Interjurisdictional flows of imperfectly-mobile migrants, investment, and other productive resources result in the costly dynamic adjustment of resource stocks. This paper investigates the comparative dynamics of adjustment to changes in local fiscal policy with two imperfectly mobile productive...

We investigate how potential tax-driven migrations modify the Mirrlees income tax schedule when two countries play Nash. The social objective is the maximin and preferences are quasilinear in income. Individuals differ both in skills and migration costs, which are continuously distributed. We...

In this paper, we consider fiscal competition between jurisdictions. Capital taxes are used to finance a public input and two public goods, one which benefits mobile skilled workers and one which benefits immobile unskilled workers. We derive the jurisdictions' reaction functions for different...

Motivated by recent interest and initiatives taken by several governments and international organizations to come up with indicators of well-being to inform policy makers, we test if subjective well-being measures (SWB) can be employed to study voting behaviour. Controlling for financial and...

The 2007-2010 recession has imposed significant fiscal hardships on state and local governments. The result has been state deficits and the need to increase state taxes, cut spending, and withdraw funds from state rainy day accounts. The primary cause of state budget "gaps" has been the rise in...

Federal deductibility for state and local taxes constitutes one of the largest tax expenditures in the federal budget and provides a significant source of federal support to state and local governments. Deductibility was restricted in the Tax Reform Act of 1986 by removing the deduction for...

We study the fiscal and tax response to intergovernmental grants, exploiting quasi-experimental variation within Germany's fiscal equalization scheme triggered by Census revisions of official population counts. Municipal budgets do not adjust instantly. Instead, spending and investments adapt...

This paper studies a conditional block grant that Dutch municipalities receive for welfare-to-work programs. Many municipalities do not fully use this grant, although programs are beneficial for them. We argue that municipalities incur expenses to use the grant. If these costs are substantial,...

This paper analyzes the impact of voter-approved school bond issues on school district balance sheets, local housing prices, and student achievement. We draw on the unique characteristics of California's system of school finance to obtain clean identification of bonds' causal effects, comparing...

We evaluate the effect of relaxing fiscal rules on policy outcomes applying a quasi-experimental research design. In 1999, the Italian central government introduced fiscal rules aimed at imposing fiscal discipline on municipal governments, and in 2001 the rules were relaxed for municipalities...