An unfunded expenditure mandate occurs when a local government must provide a good or service by dictate of a higher level of government that does not supply an accompanying revenue source to fully finance the expenditure. This paper is the first to provide empirical evidence on the influence of...

Politicians often frame sin taxes as sound sources of revenue that will improve consumer behavior. Economists point out that the first principle of tax policy is the value of consumer choice; consumers' purchasing decisions reflect their choices for pursuing their best interests. Taxes that make...

Policymakers frequently employ tax holidays to stimulate spending and transfer state revenues to favored groups. Perhaps the most common form of this policy in the United States are “Back to School” tax holidays where states waive the retail sales tax on selected school supplies in the fall....

While typically not a formulator of policy, property assessors are likely sensitive to political incentives as they are either directly elected to their office or appointed by another elected official. This paper estimates a model that is motivated by the assumption that assessors seek to...

In hedonic analysis, a common approach for eliciting information regarding the welfare significance of some landmark or (dis)amenity is to control for its distance from each observation. Unfortunately, the effects of distances to amenities on housing prices are generally not consistent...

This paper investigates the value individuals place on their relative status in consumption, as opposed to absolute status. Using observed housing sales from three Ohio MSAs in 2000, we employ a spatial hedonic price model to estimate the total marginal willingness-to-pay for both relative and...

A mainstream motivation for decentralized government is to enable public service investments to better align with political preferences that may differ by geographical region. This paper examines how political preferences determine local government provision of hospital services. We find that...