Anthony Downs

Anthony Downs (November 21, 1930 – October 2, 2021) was an American economist specializing in public policy and public administration. His research focuses included political choice theory, rent control, affordable housing, and transportation economics. He wrote a number of books including, An Economic Theory of Democracy (1957) and Inside Bureaucracy (1967), which have been major influences on the public choice school of political economy. In Downs's Law of Peak-Hour Traffic Congestion (1962), he predicted that expanding expressways could not reduce traffic congestion, since demand would increase as well, and that reducing speeds increases capacity.

He served as a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., member of faculty at the University of Chicago and a visiting fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California in San Francisco. Downs was also an elected fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.