Do citizens engage in comparative performance evaluation across local governments? And if they do, how can we disentangle this behavior from other forms of strategic interactions among local governments or simple spatial correlation across neighboring jurisdictions? We use spatial econometrics...

This paper assesses the extent to which property taxes are capitalized into property values, exploiting the 2012 Italian tax reform. Municipal-level variation in the level of the property tax rates is instrumented using the exogenous staggered timing of local elections. We show that the...

The paper discusses some issues concerning the local property tax in the light of the Italian experience. The main developments concerning the municipal property tax in Italy, since its introduction and until the most recent events, are briefly described. Then three main issues regarding the...