Economies of Scale in Property Tax Assessment

David Sjoquist and Mary Beth Walker

National Tax Journal, 1999, vol. 52, issue 2, 207-20

Abstract: We estimate the costs of performing property tax as-sessments using a translog cost function over a sample of 138 county-level assessment offices in Georgia. We find that there are substantial economies of scale. For example, computed at the sample means, a ten percent increase in the volume of assessments results in an increase of approximately three percent in total costs. The model considers both the number of parcels and the value of parcels as alternate measures of volume; both measures give similar results. We also estimate a two-product cost function, with residential and nonresidential property assessment as the different outputs. These results show no evidence of economies of scope, and calculated economies of scale are very close to the single output results.

Date: 1999
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1086/NTJ41789390 (application/pdf)
https://doi.org/10.1086/NTJ41789390 (text/html)
Access is restricted to subscribers and members of the National Tax Association.

Related works:
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:ntj:journl:v:52:y:1999:i:2:p:207-20

Access Statistics for this article

National Tax Journal is currently edited by Stacy Dickert-Conlin and William M. Gentry

More articles in National Tax Journal from National Tax Association, National Tax Journal Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by The University of Chicago Press ().