In recent years, numerous U.S. cities have enacted taxes on sweetened beverages, but there is relatively little evidence about the effects of these taxes on purchases and consumption. In this paper, we examine the effects of the beverage tax of 1.5 cents per ounce that was implemented in...

Governments and private landowners have collected royalties on mineral resources for centuries. When comprehensive measures to account for the environmental externalities of mineral extraction are politically or practically unavailable, federal and state governments might consider adjusting...

The state of Connecticut runs six defined benefit pension funds for its employees, which in the aggregate are among the most poorly funded retirement plans in the country and place increasing fiscal burdens on the state budget. We use a computer model to simulate the finances of these plans,...

An attempt is made in this paper to examine the impacts of government spending on human capital on human development indicators like healthcare outcomes, education achievements and increase in national income in Namibia using time series data from 1980 to 2015. The analysis reveals a significant...

This study examines the long-term link between in-utero cigarette taxes and adult prenatal smoking. We use U.S. birth certificate records to demonstrate that exposure to higher in-utero cigarette taxes (over 1965-2001) reduces later-life adult pre-pregnancy and prenatal smoking. We also show...

The spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has emphasized the role of governments in a public health emergency not only in developing countries but in the developed world as well. This paper has a two-fold objective. First, we investigate the efficiency of COVID management using state-level data from...

I compare the impact of local tax revenue and royalties from the extraction of natural resources on governance in Colombian municipalities, leveraging plausibly exogenous variation from cadastral updates and fluctuations in the world price of oil. Higher tax revenue has a larger effect on local...

This paper explores an under-studied channel for school finance inequality: property assessment. School districts have historically relied on local tax revenues (typically property taxes) to fund schools, which can generate disparities in funding across districts. Many states passed school...

During the COVID-19 pandemic, states grappled with the question of whether and to what extent to impose restrictions to slow the spread of COVID-19. We investigate whether state reliance on sales tax revenue, relative to other tax revenue sources, is associated with shorter durations of COVID-19...

The recession of 2007–2009 knocked the wind out of state government budgets, but revenues and spending have grown steadily in recent years. As revenues have risen, some governors have pursued reforms to reduce tax burdens on families and make their states more competitive. Other governors have...