America’s local governments spend about one-eighth of our national income, one-fourth of total government spending, and employ over 14 million people. This paper surveys the large and growing economics literature on local governments and their finances. A primary difference between local and...

Local governments are facing large losses in revenues and increased expenditures because of the COVID-19 crisis. We document a causal relationship between fiscal pressures induced by COVID-19 and the layoffs of state and local government workers. States that depend more on sales tax as a source...

This paper explores the fiscal effects of aid in Ethiopia, using national data from 1960 to 2009, which is a longer series than most studies in this literature. This data includes the measure of aid that is flowing through the budget as measured by the recipient. We use the Cointegrated VAR...