This paper analyses the role of partisan politics in determining the local tax burden. Property taxes are the most important revenue source which municipalities in the Netherlands can decide upon themselves. Using a new data set on Dutch local property taxes in 1996, it is concluded that...

Welfare is often administered locally, but financed through grants from the central government. This raises the question how the central government can prevent local governments from spending more than necessary. We analyze block grants used in The Netherlands, which depend on exogenous spending...

Fiscal equalization through the allocation of central government grants may have adverse distributional implications if these grants capitalize into house values. We investigate the impact of changes in grants induced by a reform of the Dutch grant system. Since this reform was implemented...

This paper provides a spatial-econometric analysis of the setting of property tax rates by Dutch municipalities. We find evidence of tax mimicking: a ten percent higher property tax rate in neighboring municipalities leads to a 3.5 percent higher tax rate. Mimicking is less pronounced in...