a speech at the Opportunity Finance Network’s Annual Conference, Washington, D.C.

This study asks if local governments which provide a high level of public services per tax dollar attract housing capital. The first portion of the paper examines large shifts in property tax burdens induced by an unusual school finance reform in the state of New Hampshire. The estimates suggest...

Theories of fiscal illusion and political competition have different implications for (i) the causal relationships between taxes and spending, and (ii) government size. These are tested using data from u.s. states from 1950 to 1990. We find evidence that greater political competition generally...

Applying insights from theoretical tax competition models, this study of manufacturing investment and taxes in U.S. states makes four contributions to the empirical tax competition literature. First, while the existing empirical literature has assumed exogenous tax rates, the theoretical model,...

Contrary to simple theoretical predictions, previous empirical research has found that state government public spending is increased far more, often dollar-for-dollar, by federal grant receipts than by equivalent increases in constituent private income. This anomaly has come to be known as the...