This paper investigates the impact of tax base mobility on local taxation. We first develop a theoretical model in order to examine the connection between local business property taxation and tax base mobility within a metropolitan area. We find that decreasing capital intensity in the tax base increases the business property tax rates unambiguously. We then test this result using a French reform, which changes the composition of the main local business tax base in 2010. Estimations using Difference-inDifferences show that the reduction in the mobility of the tax base indeed results in higher business property tax rates. Housing tax rates were not affected by the reform.
This paper investigates the efficiency properties of tax competition between submetropolitan jurisdictions when capital, residents and workers are mobile, and both households and firms compete for local land markets. We analyze two decentralized equilibria: (1) with a local tax on residents and two separate local taxes on capital and land inputs, efficiency is achieved and the existence of a marginal fiscal cost due to residents' mobility is revealed; (2) combination of the taxes on capital and land inputs into a single business property tax leads local authorities to charge inefficiently high taxation on capital. We show that capital mobility induces a reduction in the business land taxation and local public inputs are used to offset the distorting effects of the property tax, accounting for the distorting impact of workers' mobility.
This paper investigates the efficiency properties of tax competition between submetropolitan jurisdictions when capital, residents and workers are mobile, and both households and firms compete for local land markets. We analyze two decentralized equilibria: (1) with a local tax on residents and two separate local taxes on capital and land inputs, efficiency is achieved and the existence of a marginal fiscal cost due to residents' mobility is revealed; (2) combination of the taxes on capital and land inputs into a single business property tax leads local authorities to charge inefficiently high taxation on capital. We show that capital mobility induces a reduction in the business land taxation and local public inputs are used to offset the distorting effects of the property tax, accounting for the distorting impact of workers' mobility.
This paper investigates the efficiency properties of tax competition between submetropolitan jurisdictions when capital, residents and workers are mobile, and both households and firms compete for local land markets. We analyze two decentralized equilibria: (1) with a local tax on residents and two separate local taxes on capital and land inputs, efficiency is achieved and the existence of a marginal fiscal cost due to residents' mobility is revealed; (2) combination of the taxes on capital and land inputs into a single business property tax leads local authorities to charge inefficiently high taxation on capital. We show that capital mobility induces a reduction in the business land taxation and local public inputs are used to offset the distorting effects of the property tax, accounting for the distorting impact of workers' mobility.
This paper investigates the efficiency properties of tax competition between submetropolitan jurisdictions when capital, residents and workers are mobile, and both households and firms compete for local land markets. We analyze two decentralized equilibria: (1) with a local tax on residents and two separate local taxes on capital and land inputs, efficiency is achieved and the existence of a marginal fiscal cost due to residents' mobility is revealed; (2) combination of the taxes on capital and land inputs into a single business property tax leads local authorities to charge inefficiently high taxation on capital. We show that capital mobility induces a reduction in the business land taxation and local public inputs are used to offset the distorting effects of the property tax, accounting for the distorting impact of workers' mobility.
The rational allocation of transportation resources involves both the evaluation of the effectiveness of programs designed to improve transportation systems, as well as the formulation of policies representing a balance of competing public interests in those systems. Such interests often include: curbing automobile emissions, expanding highway infrastructure, providing affordable transit services for inner-city residents, and extending commuter rail services to sprawling suburban areas. Designing policies that cost-effectively further each these objectives can attenuate the degree of inherent tradeoffs between them and expand the frontier of achievable policy goals. This dissertation presents a set of essays addressing two such aspects of transportation policy decisions: 1) an evaluation of programs aimed at increasing transportation safety and public health, and 2) an examination of the processes through which competing public interests and agendas are mobilized in the legislative arena by transportation agencies.Chapter One: Graduated driver license programs (GDL), which progressively move teens through three stages of licensing while limiting driving to lower risk conditions, have become an increasingly popular approach in the past decade to address the high rate of teen driving related fatality and injury crashes. Teens are 2 to 6 times as likely as adults, per mile driven, to die in motor vehicle accident, and teen crashes tend to involve more fatalities per crash than for any other age group. Driving at night past 9pm or with young passengers under the age of 20 are significant risk factors for teen crashes.This research uses a panel data set of teen driver involved fatal vehicle crashes among 16 to 17 year old drivers in 742 counties and 137 commuting zones straddling state borders for the years 1996 to 2009. I use a cross-state policy discontinuity design with an ordinary least squares fixed-effects regression model to identify the effects of graduated driver license laws on teen driver error related fatal crashes and associated fatality counts. Additionally, I analyze the impacts on crash characteristics most likely associated with teen driving mistakes, such as presence of young occupants and those occurring at night or involving alcohol. By taking into account local heterogeneities, the policy-discontinuity design provides more credible identification than previous studies. Importantly, the findings indicate much larger GDL effects than in the extant literature. I find that the strongest GDL programs, as rated by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, reduce teen driving related fatal crash rates by 25 to 34 percent and teen driving error related fatal crash rates by 34 to 45 percent. The most effective components of the GDL were early nighttime driving curfews beginning between 6pm to 10pm at night. Passenger restrictions had statistically significant effects only when controlling for the number of licensed teens on the road. For example, the zero to one passenger limit reduced quarterly county-level young teen driver involved fatal crash rates per 100,000 by -6.388 points, relative to a mean rate of 9.5 in state-periods without restrictions. These passenger limits were also highly effective at reducing nighttime crashes among teens, with a reduction in these crash rates of -5.909. Finally, the extended practice period during which newly licensed teens are only allowed to drive under adult supervision were effective in reducing fatal crashes per unit population but only were statistically significant for nighttime crashes that occur after 9pm when controlling for the number of licensed teen drivers. Chapter Two: Government transportation agencies spend considerable amounts of money attempting to influence state and federal legislation, through their own legislative staff, and the efforts of appointed officials and hired lobbyists. Almost none of the literature to date has examined how transportation agencies use their funding and political influence to shape state and federal policy. By looking at what topics agencies choose to lobby on, or not to lobby on, we can better understand how transportation agencies attempt to shape the transportation legislation, and how potential biases in their agendas are mobilized. This analysis includes four agencies in the San Francisco Bay Area Metropolitan region: the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), a regional Metropolitan Transportation Planning Organization, the Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART), the region's commuter rail operator, Alameda-Contra Costa Transit (AC Transit), a local bus agency serving two counties in the East Bay, and the Santa Clara Valley Transit Authority (VTA), a bus and light-rail transit operator in the southern portion of the region. Collectively, these four agencies account for approximately 80 percent of the total spending on lobbying activities by San Francisco Bay Area transportation agencies.This research draws on government reports filed by the agencies, in-house agency legislative agenda records, and interviews with legislative and agency staff. Descriptive statistics and a probit analysis of lobbying data are applied to compare the substance of each agency's lobbying activities to the set of pressing transportation issues the agencies themselves have identified in their planning documents, and the set of transportation issues and needs identified by other key stakeholders including business groups, social justice advocates, and environmentalists. All of the transportation agencies lobbied heavily for finance bills that increase revenue and flexibility in fund use as well as funding redistribution. Equity related bills that address transportation for low-income populations have a significantly higher marginal probability of gaining both MTC and AC Transit support, relative to bills that do not address these issues. Overall, VTA was less likely to support highway bills but did not have biases toward any other particular bill issues. BART overwhelming supported bills promoting smart growth principles and transit oriented development, two strategies believed to increase transit ridership. Both the Santa Clara VTA and BART were strategic in the bills they chose to support, having a greater likelihood of supporting bills authored by transportation committee chairs, perhaps in an effort to both build political capital and to expend resources on bills with a greater chance of passage. MTC was more likely to take a supporting position on social equity related bills; however, the degree of effort in that support is unknown. Notably, MTC was not statistically more likely to support bills specific to expanding public transit, a mode important to low income groups, relative to other bill categories.
This study uses secondary figures, i.e. reports from the Directorate General of Fiscal balance and the Supreme Audit Agency on the implementation of the District Government and the Government of the Majene Regency in 2018 and 2019. The results of this study show that (1) the financial performance of the Regional Government of Majene Regency, as shown in the Regional Budget for 2019 by the analysis of variances, is well established. (2) the 2019 ABPD level of efficiency and efficiency is less efficient in the Majene Regency. It can be said that Majene Regency's level of financial achievement is less efficient. On efficiency, the level of achievement of Majene Regency's regional financial performance is beneficial. (3) the independence story remains shallow in 2018 and 2019.This study uses secondary figures, i.e. reports from the Directorate General of Fiscal balance and the Supreme Audit Agency on the implementation of the District Government and the Government of the Majene Regency in 2018 and 2019. The results of this study show that (1) the financial performance of the Regional Government of Majene Regency, as shown in the Regional Budget for 2019 by the analysis of variances, is well established. (2) the 2019 ABPD level of efficiency and efficiency is less efficient in the Majene Regency. It can be said that Majene Regency's level of financial achievement is less efficient. On efficiency, the level of achievement of Majene Regency's regional financial performance is beneficial. (3) the independence story remains shallow in 2018 and 2019.
International audience ; A long-standing economic literature has delivered rich empirical evidence on the relationship between economic growth and income inequality or urbanisation, since Simon Kuznets' pioneering work on the inverted U curve hypothesis. This paper explores the relationship between urban inequality and urbanisation trends in China from 1978 to 2005, a period that corresponds to the economic opening up of the country to the market economy. One of the main issues, here, is not only to test the correlation between regional income inequality and urbanisation trends, but also to highlight the neighbouring effects of this correlation, mainly through the use of some new spatial analysis tools. This paper delivers two conclusions: firstly, neighbouring effects are stronger when it comes to income inequality than urbanisation; secondly, a distortion in development patterns, between northern and southern coastal China appears: in the first one, growth effects and urbanisation process spread all over the different provinces, while in the second one, Guangdong appears as a regional economic centre. ; Les travaux de S. Kuznets et son hypothèse de courbe en cloche sont à l'origine d'une littérature importante sur la relation entre croissance économique, disparités de revenu et urbanisation. Cet article examine la relation entre disparités régionales de revenu et dynamiques d'urbanisation en Chine durant la période 1978-2005 qui correspond à l'ouverture du pays à une économie de marché. L'objectif recherché est non seulement de tester la corrélation entre ces deux phénomènes, mais également de mettre en évidence les effets de contiguïté qui les caractérisent, à travers l'utilisation d'un certain nombre d'outils d'analyse spatiale exploratoire. Cet article aboutit à deux conclusions : en premier lieu, les effets de contiguïté sont plus importants dans la distribution provinciale des PIB par tête que dans celle des taux d'urbanisation ; en second lieu, le développement des régions côtières n'est pas uniforme et un clivage Nord-Sud apparaît. La côte nord de la Chine est caractérisée par une prolifération régionale des effets de croissance et uneurbanisation diffuse, tandis que dans le Sud, on assiste à un effet de polarisation autour de la province de Guangdong.
International audience ; A long-standing economic literature has delivered rich empirical evidence on the relationship between economic growth and income inequality or urbanisation, since Simon Kuznets' pioneering work on the inverted U curve hypothesis. This paper explores the relationship between urban inequality and urbanisation trends in China from 1978 to 2005, a period that corresponds to the economic opening up of the country to the market economy. One of the main issues, here, is not only to test the correlation between regional income inequality and urbanisation trends, but also to highlight the neighbouring effects of this correlation, mainly through the use of some new spatial analysis tools. This paper delivers two conclusions: firstly, neighbouring effects are stronger when it comes to income inequality than urbanisation; secondly, a distortion in development patterns, between northern and southern coastal China appears: in the first one, growth effects and urbanisation process spread all over the different provinces, while in the second one, Guangdong appears as a regional economic centre. ; Les travaux de S. Kuznets et son hypothèse de courbe en cloche sont à l'origine d'une littérature importante sur la relation entre croissance économique, disparités de revenu et urbanisation. Cet article examine la relation entre disparités régionales de revenu et dynamiques d'urbanisation en Chine durant la période 1978-2005 qui correspond à l'ouverture du pays à une économie de marché. L'objectif recherché est non seulement de tester la corrélation entre ces deux phénomènes, mais également de mettre en évidence les effets de contiguïté qui les caractérisent, à travers l'utilisation d'un certain nombre d'outils d'analyse spatiale exploratoire. Cet article aboutit à deux conclusions : en premier lieu, les effets de contiguïté sont plus importants dans la distribution provinciale des PIB par tête que dans celle des taux d'urbanisation ; en second lieu, le développement des régions côtières n'est pas uniforme et un clivage Nord-Sud apparaît. La côte nord de la Chine est caractérisée par une prolifération régionale des effets de croissance et uneurbanisation diffuse, tandis que dans le Sud, on assiste à un effet de polarisation autour de la province de Guangdong.
The objective of this study is to analyze the causal impact of natural disasters on municipal budget choices, using a original database that allows us to study a sample of several thousand municipalities, 22,972 of which were affected by a natural disaster between 2000 and 2019. This quasi-experimental setting allows us to use panel regression models to estimate municipalities' responses to a shock and with respect to their prevention strategies. We find evidence of increased spending for about 10 years after the disaster, together with increased in revenues and debt. Furthermore, it appears that prevention allows municipalities to effectively mitigate the effect of the disaster in terms of public spending, as municipalities with a natural hazard prevention plan in place did not increase their spending and their debt in the long run.
The objective of this study is to analyze the causal impact of natural disasters on municipal budget choices, using a original database that allows us to study a sample of several thousand municipalities, 22,972 of which were affected by a natural disaster between 2000 and 2019. This quasi-experimental setting allows us to use panel regression models to estimate municipalities' responses to a shock and with respect to their prevention strategies. We find evidence of increased spending for about 10 years after the disaster, together with increased in revenues and debt. Furthermore, it appears that prevention allows municipalities to effectively mitigate the effect of the disaster in terms of public spending, as municipalities with a natural hazard prevention plan in place did not increase their spending and their debt in the long run.
The objective of this study is to analyze the causal impact of natural disasters on municipal budget choices, using a original database that allows us to study a sample of several thousand municipalities, 22,972 of which were affected by a natural disaster between 2000 and 2019. This quasi-experimental setting allows us to use panel regression models to estimate municipalities' responses to a shock and with respect to their prevention strategies. We find evidence of increased spending for about 10 years after the disaster, together with increased in revenues and debt. Furthermore, it appears that prevention allows municipalities to effectively mitigate the effect of the disaster in terms of public spending, as municipalities with a natural hazard prevention plan in place did not increase their spending and their debt in the long run.
The objective of this study is to analyze the causal impact of natural disasters on municipal budget choices, using a original database that allows us to study a sample of several thousand municipalities, 22,972 of which were affected by a natural disaster between 2000 and 2019. This quasi-experimental setting allows us to use panel regression models to estimate municipalities' responses to a shock and with respect to their prevention strategies. We find evidence of increased spending for about 10 years after the disaster, together with increased in revenues and debt. Furthermore, it appears that prevention allows municipalities to effectively mitigate the effect of the disaster in terms of public spending, as municipalities with a natural hazard prevention plan in place did not increase their spending and their debt in the long run.
The objective of this study is to analyze the causal impact of natural disasters on municipal budget choices, using a original database that allows us to study a sample of several thousand municipalities, 22,972 of which were affected by a natural disaster between 2000 and 2019. This quasi-experimental setting allows us to use panel regression models to estimate municipalities' responses to a shock and with respect to their prevention strategies. We find evidence of increased spending for about 10 years after the disaster, together with increased in revenues and debt. Furthermore, it appears that prevention allows municipalities to effectively mitigate the effect of the disaster in terms of public spending, as municipalities with a natural hazard prevention plan in place did not increase their spending and their debt in the long run.
