This paper analyzes how minimum local property tax rates affect local tax policy choice. In Finland, central government has raised the limits on property tax rates several times in the past 30 years. I construct a measure of forced tax rate increases caused by these reforms and examine how...

This paper examines the effect of property taxation on housing construction. In 2001, Finnish municipalities were allowed to levy an extra property tax on undeveloped land zoned for housing. Municipalities that adopted the new tax instrument have a three-rate tax property tax system with...

In this study, we examine the effect of church tax on the church membership decision using Finnish data. We present both descriptive statistics from an opting-out website and econometric evidence exploiting the panel structure of a large individual-level data set. Our descriptive analysis shows...

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...

We explore the impact of central government grants on local house prices in England using a panel data set of local authorities (LAs) from 2001 to 2008. Electoral targeting of grants to LAs by the incumbent national government provides an exogenous source of variation in grants that we exploit...