We argue in this paper that better rural local governments are needed to improve the lives of billions and that a good property tax is the key to improving rural local governments. Moreover, we suggest that only by giving local governments both the incentive and the ability to levy a property...

The aim of this paper is to review from a fiscal perspective the different models of governing structure found in metropolitan areas around the world. While there is considerable dispute in the literature as to exactly how, and how much, the design of governing institutions matters in affecting...

Recently many commentators have expressed concern about the fiscal health of Toronto and, more generally, the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). Such concern is puzzling because most of the available evidence suggests that municipalities in the GTA are fiscally healthy. Over the past decade, for...

One way to design a local tax system is to determine the desired size and nature of local expenditures and then put in place a tax (and transfer) system providing incentives that lead local decision-makers to choose to finance that expenditure package. In practice, however, there are seldom...

Municipal amalgamation is often seen as one way to ensure that municipalities are large enough to be financially and technically capable of providing the extensive array of services with which they are charged. The idea is presumably that municipalities will be able not only to reap economies of...

This comprehensive Handbook explores case studies of land and property taxation in 25 countries (five in each of five regions – OECD, central and eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America), and focuses on the potential contributions of the property tax to the revenues of urban and...

This comprehensive Handbook explores case studies of land and property taxation in 25 countries (five in each of five regions – OECD, central and eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America), and focuses on the potential contributions of the property tax to the revenues of urban and...

This comprehensive Handbook explores case studies of land and property taxation in 25 countries (five in each of five regions – OECD, central and eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America), and focuses on the potential contributions of the property tax to the revenues of urban and...

This comprehensive Handbook explores case studies of land and property taxation in 25 countries (five in each of five regions – OECD, central and eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America), and focuses on the potential contributions of the property tax to the revenues of urban and rural...