In his article Enriching Malta’s Urban Experience, Ray De Micoli stated that “people who leave their property uncared for offend the public interest”. As anyone familiar with basic economics can quickly realise, this is another example of a ‘negative externality’, loosely speaking, an action by someone which impacts a third party negatively.

Equally obvious is the economic solution to ‘internalise’ such externality: impose an annual tax on property in order to ensure that property owners have an interest to preserve the economic value of their asset or else dispose of their unwanted property.

The cynic may want to argue that some of these abandoned properties are the result of complicated legal issues.

An equally cynical economist might likewise reply that legal hassles can be quickly resolved if people are made to pay for their lack of interest in resolving disputes.

People’s behaviour might be erratic but the language of money seems to be rather convincing!