In recent years, many developing countries have sought to implement more decentralized governmental systems. Despite efforts toward fiscal federalism, assessment of decentralization activity has been hampered by lack of consistent cross-country measures of effectiveness. Since governments play a...

We use detailed information from Wisconsin municipalities on annexation and tax increment finance (TIF) activity over the period 1990–2003 to determine whether TIF has encouraged annexation. Declaring a recently annexed area a TIF district increases the fiscal benefit of annexation since it...