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...

What is the effect of e-commerce on the geographic distribution of local sales tax revenues? Using COVID-19 as a shock to online shopping and hand-collected high-frequency data on local sales tax revenue, we document an important shift in the state and local public finance landscape. As...

Requiring firms, rather than individuals, to remit sales taxes improves tax compliance. In the U.S., this shift toward firm-based remittance rules for remote purchases occurred gradually after South Dakota v. Wayfair. Using comprehensive and high-frequency local sales tax revenue data, we show...

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...

Exploiting reforms requiring online vendors to remit taxes on a destination basis and using the unprecedented shock to online shopping due to COVID-19, we examine the effect of e-commerce on the distribution of tax revenues across urban and rural jurisdictions. We assemble a high-frequency and...

This paper estimates a stochastic production frontier, to investigate whether municipalities covered by oil royalties in the last decade have reduced their tax effort in Brazil. The issue is relevant to the prospect of a substantial increase in these revenues and the new rules for distribution...

We describe the evolution of Oregon’s one-off property tax system, which emphasizes stable growth in tax payments and inter-jurisdictional uniformity in tax rates. We contrast its outcomes in two sections of Portland, which had the best, most fairly administered property tax system in the...

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...

Local governments often enjoy "home rule," in the sense that they are able to initiate legislation concerning municipal affairs without obtaining the prior consent of the state legislature. At the same time, these localities often are able to exercise limited discretion over revenue raising. In...