Elinor and Vincent Ostrom have dedicated their professional careers to understanding polycentric forms of public administration. From a public finance perspective, the Ostrom-polycentric system represents a number of challenges. America's answer to the public financing of polycentric public...

Use taxes are utilized by states to discourage taxpayers from engaging in sales tax avoidance via shopping in lower tax states. Enforcement of this tax has long been difficult, as demonstrated in the case of South Dakota v. Wayfair, Inc. (2018). States have instead relied on different...

Policy makers are frequently interested in soliciting unbiased information regarding alternative policies, and expert surveys can be influential. Since ranking policies is an often subjective process, there is always the concern of bias, both intentional and not. Expert bias is difficult to...

The SIC sectors identified for direct, indirect, and in kind rent seeking activity have been identified and verified empirically in Sobel & Garrett (2002) by comparing capital counties to non-capital counties. We convert these industries from SIC to NAICS codes and provide measures of direct,...

Two of the most recognized and discussed “market” failures in public policy exist when spillover effects on third parties exist to market transactions, and when individuals can enjoy the benefit of a good or service without paying for its provision. In this essay I illustrate these forms of...

Traditional economic and policy analysis theory has emphasized the implementation of private or public property rights regimes in order to sustainably manage natural resources. More recent work has challenged this approach by examining the strengths and weakness of common property governance of...

Using recently released data on public mental health expenditures by U.S. states from 1997 to 2005, this study is the first to examine the effect of state mental health spending on suicide rates. We find the effect of per capita public mental health expenditures on the suicide rate to be...

The conventional view of fiscal zoning is that communities only make land use accommodations to Nuisance Entities who generate enough fiscal benefits to compensate for their other undesirable traits. By representing a disproportionate burden of the property tax base, this finance-for-location...

This paper employs Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports of the 35 largest population American cities from 2005 to 2011 to examine how these cities managed the Great Recession, which was a global macroeconomic shock particularly damaging to the housing sector. While broader surveys of local...

Property tax limits are a subject of continual interest among policy makers. Indiana recently implemented tax caps that limit individual property tax burdens to a fixed percentage of market value. The resulting system creates structural deficits that depend on the simultaneous spending choices...