Various education finance and taxation reforms in the past several decades have substantially changed China's system for funding basic education, but the present system is still characterized by insufficient funding and large inequalities across localities. Using data of more than 2000...

Since the 1990s, China has pushed forward the province-managing-county (PMC) reform in some provinces as an experiment of fiscal decentralization. The reform provides a good opportunity to examine the impact of fiscal decentralization on fiscal behaviors of local governments in China. Using a...

Since the 1970s, local governments in Georgia have been authorized, upon voter approval, to levy a one-percent general-purpose Local Option Sales Tax (LOST), which is earmarked for property tax relief. Using data during 1975-2002, this study examines the adoption of the LOST in Georgia counties...

This paper employs regression discontinuity design to estimate the impact of heating modes on residents’ energy consumption, energy efficiency gap, and energy usage behavior, using the Chinese Residential Energy Consumption Survey (CRECS). We find that district heating increases total energy...

We document a substantial gender gap in China's gender-blind university admissions system: equally qualified female students are less likely to apply and be admitted to elite universities than male students. Leveraging linked administrative and survey data on students' application choices,...

As vehicles become more fuel-efficient and overall levels of travel stagnate in response to increases in fuel prices, conventional sources of revenue for transportation finance such as taxes on motor fuels have been put under increasing pressure. One potential replacement as a source of revenue...