This paper formalizes and empirically tests the hypothesis that the deficient maintenance of public infrastructure is caused by fiscal distress. The authors utilize a production-decision framework in which public officials combine maintenance and new capital to produce a desired level of capital...

In this broad and illuminating work, experts on public finance discuss innovations in state and local tax policy that have been implemented or considered over the course of the last three decades. The authors provide original work that analyzes whether state and local governments have...

In this paper we use monthly gasoline price data for all fifty U.S. states over the period 1984 to 1999 to examine the incidence of state gasoline excise taxes. Standard economic theory predicts full shifting of the excise tax to consumers when the supply of gasoline is perfectly elastic, and...

In the late 1990s, China enacted a rural tax reform known as the "Tax-for-Fee Reform" (TFR), largely driven by a desire to address farmers' complaints about their perception of a heavy and regressive tax burden. This paper examines the impact of the TFR on inequality in rural villages in China....