As local governments seek to address growing financial challenges, many will consider a variety of cost-cutting measures, including joint service provision with other localities. This policy brief examines the potential savings from large-scale service-sharing arrangements, using the specific...

We develop a flexible, citations- and reference-intensity-adjusted ranking technique that allows a specified set of journals to be evaluated using a range of alternative criteria. We also distinguish between the influence of a journal and that of a journal article, with the latter concept...

Current methods of failed bank resolution are unnecessarily expensive for taxpayers and impose substantial costs on borrowers at failed banks. This situation is due to distorted incentives imbedded in the standard contract between the government and acquirers of failed banks, which result in...

This working paper was written for the New England Public Policy Center’s third annual conference: “The Dynamic between Municipal Revenue Sources and the State-Local Relationship in New England”. It relies on data from the U.S. Census to examine the dynamic between municipal revenues and...

Venture capital has been one of the major drivers of the U.S. economy. Using the State of the Inner City Economies database of the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City, we found that secondary cities – which we have defined as cities outside the 40 largest U.S. metro areas – have received...

This module shows: The changing patterns in foreclosure rates and subprime mortgage originations across Massachusetts cities and towns over time; How movements in these rates compare with movements in house prices for any user-selected city or town; The association between foreclosure rates and...

This paper investigates the performance of real estate auctions in selling real estate relative to the more traditional method of negotiated sale. Estimates from auctions in Los Angeles during the boom of the mid 1980s show a discount that ranges between 0 and 9 percent, while similar sales in...

We show a statistically significant and economically relevant effect of open capital accounts on financial deepness and economic growth in a cross-section of countries over the period 1986 to 1995. Countries with open capital accounts over some or all of this period had a significantly greater...

This paper examines the impact of a specific local tax limit, Proposition 2½ in Massachusetts, on the fiscal behavior of cities and towns in Massachusetts and the capitalization of that behavior into property values. Proposition 2½ places a cap on the effective property tax rate at 2.5 percent...