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...

Policy makers are frequently interested in soliciting unbiased information regarding alternative policies, and expert surveys can be influential. Since ranking policies is an often subjective process, there is always the concern of bias, both intentional and not. Expert bias is difficult to...

This paper provides a tractable theoretical model designed to capture the targeting incentives created by benchmark testing. Under high-stakes benchmark testing, schools and teachers are judged on the fraction of students that meet some given level of educational attainment. The incentive for...

This paper employs Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports of the 35 largest population American cities from 2005 to 2011 to examine how these cities managed the Great Recession, which was a global macroeconomic shock particularly damaging to the housing sector. While broader surveys of local...

Property tax limits are a subject of continual interest among policy makers. Indiana recently implemented tax caps that limit individual property tax burdens to a fixed percentage of market value. The resulting system creates structural deficits that depend on the simultaneous spending choices...

Use taxes are utilized by states to discourage taxpayers from engaging in sales tax avoidance via shopping in lower tax states. Enforcement of this tax has long been difficult, as demonstrated in the case of South Dakota v. Wayfair, Inc. (2018). States have instead relied on different...

The U.S. Supreme Court ruling in South Dakota v. Wayfair, Inc. that states may require sellers without a physical presence to collect use taxes has generated much enthusiasm and dread among observers. We present new data on revenues from the state use tax between 2010 and 2017. We also present a...

One of the immediate political difficulties of federal legislation during the COVID-19 pandemic is in the delivery of aid made available to state and local governments. However, due to differences in administrative and budgeting processes, there is variation in the timing between damages to...

Local governments across the U.S. have had a prominent role in financing the pandemic response during the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak and economic recession. Yet, such governments are increasingly facing budgetary strain as sources of tax revenue evaporate. If the financial burden on such...