A recent policy change caps the annual percentage increase in the assessed value of owner–occupied homes in Cook County, Illinois. Assuming that total revenue would remain constant, the result is relief for some financed by higher taxes on others. We estimate these tax burden shifts using data...

Dick Netzer, a leading public finance economist specializing in state and local issues and urban government, brings together in this comprehensive volume essays by top scholars connecting the property tax with land use. They explore the idea that the property tax is used as a partial substitute...

The City of Chicago and the inner suburbs grew much more slowly than the outer suburbs in recent decades. In the central county of the metropolitan area, commercial and industrial property is "classified," in that it is assessed at a higher ratio of market value than residential property....

In 1991, a property tax limitation measure was imposed in five Illinois counties. Dye and McGuire (1997) studied its short–term impact. With the limit now in effect for over a decade and extended to many more counties, we assess its long–term impact. Because jurisdictions brought under the...

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...

Provides some preliminary systematic evidence on state spending and presents an abundance of descriptive statistics on spending and on the demographic and economic characteristics of the states.

How are major state revenue sources affected by the business cycle? Could changing the mix of taxes mitigate the severity of cyclical budget problems? This paper examines issues in estimating and interpreting the short–run elasticity of taxes with respect to personal income. Recent literature...