Does Special Districts Reduce Local Property Tax across U.S. Metropolitan Areas?
Special districts as a share of all governments have increased from 10.5 percent to 41.8 percent in 1952-2007. Public choice theory indicates that increased number of special districts could reduce tax burden through inter-jurisdictional competition. Institutional reform advocates argue that special districts should be consolidated to promote local government cooperation and economics of scale. Previous studies confirmed that higher number of special districts is associated with higher local expenditure or tax revenue. Those studies combine special districts and school districts together. Yet special districts and school districts might play different roles in contributing the local government property tax revenue. Special districts count 42％ of total local governments in 2007 and collect 4％ property taxes. School districts take 15％ of the total local government count and 43％ property tax. When this study separates special districts from school districts, I find metropolitan areas with more special districts are associated with lower property tax. Municipalities do not affect public sector size, which contradicts previous finding. State tax/expenditure limit policy actually associate larger public sector. Using the number of special districts in 1942 as the instrument, the finding from two stages least square analysis is the same. It implies that special districts might be an efficient governmental form to provide local public services. Further research is needed to interpret the difference results from models with school districts and those excluding school districts.
Huiping Li
Shanghai University of Finance and Economics ＃777 Guoding Rd, Shanghai, China, 200433
国际会议
上海
英文
1-14
2012-05-25（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）