed a more severe negative externality that is stemmed from the new noise ordinance. Just as donut shops will attract police, new noise violations will also attract police activity, furthering more police away from the actual crimes and leading them on goose chases through student housing.

If Erica Goldfarb and other neighborhood alliances had employed the Coase Theorem, I think all negative externalities could have been diminished without government intervention. The neighborhood alliances could have dealt with student unions, or the University itself, working out a non-government induced allocative efficient situation, such as less parties on weeknights, or earlier curfews.