The Relationship Between City Taxes, Political Types, And City Growth
The relationship between city taxes, political types, and city growth
Christopher B. Colburn
Associate Professor
Economics Department
Old Dominion University
Norfolk, VA 23503
email: [email protected]
fax: 757-683-3569
and
Suganya Utanskul
Graduate Student
Economics Department
Old Dominion University
Norfolk, VA 23503
Draft copy, not for quotation without author¡¦s permission. Paper to be presented at the Public Choice Society Meetings, Baltimore, MD, March 2004.
Abstract
While there has been much research on the relationship between so called quality of life indicators and city population growth there has been supprisigly little research on the relationship to the tax burden on citizens and the growth of cities across the decimal census. This research uses a cross sectional database of all US cities with a population greater than 100 thousand (a sample of about 200) to estimate the relationship between taxes and population growth. We follow the general methodology of Glaeser and Shapiro (May 2001, Brookings Institution Survey Series) and Glaeser, Scheinman and Shleifer, (Journal of Monetary Economics, 1995). We focus on the role of taxes per capita and the distribution of the tax burden across the income distribution on city growth. Of further interest is the political structure of the cities and population. We break cities into different categories of governance by classifying cities as strong-mayor, council-manager to identify any potential effects of the political structure on economic growth. We hypothesize that in communities that have a less fragmented form of government (consistent with the strong mayor structure) ...
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