Robert Frost’s poem, Mending Wall, popularized the
proverb “Good fences make good neighbors.” Yet
this phrase fails to capture the richer imagery of
fences and neighbors in Frost’s words. The poem
treats the case of two New England farmers walking
a stone wall between their fields to repair Winter’s
depredations. It begins with the observation
“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.” Of
course, for Germans and for Europeans, the observation
that even the greatest wall is fragile is not
news. My aim is to use the framework of economics
to illuminate the forces that tear walls down and to
consider these in the United States context, with the
hope that there are useful insights beyond the US
context.