Tax and grant illusion are envisioned as alternative forms of fiscal illusion in the literature, with differing implications for local government spending. This article shows that tax and grant illusion, previously thought to be separate sources of fiscal illusion, are in fact interdependent. It...

This paper examines the impact of land title systems on property values. The predominant system in the U.S. and a few other countries, the recording system, awards title to claimants over current possessors, whereas the predominant system throughout most of the world, the registration system,...

The antichresis lease in civil law countries requires a lump sum tenant payment which is returned when the lease ends. The custody of the lump sum is the property owner's compensation. We present a theory of leases that emphasizes tenant liquidity risk and owner input moral hazard. Monthly rent...

The traditional law of leases imposed no duty on landlords to mitigate damages in the event of tenant breach, whereas the modern law of leases does. An economic model of leases, in which absentee tenants may or may not intend to breach, shows that the traditional rule promotes tenant investment...

This paper examines the efficiency of eminent domain used to acquire green spaces, situations in which private investment permanently destroys the ecological externality value of land. The real option approach takes into account this irreversibility and changes established conclusions for the...

In the traditional certainty model of voter fiscal illusion, voters misperceive non-stochastic tax prices as being lower than they actually are and therefore allow public sector officials to expand output beyond the perfect information output. This article shows how modeling fiscal illusion as...

How do landlords provide credible signals to tenants that they will maintainthe building when the needed upkeep over the contract period is uncertain at the time that rental decisions are made? In this paper, we develop a model of credible commitment under uncertainty wherein owner tenancy...