Governments at all levels – federal, state and local – are suffering through ever more severe budget crises. The interests of these different levels of government are often assumed to be in conflict. For instance, it seems reasonable to believe that if the federal government were to get its...

In this paper, I argue that we should replace poorly designed fiscal rules constraining cities and other local governments. For example, instead of requiring a local supermajority to issue debt, localities should only be able to issue relatively safe forms of debt. Abolishing the old rule...

In this paper we develop and resolve a tension amidst several widely held – and sensible – general propositions concerning municipal public finance. On the one hand, local governments are supposed to be scrupulous protectors of public dollars. And yet there is also widespread agreement that...