Thompson, Paul N.

The effect of school district and minicipal government financial health information on local tax election outcomes evidence from fiscal stress lebels in Ohio / Paul N. Thompson, Joseph Whitley .-- , 2017


Disponible también en línea a través de la Biblioteca del Instituto de Estudios Fiscales. Resumen. Conclusión. Bibliografía. Apéndice.

A key informational asymmetry in local public finance is the lack of information available to local residents regarding the financial status of the school districts and local governments in which they reside. Given that votersin many states must approve property and income tax increases for these local entities, the lack of full information on the financial status of these local entities may lead to sub-optimal voting decisions. State financial intervention systems have begun to make financial problems more salient to residents, potentially alleviating these informational asymmetries. This paper examines the effect ofthe Ohio fiscal stress labeling program on voting outcomes and the tax-setting behavior of local officials for school district and municipal government tax referendums. We use a difference-in-differences approach to examine data from over 3000 school district and 2300 municipality property tax elections from 2004 to 2012. While we find minimal evidence that the yes vote share changed for school district referendums following fiscal stress label receipt, we find very large increases (15 to 23 percentage points) in the likelihood of referendum passage forschool districts following label receipt. We do not find much evidence of changes in the likelihood of passage or the yes vote share following label receipt for municipalities, but we do find that these voting outcomes rise following labelremoval. We also find that local officials do not appreciably change their tax-setting behavior in response to these labels, as the size and likelihood of property tax proposal are largely unchanged following label receipt or removal.


PRESION FISCAL
IMPUESTOS LOCALES
CENTROS DOCENTES
ELECCIONES
VOTO
ESTADOS UNIDOS


Whitley, Joseph

Public Choicev. 170, n. 3-4, March 2017, p. 265-288

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