New Zealand is unusual in that nearly 60% of local services are funded from property taxes. These are a mixture of land taxes, capital value taxes, annual rental value taxes and uniform general charges. We explore the efficiency and equity of this system at both national and local levels. We...

The Whitman Administration’s 30 percent reduction in New Jersey’s personal income taxes from 1994-96 is prominently cited as a role model for state fiscal policy. We investigate whether the growth benefits attributed to the Whitman tax cuts are warranted. Panel data methods are applied to...

In models of economic geography, plant-level scale economies and trade costs create incentives for spatial agglomeration of production into a manufacturing core and agricultural periphery, creating regional income differentials. We examine tax competition between national governments to...

We study whether "coercive" public provision or voluntary private provision of public goods can survive when individuals who "vote with their feet" can choose between communities that differ in the way that public goods are provided. We obtain the following findings: (i) an equilibrium always...

This paper investigates differences in the rate of growth of population across the large city-regions of the EU12 between 1980 and 2000. The US model which assumes perfect factor mobility does not seem well adapted to European conditions. There is evidence strongly suggesting that equilibrating...

This paper considers a dynamic model of Tiebout-like migration between communities that utilize distinct allocation procedures for public goods. At issue is whether voluntary or compulsory procedures are more likely to prevail over time. We model infinitely lived individuals who make repeated,...

There are concerns that regional inequality in India has increased after the economic reforms of 1991. This concern is supported by various statistical analyses. In this paper, we show that the conclusions are sensitive to what measures of attainment are used. In particular, human development...

Fiscal uncertainty has led many states to utilize a variety of economic and revenue forecasting methods. To improve accuracy, many budget analysts use alternative projections generated by different techniques. Composite modeling goes a step further and allows users to systematically combine two...

The widespread ennoblement of the Spanish bourgeoisie in the sixteenth century has been traditionally considered one of the main causes of Iberian decline. I document and quantify the surge in ennoblement through a new time series of nobility cases preserved in the Archive of the Royal Chancery...

Using a panel data set for Dutch municipalities we estimate effects for weight-based, bag-based, frequency-based and volume-based pricing of household waste collection. Unit-based pricing shows to be effective in reducing solid and compostable and increasing recyclable waste. Pricing has no...