This paper uses a Finnish policy intervention to study tax competition among local governments. Changes in the statutory lower limits to the property tax rates are used as a source of exogenous variation to estimate the responses of municipalities to tax rates in their neighboring...

This paper exploits an exogenous reform of the local fiscal equalization scheme in the German State of North Rhine-Westphalia to identify tax mimicking by municipalities in the neighboring state of Lower Saxony. The spatial lag regressions provide no evidence for the existence of strategic...

The tax on immovable property recently started to regain its former significance, but the tax yield still remains low, with slightly more than 1% of GDP and wide variation across countries. Against this background this paper surveys property tax policy in OECD countries and analyses the...

Using a cost-capacity gap framework, this paper is the first study to quantify nonschool fiscal disparities across Connecticut municipalities. In the absence of a Uniform Chart of Accounts for municipalities, the paper uses a newly assembled dataset of multi-year local financial records,...

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 investigates whether and how strongly the share of homeowners in a community affects residential property taxation by local governments. Different from renters, homeowners bear the full property tax burden irrespective of local market conditions, and the tax is more salient to them....

This paper investigates whether and how strongly the share of homeowners in a community affects residential property taxation by local governments. Different from renters, homeowners bear the full property tax burden irrespective of local market conditions, and the tax is more salient to them....

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...

In the short-term, Texas should reform burdensome local property taxes by improving the appraisal process and strengthening the rollback provision. Ultimately, Texas should eliminate property taxes and transition to a reformed sales tax. This paper investigates these issues and more

Municipal budgets represent the basis of the development of an area with a certain number of inhabitants. The quality of life of the population will depend on the size of the budget and the potential for the development of the municipality. The budget system of the Republic of Srpska includes...