What factors influence state economic growth? This paper uses annual state (and local) data for the years 1947 to 1997 for the 48 contiguous states to estimate the effects of a large number of factors, including taxation and expenditure policies, on state economic growth. A special feature of...

When external effects are important, markets will be inefficient, and economists have considered several broad classes of economic instruments to correct these inefficiencies. However, the standard economic analysis has tended to take the region, and the government, as a given; that is, this...

In the late 1990s, China enacted a rural tax reform known as the "Tax-for-Fee Reform" (TFR), largely driven by a desire to address farmers' complaints about their perception of a heavy and regressive tax burden. This paper examines the impact of the TFR on inequality in rural villages in China....

China enacted a rural tax reform – the "Tax-for-Fee Reform" (TFR) – in the late 1990s. A crucial but unanswered question is whether this reform improved farmers' welfare in rural areas. This paper uses village-level survey data from the Chinese Household Income Project in order to...

Historically, local governments in the United States have relied on the property tax as one of their main sources of own-source revenues. However, the recent collapse of housing prices and the resulting negative impact on local government budgets suggest that it may be opportune to rethink this...