Abstract: This paper studies the change from lump-sum tax to property tax, which serves as a combat to inequality by shifting tax incidence from farmers to landowners, on farmers rebel and social conflicts. Using panel data from 575 counties over 262 years in China, we show that this progressive...

It is a well-known result in economics that land value taxation is efficient since it does not distort the supply of the tax base. Considering only efficiency, land value should thus be fully taxed. Using optimal taxation theory with heterogeneous households, we show that it may be optimal not...

The external costs and benefits of large capital-intensive projects often occur on dramatically different spatial scales. When local jurisdictions have control over land use, this spatial mismatch can prevent socially beneficial projects from moving forward or allow socially harmful projects to...

We study the impact of commercial property taxation on vacancy rates and rents in the UK, using a new data-set, and exploiting exogenous variations in property tax rates from reliefs in the UK system: small business rate relief (SBRR), retail relief and empty property relief. We estimate that...

Property taxes are regarded by economists as good taxes for local governments. Yet property tax revenues rarely exceed 3 percent of gross domestic product in any country and usually amount to much less than that. Moreover, jurisdictions that levy property taxes rarely do so in a way that adheres...

GPT-4 performs vastly better than ChatGPT or GPT-3.5 on legal tasks like the bar exam and statutory reasoning. To test GPT-4’s abilities, we ran it on our final exams this semester and graded its output alongside students’ exams. We found that it produced smoothly written answers that failed...

Many states turn in sizable part to local property taxes to finance public education. Political and academic discourse on the extent to which these taxes should serve in this role largely centers on second-order issues, such as the vices and virtues of local control, the availability of...

Shared occupancy arrangements are on the rise in recent years due to affordability constraints in homeownership. This article examines for the first time the property tax compliance behavior of shared dwellings, where homeowners rent out part of their own home to tenants. Using...

This paper studies the role of real estate prices on employment fluctuations. We focus on the relative importance of the housing wealth and firm collateral channel on employment. We use empirical evidence from Italian municipality data and feature a quantitative model with financial frictions to...

Taxes create incentives; yet, the potency of these incentives may depend on the salience and households’ perceptions of the tax itself. We investigate this issue in the context of property taxes, exploring how accurately households perceive their property tax liabilities and what factors...

This paper investigates the extent of property tax capitalization in the context of a progressive property tax pilot in Shanghai. I utilize a difference-in-differences approach by comparing neighborhoods with different tax rates before and after the implementation of the property taxes....

This paper studies the effects of multiple increases of the German Real Estate Transfer Tax (RETT) on spatial mobility decisions both on the aggregate and individual level. We look at RETT hikes introduced by a federal reform in 2006 and exploit the staggered introduction of these hikes and the...

Local taxes and the related taxing power are significant determinants of public authority decentralization. Local taxes should primarily serve as an effective source of self-government revenues. Therefore, it is extremely important to identify and comprehend the motives and behaviors of...

Low tax compliance in low- and middle-income countries around the world limits the ability of governments to offer effective public services. This paper reports the results of a randomly rolled out text message campaign aimed at promoting tax compliance among landowners in Dar es Salaam,...

Das bisherige Verfahren zur Grundsteuererhebung ist 2018 vom Bundesverfassungsgericht als verfassungswidrig erklärt worden. Seither haben fünf Bundesländer gestützt auf die Öffnungsklausel nach Art. 125b Grundgesetz (GG) neue Modelle für eine ausschließlich flächenbasierte...

We develop a model of property taxation and characterize equilibria under three alternative taxation regimes often used in the public finance literature: decentralized taxation, centralized taxation, and "rent seeking" regimes. We show that decentralized taxation results in inefficiently high...

In this paper, I develop an overlapping generations model to analyze the effects of property transfer taxes on homeownership, residential mobility, and welfare in the Netherlands. A revenue-neutral abolition of the 2% transfer tax increases the likelihood that homeowners sell their old house and...

We set up a framework to conduct experiments for estimating spillover effects when units are grouped into mutually exclusive clusters. We improve upon existing methods by allowing for heteroskedasticity, intra-cluster correlation and cluster size heterogeneity, which are typically ignored when...

The present paper investigates whether the decentralization of the rural land property tax (ITR) in Brazil increases the aggregate volume of tax collection from this source. We apply a difference-in-differences strategy where treatment is defined as the switch from a federal administration to...

New Mexico (NM) passed a Greenbelt law (NM Stat § 7-36-20) in 1967 offering tax subsidies to agricultural landowners. The law illuminates a disconnect between land and water policy: it has water policy implications, but it has never been discussed accordingly. We estimate that in 2020, Rio...

Since the 2008 global financial crisis, inequality has been increasing worldwide. In particular, wealth (asset) inequality is getting worse than income inequality. And Korea is no exception. This deepening of inequality is more worrisome in that it leads to inequality of opportunity while...

We develop a model of property taxation and characterize equilibria under three alternative taxation regimes often used in the public finance literature: decentralized taxation, centralized taxation, and “rent seeking” regimes. We show that decentralized taxation results in inefficiently...

A property tax bill depends on both the local property tax rate and the property’s assessedvalue. In this paper, we study the inequality in property taxation in the U.S. single-family homemarket based on a property’s assessed value. Comparing the assessment ratio of propertiesowned by...

Der folgende Beitrag zeichnet die Anfänge der Behandlung des Bodens in der Geschichte der ökonomischen Theorie und in der dazu korrespondierenden politischen Praxis nach. Eine zentrale Rolle spielt die Kritik am Privatbesitz am Boden, aus der dann die Forderung nach einer Besteuerung des...

In many countries, including the US, UK and China, households need to pay additional taxes or fees for their second homes, and some choose to avoid such property taxes through voluntary marriage distortions - e.g., by delaying marriage or by divorce. We develop a novel theoretical framework to...

Recent changes in Canadian legislation have enabled First Nations to adopt property taxation and other forms of taxation on reserves, thereby allowing them to directly finance their local governments through local tax revenues. In this paper, we compile data on the passage of First Nations tax...

Recent changes in Canadian legislation have enabled First Nations to adopt property taxation and other forms of taxation on reserves, thereby allowing them to directly finance their local governments through local tax revenues. In this paper, we compile data on the passage of First Nations tax...