An important concern to the efficiency of public finance systems is that voters suffer from various "fiscal illusions" that can politicians can exploit to expand the public sector. This paper contributes evidence of this effect on a public finance system through the revenue elasticity...

This primer provides an overview of the different types of general revenue taxes used in American state and local governments. The intended audience includes policy makers, their advisors, and other citizens interested in the trade-offs involved in setting tax policy. The primer begins with a...

The ability of communities to realize Pareto efficient outcomes may potentially be realized through the practice of fiscal zoning. A common concern to this theory is the prospect that political boundaries may undermine this process. If nuisance entities produce negative externalities that decay...

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 essay demonstrates the full range and potential contributions economists have to offer many academic disciplines. We argue that in the absence of a formula which identifies the length of the hypotenuse on a right-triangle, known today as the Pythagorean theorem, economists would have...