IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fednsr/643.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Did cuts in state aid during the Great Recession lead to changes in local property taxes?

Author

Abstract

During the Great Recession and its aftermath, state and local governments? revenue streams dried up due to diminished taxes. Budget cuts affected many aspects of government; in this paper, we investigate whether (and how) local school districts modified their funding and taxing decisions in response to changes in state aid in the post-recession period. Using detailed district-level panel data from New York and a fixed effects as well as an instrumental variables strategy, we find strong evidence that school districts did indeed respond to state aid cuts in the post-recession period by countering the cuts. In comparison with the pre-recession period, a unit decrease in state aid was associated with a relative increase in local funding per pupil. To further probe the school district role, we explore whether the property tax rate, which districts set each year in response to budgetary needs, also responded to state aid cuts. Indeed, we find that relative to the pre-recession period, the post-recession period was characterized by a strong negative relationship between the property tax rate and state aid per pupil. In other words, after the recession a unit decrease in state aid was associated with a relative increase in the property tax rate in the post-recession period (in comparison with the pre-recession period).

Suggested Citation

  • Rajashri Chakrabarti & Max Livingston & Joydeep Roy, 2013. "Did cuts in state aid during the Great Recession lead to changes in local property taxes?," Staff Reports 643, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
  • Handle: RePEc:fip:fednsr:643
    Note: For a published version of this report, see Rajashri Chakrabarti, Max Livingston, and Joydeep Roy, "Did Cuts in State Aid during the Great Recession Lead to Changes in Local Property Taxes?" Education Finance and Policy 9, no. 4 (2014): 383-416.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff_reports/sr643.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff_reports/sr643.html
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rajashri Chakrabarti & Max Livingston, 2019. "The Long Road to Recovery: New York Schools in the Aftermath of the Great Recession," Economic Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, vol. 25(Dec).
    2. Eric J. Brunner & Stephen L. Ross, 2009. "Is the Median Voter Decisive? Evidence of 'Ends Against the Middle' From Referenda Voting Patterns," Working papers 2009-02, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics, revised May 2010.
    3. Brunner, Eric J. & Ross, Stephen L., 2010. "Is the median voter decisive? Evidence from referenda voting patterns," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(11-12), pages 898-910, December.
    4. Oecd, 2011. "The Impact of the 1999 Education Reform in Poland," OECD Education Working Papers 49, OECD Publishing.
    5. Rubenstein, Ross & Schwartz, Amy Ellen & Stiefel, Leanna & Amor, Hella Bel Hadj, 2007. "From districts to schools: The distribution of resources across schools in big city school districts," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 26(5), pages 532-545, October.
    6. Deborah Fletcher & Lawrence W. Kenny, 2008. "The Influence of the Elderly on School Spending in a Median Voter Framework," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 3(3), pages 283-315, July.
    7. Chakrabarti, Rajashri & Roy, Joydeep, 2016. "Do charter schools crowd out private school enrollment? Evidence from Michigan," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 88-103.
    8. Duncombe, William & Yinger, John, 1998. "School Finance Reform: Aid Formulas and Equity Objectives," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 51(n. 2), pages 239-62, June.
    9. Rajashri Chakrabarti & Max Livingston, 2013. "Still not out of the woods? New Jersey schools during the recession and beyond," Staff Reports 632, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    10. Wang, Wen & Duncombe, William D. & Yinger, John M., 2011. "School District Responses to Matching Aid Programs for Capital Facilities: A Case Study of New York’s Building Aid Program," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 64(3), pages 759-794, September.
    11. Duncombe, William & Yinger, John, 1998. "School Finance Reform: Aid Formulas and Equity Objectives," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 51(2), pages 239-262, June.
    12. Sean Corcoran & William N. Evans, 2010. "Income Inequality, the Median Voter, and the Support for Public Education," NBER Working Papers 16097, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Rockoff, Jonah E., 2010. "Local response to fiscal incentives in heterogeneous communities," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 138-147, September.
    14. Leah Boustan & Fernando Ferreira & Hernan Winkler & Eric M. Zolt, 2013. "The Effect of Rising Income Inequality on Taxation and Public Expenditures: Evidence from U.S. Municipalities and School Districts, 1970–2000," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 95(4), pages 1291-1302, October.
    15. Ross, Stephen & Yinger, John, 1999. "Sorting and voting: A review of the literature on urban public finance," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: P. C. Cheshire & E. S. Mills (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 47, pages 2001-2060, Elsevier.
    16. William Duncombe & John Yinger, 2011. "Making do: state constraints and local responses in California’s education finance system," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 18(3), pages 337-368, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Rajashri Chakrabarti & Nicole Gorton & Joydeep Roy, 2018. "Getting ahead by spending more? Local community response to state merit aid programs," Staff Reports 872, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    2. Lavertu, Stéphane & Clair, Travis St., 2018. "Beyond spending levels: Revenue uncertainty and the performance of local governments," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 59-80.
    3. William N. Evans & Robert M. Schwab & Kathryn L. Wagner, 2019. "The Great Recession and Public Education," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 14(2), pages 298-326, Spring.
    4. Rajashri Chakrabarti & Max Livingston, 2021. "Tough Choices: New Jersey Schools during the Great Recession and Beyond," Economic Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, vol. 27(1), pages 1-34, July.
    5. Rajashri Chakrabarti & Max Livingston, 2019. "The Long Road to Recovery: New York Schools in the Aftermath of the Great Recession," Economic Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, vol. 25(Dec).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Tae Ho Eom & William Duncombe & Phuong Nguyen-Hoang & John Yinger, 2014. "The Unintended Consequences of Property Tax Relief: New York’s STAR Program," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 9(4), pages 446-480, October.
    2. Buckley, Neil & Cuff, Katherine & Hurley, Jeremiah & Mestelman, Stuart & Thomas, Stephanie & Cameron, David, 2015. "Support for public provision of a private good with top-up and opt-out: A controlled laboratory experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 177-196.
    3. Buerger, Christian & Bifulco, Robert, 2019. "The effect of charter schools on districts’ student composition, costs, and efficiency: The case of New York state," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 61-72.
    4. Brunner, Eric J. & Ross, Stephen L. & Simonsen, Becky K., 2015. "Homeowners, renters and the political economy of property taxation," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 38-49.
    5. Luiz Mello & Simone Schotte & Erwin R. Tiongson & Hernan Winkler, 2017. "Greying the Budget: Ageing and Preferences over Public Policies," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 70(1), pages 70-96, February.
    6. William N. Evans & Robert M. Schwab & Kathryn L. Wagner, 2019. "The Great Recession and Public Education," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 14(2), pages 298-326, Spring.
    7. John Yinger, 2009. "Hedonic Markets and Explicit Demands: Bid-Function Envelopes for Public Services, Neighborhood Amenities, and Commuting Costs," Center for Policy Research Working Papers 114, Center for Policy Research, Maxwell School, Syracuse University.
    8. Brunner, Eric J. & Johnson, Erik B., 2016. "Intergenerational conflict and the political economy of higher education funding," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 73-87.
    9. Il Hwan Chung & William Duncombe & John Yinger, 2018. "The Impact of State Aid Reform on Property Values: A Case Study of Maryland's Bridge to Excellence in Public Schools Act," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 13(3), pages 369-394, Summer.
    10. Michael Reed & Patrick O’Reilly & Joshua Hall, 2019. "The Economics and Politics of Carbon Taxes and Regulations: Evidence from Voting on Washington State’s Initiative 732," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(13), pages 1-12, July.
    11. Paul N. Thompson & Joseph Whitley, 2017. "The effect of school district and municipal government financial health information on local tax election outcomes: evidence from fiscal stress labels in Ohio," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 170(3), pages 265-288, March.
    12. Bird, Richard M. & Smart, Michael, 2002. "Intergovernmental Fiscal Transfers: International Lessons for Developing Countries," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 30(6), pages 899-912, June.
    13. Plummer, Elizabeth, 2006. "The effects of state funding on property tax rates and school construction," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 25(5), pages 532-542, October.
    14. Rajashri Chakrabarti & Max Livingston, 2021. "Tough Choices: New Jersey Schools during the Great Recession and Beyond," Economic Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, vol. 27(1), pages 1-34, July.
    15. Bo Zhao, 2023. "Estimating the cost function of connecticut public K–12 education: implications for inequity and inadequacy in school spending," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(4), pages 439-470, July.
    16. Jason Giersch, 2014. "Effects of vacation properties on local education budgets," Cogent Economics & Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 2(1), pages 1-9, December.
    17. Dennis Epple & Richard E. Romano & Miguel Urquiola, 2017. "School Vouchers: A Survey of the Economics Literature," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 55(2), pages 441-492, June.
    18. Duncombe, William & Yinger, John, 2000. "Financing higher student performance standards: the case of New York State," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 19(4), pages 363-386, October.
    19. Borck, Rainald & Wrohlich, Katharina, 2011. "Preferences for childcare policies: Theory and evidence," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 436-454, September.
    20. Duncombe, William & Yinger, John, 2005. "How much more does a disadvantaged student cost?," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 24(5), pages 513-532, October.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Great Recession; school finance;

    JEL classification:

    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • H40 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - General
    • I28 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Government Policy

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fednsr:643. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Gabriella Bucciarelli (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbnyus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.