About the Book
This is the first collection of readings in the economics of state and local public finance in almost thirty years. The scope of the thirty pieces is broad, including both classic and current articles. The articles fall into three broad categories: public choice and fiscal federalism, revenue sources and the fiscal condition of cities.
The book is an excellent resource for undergraduate economics courses in which state and local public finance comprises a substantial part of the syllabus, and for graduate courses in state and local public finance in public policy programs, planning and public administration. The collection is also valuable to anyone who needs to understand the theory and practice of public finance, including policy analysts, planners, public administrators, and financial market analysts.
Table of Contents:
. Part I: Public Choice and Fiscal Federalism (Fisher's Part 2):.
1.1 Buchanan, James M., 'Public Finance and Public Choice,' National Tax Journal, Vol.28, Dec., 1975, pp.383-94.
1.2 Tiebout, Charles M., 'A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures,' Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 64, Feb., 1956, pp. 416-24.
1.3 Musgrave, Richard A. and Peggy B. Musgrave, 'Principals of Multiunit Finance,' Chap 27 in Public Finance in Theory and Practice, 5th ed. New York: McGraw Hill, 1989, pp. 445-56.
1.4 Buchanan, James M., 'Who Should Distribute What in a Federal System?' Hochman and Peterson, eds., Redistibution Through Public Choice. New York: Columbia University Press, 1974, pp. 22-42.
1.5 Gramlich, Edward M., 'The Economics of Fiscal Federalism and Its Reform,' in Swartz and Peck, eds., The Changing Face of Fiscal Federalism. New York: M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 1990, pp. 152-174.
Part II: Revenues for State and Local Governments (Fisher's Part 3): .
2.1 Smith, Adam, 'Of Taxes,' The Wealth of Nations, Book V, Chap. II, Part II, New York: Modern Library, 1937, pp. 777-79.
2.2 Mieszkowski, Peter M., 'Tax Incidence Theory: The Effects of Taxes of the Distribution of Income,' Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 7, 1969, pp. 1103-1124.
2.3 Zodrow, George R. and Peter Mieszkowski, 'The Incidence of the Property Tax: The Benefit of View Versus the New View,' in Zodrow, ed., Local Provision of Public Services. New York: Academic Press, 1983, pp. 109-29.
2.4 Heilbrun, James, 'Who Bears the Burden of the Property Tax?' C. Lowell Hariss, ed., The Property Tax and Local Finance. New York: The Academy of Political Science, 1983, pp. 57-71.
2.5 Netzer, Dick, 'Property Taxes: Their Past, Present, and Future Place in Government Finance' Urban Finance Under Siege. New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1993, pp. 51-78.
2.6 Poterba, James M., 'Lifetime Incidence and the Distributional Burden of Excise Taxes, American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings,' Vol. 79, May 1989, pp. 325-330.
2.7 Siegfried, John J., and Paul A. Smith, 'The Distributional Effects of a Sales Tax on Services,' National Tax Journal, Vol. 44 (1991), pp. 41-53.
2.8 Mikesell, John L., 'Fiscal Effects of Differences in Sales Tax Coverage: Revenue Elasticity, Stability and Reliance,' in National Tax Association-Tax Institute of America, Proceedings of the Eighty-Fourth Annual Conference, 1991, pp. 50-57.
2.9 McLure, Charles E., Jr., 'The State Corporate Income Tax: Lambs in Wolves' Clothing," in Aaron and Boskin, eds., The Economics of Taxation. Washington: The Brookings Institution, 1980, pp. 327-346.
2.10 Netzer, Dick, 'Differences in Reliance on User Charges by American State and Local Governments,' Public Finance Quarterly, Vol. 20 (1992), pp. 499-511.
2.11 Gramlich, Edward M., 'The Deductibility of State and Local Taxes,' National Tax Journal, Vol. 38 (1985), pp. 447-65.
2.12 Chernick, Howard and Andrew Reschovsky, "Comment on 'The Deductability of State and Local Taxes,' 'National Tax Journal, Vol. 40, 1987, pp. 95-102.
2.13 Courant, Paul N. and Daniel L. Rubinfeld, 'Tax Reform: Implications for the State-Local Public Sector, 'Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 1, Summer, 1987, pp. 87-100.
2.14 Zimmerman, Dennis, The Private Use of Tax-Exempt Bonds. Washington, Urban Institute Press, 1991, (Ch. 5) pp. 83-111.
2.15 Netzer, Dick, 'State Tax Policy and Economic Development: What Should Governors Do When Economists Tell Them Nothing Works?' in New York Affairs, Vol. 9 (1986), pp. 19-36.
Part III: Applications: The Fiscal Conditions of Cities (Fisher's Part 5):.
3.1 Baumol, William, 'Macroeconomics of Unbalanced Growth: The Anatomy of Urban Crisis,' American Economic Review, Vol. LVII, No. 3, 1967.
3.2 Thompson, Wilbur, 'The City as a Distorted Price System,' The Urban Economy, H. Hochman, ed., New York: W. W. Norton, 1976, pp. 74-86.
3.3 Moody's Investors Service, 'City of New York, New York,' Municipal Credit Report, April 8, 1975.
3.4 Gramlich, Edward M., 'The New York City Fiscal Crisis: What Happened and What is to Be Done?', American Economic Review, Vol. 66, No. 2, May, 1976, pp. 415-429.
3.5 Drennan, Matthew P., 'The Present and Future Fiscal Problems of the Two New Yorks: What Happened This Time,' Public Budgeting and Finance, Vol. 14, No. 2, Summer, 1994.
3.6 Ladd, Helen F., 'Big City Finances in The New Era of Fiscal Federalism,' Swartz and Peck, eds, op cit, pp. 127-151.
3.7 Reschovsky, Andrew, 'Are City Fiscal Crises on the Horizon?' Urban Finance Under Siege, op cit, pp. 107-137.
3.8 Reischauer, Robert D., 'The Rise and Fall of National Urban Policy:' M. Kaplan and F. James, eds. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990, pp. 225-34.
3.9 Yinger, John and Helen F. Ladd, 'The Determinants of State Assistance to Central Cities,' National Tax Journal, Vol. 42, No. 4, pp. 413-28.
3.10 Netzer, Dick, 'National Assistance to Urban Areas in the United States,' 'Urban Change in the United States and Western Europe,' A. Summers, P. Cheshire, and L. Senn, eds. Washington: The Urban Institute Press, 1993, pp. 465-91.
About the Author :
Dick Netzer has worked in urban public finance and urban economics as a researcher, teacher, public official, and consultant for more than forty years. He is the author of Economics of the Property Tax, Economics and Urban Problems, and The Subsidized Muse plus more than 200 articles and book chapters. Netzer, previously Dean of the School of Public Administration at New York University, is currently Senior Fellow at the Taub Urban Research Center at New York University. Matthew P. Drennan has published papers on the economics and fiscal condition of New York City, New York State, and other states. He has written about the economics transformation of large cities with the rise of producer services and the decline of manufacturing. He is the author of Modeling Metropolitan Economies for Forecasting and Policy Analysis. Drennan is a Professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning at Cornell University.
Review :
"Readings in State and Local Public Finance by Drennan and Netzer is highly suitable to accompany the Fisher text, at least based on the first edition of the book. The articles serve several purposes:
* They provide exposure to some of the well-known economists in the field, such as Richard and Peggy Musgrave, James Buchanan, Charles Tiebout, and Peter Mieszkowski.
* They illustrate some of the controversy in the field, for example, by comparing Buchanan's views on which level of government should be responsible for redistributing income with the view of the Musgraves.
* They go into more depth than is possible in a text, in specific topic areas, such as the Tax Reform Act of 1986 and urban fiscal problems.
* They push the students hard in some areas and thereby give a sense of the potential for more sophisticated conceptual and empirical analysis, as in the Mieszkowski and Zodrow article and the Ladd and Yinger article." Helen F. Ladd, Professor of Public Policy at Duke University "I think that this is an excellent collection. It is well organized, the introductions by the editors are helpful, the selections are sensible, and it would be an ideal supplement for State and Local Public Finance by Ronald Fisher. The Fisher book is very good, but it does not present the analytical arguments in much depth or with much sense for the broader issues in the literature. The readings in this collection add those dimensions." John Yinger, Professor of Economics, Syracuse University
