Spending within limits: Evidence from municipal fiscal restraints

Leah Brooks, Yosh Halberstam and Justin Phillips

No 2012-52, Finance and Economics Discussion Series from Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.)

Abstract: This paper studies the role of a constitutional rule new to the literature: a limit placed by a city on its own ability to tax or spend. We find that such a limit exists in at least 1 in 8 cities, and that limits are not adopted in response to high levels of or variability in taxation. After limit adoption, municipal revenue growth declines by 16 to 22 percent. Our results suggest that institutional constraints may be effective when representative government falls short of the median voter ideal.

Date: 2012
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo, nep-pbe and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/feds/2012/201252/201252abs.html (text/html)
http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/feds/2012/201252/201252pap.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Spending Within Limits: Evidence From Municipal Fiscal Restraints (2016)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:fedgfe:2012-52

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Finance and Economics Discussion Series from Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ryan Wolfslayer ; Keisha Fournillier ().