This paper considers two related questions: the impact of spatial variation in crime prevention policies on the migration of criminal activity into nearby locations and the tendency for higher-level government anti-crime policies to be offset by a scaling back of local crime deterrent efforts. A...

This paper studies how size-induced cost differences in the provision of local public goods affect the efficient level of public spending. Since public goods are non-rival in consumption, the per-capita cost of a given level of public good provision is lower in more populous jurisdictions. We...

Governments are widely perceived as competing for capital by choosing parameters in a multi-dimensional policy space. We consider the choice of a business tax rate as well as a productive public input by local governments and estimate a model of strategic interaction in both policy instruments....

In 2001 the state of Minnesota reduced the weights assigned to non-residential property in local property tax bases, which increased residents' price of raising property tax revenue and affords the opportunity to identify the tax price elasticity of local tax revenues and expenditures. Results...

Over the last decades spatial econometric models have represented a common tool for measuring spillover effects across different geographical entities (counties, provinces, regions or nations). The aim of this paper is to investigate the issue of measuring spatial spillovers in the presence of...

We examine whether state government responses to rising Medicaid costs cause reduced low income assistance, overall state budget cuts, or higher taxes. We segment Medicaid recipient groups into families, the disabled, and the elderly. Using GMM estimation, we instrument for endogenous program...

This paper analyses rental contracts in the housing market assu-ming asymmetric information about tenant related `service cost' andimperfect mobility. On the positive side it explains why long standingtenants tend to enjoy lower rents |the so called `tenure discount'. Onthe normative side, it...

In recent decades, large infl ux of immigrants to the U.S. and other developed countries has made cities in these countries more ethnically diverse. In this paper, I aim to understand whether and how ethnic diversity affects communities in these cities. A general equilibrium model is built in...

In this paper, we consider the tenure choice problem under different schemes of legal tenancy protection. We analyze the interaction between the rental and resale housing markets under conditions of bilateral asymmetric information regarding housing quality and the type of residents. Home...

In this paper, I analyze the distribution of rental prices in Berlin using quantile estimates and decomposition methods. These methods have been rarely applied in the field of housing economics but have proven to offer relevant insights into the evolution of price distributions. The shift of...