This paper employs Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports of the 35 largest population American cities from 2005 to 2011 to examine how these cities managed the Great Recession, which was a global macroeconomic shock particularly damaging to the housing sector. While broader surveys of local...

The textbook view of the real property tax is that the tax rate is simply a residual, determined by dividing the revenue to be raised from the property tax by the taxable base of assessed values. As such, tax rate adjustment is automatic and changes in assessed values are neutral with respect to...

The property tax rate, according to the residual view, is simply the ratio of levies over total assessed values, so that growth in property values is irrelevant to the revenue raised. Critics of this view claim instead that fiscal illusion allows policymakers to take advantage of increased...

Local public services are produced through various overlapping jurisdictions. This study examines how the issuance of municipal general obligation bonds is affected by the tax policies of overlapping local governments. The findings challenge the hypothesis that the shared tax base would be...

This paper provides an empirical test of the demand side of Thakor's (1982) theory of bond insurance signaling, namely that the insurance premium charged by municipal bond insurers provides a signal to the market that reduces asymmetric information in the market. We test the theory for a sample...

This study examines the relationship between underwriter placement risk and market transaction prices using a sample of state general obligation bonds. We proxy underwriter placement risk using three variables: “when-issued” trades, underwriter syndicate size, and bond sale method....

There was much uncertainty and concern during the early days of the pandemic about the finances of state and local governments. Lower-rated bond issuers, like the state of Illinois and some other state and local governments, tend to suffer more from interest rate increases during uncertain...

The previous literature on vertical equity in property assessment has focused on parcel level data within a single area, and has produced mixed conclusions on whether the process is progressive or regressive. This paper advances the discussion to identifying what differences between...

Previous research has shown that Tiebout-style fiscal competition among local governments reduces the likelihood of adopting income taxes. This literature has not yet considered the impact of yardstick competition on tax instrument choice. This paper employs spatial econometrics to test for...