Illegal immigration is a major policy challenge in Europe, in particular in countries on the external border of the EU such as Italy or Spain. However, there are likely to be important effects on the rest of the EU, too, depending on the policies against illegal immigration in border countries....

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 examines the effect of agglomeration economies on the sensitivity of employment location to tax differentials. In the presence of agglomeration economies, when a firm moves into a community attracted by a tax reduction, other firms may decide to follow, implying that agglomeration...

This paper studies the impact of state funded higher education scholarship plans on interstate migration patterns of college educated individuals between 1980 and 2009. We find that these plans increase the in-state enrollment rate, but have no positive impact on the subsequent number of...

We analyze land use regulations in cities with traffic congestion and production spillovers. Land is allocated between residential and industrial uses inside the city boundary or between urban and rural uses at the city boundary. The production is dispersed over the city, and people and firms...

This study investigates the relationship between state-level attributes and employment of workers in the US by foreign owned firms (FDI-related employment, hereafter). In particular, we investigate the role of state-level business incentives in influencing the employment outcomes of...

Historically, local governments in the United States have relied on the property tax as their main source of own-source revenues. With the recent collapse of housing prices and the resulting increase in foreclosures that followed the “Great Recession”, many observers have speculated that the...

One of the alleged virtues of the property tax is that it produces stable revenues regardless of price movements in real estate markets. One explanation for this is that local governments adjust their millage rates to offset changes in their property tax base. Little evidence, however, exists on...