Previous studies have struggled to demonstrate that higher taxes deter business activity. We revisit this issue by estimating the effect of changes over time in cross-border differences in state tax conditions on the tendency for new establishments to favor one side of a state border over the...

This paper provides an analysis of competition for migrants. Competing in taxes (transfers) renders migration flows less (more) elastic with respect to changes in fiscal policy. Jurisdictions with aligned preferences (i.e. jurisdictions that maximize the interest of the same type of households,...

This paper examines how district size affects the bargaining power of teachers’ unions and the allocation of school resources. Our identification strategy exploits the fact that 33 states mandate collective bargaining while 5 states prohibited it. In states that mandate collective bargaining,...

Housing developments (condos and suburban developments) are not necessarily homogeneous. Developers provide different types of units of various sizes and other characteristics catering to different types of customers. In this paper, we allow joint production and local consumption externalities...

We model residential land use constraints as the outcome of a political economy game between owners of developed and owners of undeveloped land. Land use constraints benefit the former group via increasing property prices but hurt the latter via increasing development costs. In this setting,...

Although the volatility of house prices is often ascribed to demand-side factors, constraints on housing supply have important and little-studied implications for housing dynamics. I illustrate the strong relationship between the volatility of house prices and the regulation of new housing...

This article contributes to the literature on local tax interactions. Its novelty lies in its focus on the interactions of local governments across national borders. We use panel data for the French and German municipalities in the Rhine Valley for the period 2000–2007. The local governments...

Despite interest in the impact of land use regulations on housing construction and housing prices, little is known about the drivers of these policies. Conventional wisdom holds that homeowners have an influence on restrictive local zoning. In this paper, we contend that the party controlling...

Business support policies are widespread in advanced countries, to foster employment and productivity. This paper analyses the role of organized crime in the allocation of public subsidies to businesses. We assemble an innovative data set on the Italian mafia at municipality level and test...

Segregation has been a recurring social concern throughout human history. While much progress has been made to our understanding of the mechanisms driving segregation, work to date has ignored the role played by location-specific amenities. Nonetheless, policy remedies for reducing group...