When investigating the effects of federal grants on the behavior of lower-level governments, it is hard to defend the handling of grants as an exogenous factor affecting local governments; federal governments often set grants based on characteristics and performance of local governments. In this...

Distribution of tax revenue among municipalities - which are constitutionally official federal entities in Brazil - is highly unequal vis-à-vis their demands of public services. Given conurbation processes and intense urbanization in the second half of the past century, some municipalities...

While the literature on how intergovernmental grants affect the budget of receiving jurisdictions is numerous, the very few studies that explicitly deal with likely endogeneity problems focus on grants targeted towards specific sectors or to specific type of recipients. The results from these...

While the literature on how intergovernmental grants affect the budget of receiving jurisdictions is numerous, the very few studies that explicitly deal with likely endogeneity problems focus on grants targeted towards specific sectors or to specific type of recipients. The results from these...

Distribution of tax revenue among municipalities - which are constitutionally official federal entities in Brazil - is highly unequal vis-à-vis their demands of public services. Given conurbation processes and intense urbanization in the second half of the past century, some municipalities...

We use a two period model to analyze the contractual relationship between entrepreneurs and venture capitalists in an open regional economy. First, we describe the first best investment contract, we study the second best investment contract in the presence of private information, and then we...

We use results from the December 2016 CalSpeaks Survey to assess citizen understanding about how the property tax functions and the distributional impact of the tax. Key issues include (1) do California citizens today understand the provisions of Proposition 13 and the implications for how the...

Local taxes and the related taxing power are significant determinants of public authority decentralization. Local taxes should primarily serve as an effective source of self-government revenues. Therefore, it is extremely important to identify and comprehend the motives and behaviors of...

State borders create a discontinuous tax treatment of retail sales. In a Nash game, local tax rates will be higher on the low-state-tax side of a border. Local taxes will decrease from the nearest high-tax border and increase from the low-tax border. Using driving time from state borders and all...

Cities across Canada should consider new and innovative approaches to financing their share of infrastructure spending, according to a new C.D. Howe Institute report. In “Tapping the Land: Tax Increment Financing of Infrastructure,” author Adam Found shows how cities could use tax increment...