IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ris/albaec/2018_004.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

“Causes of Sprawl”: A (Further) Public Finance Extension

Author

Listed:
  • McMillan, Melville L.

    (University of Alberta, Department of Economics)

Abstract

There are good reasons to expect that attributes of local public finance may impact urban land use and, specifically, sprawl. A detailed and novel investigation of U.S. metropolitan areas (Burchfield et al., 2006) provides substantial insights into the causes of sprawl, but it overlooks the main characteristics of local public finance (taxes and user charges). Using a subset of the data matched to city public finance data, a parallel analysis yielded evidence that greater reliance on local property taxes reduces sprawl and suggested that user charges (primarily for water, sewerage and solid waste services) could have a similar effect (McMillan, 2016). Expansion of the local public finance data set allowed extension of the data analyzed from 83 to 109 observations. The subsequent analysis was expected to enable a refinement of the estimates made in the 2016 paper. However, analysis of the extended data set as reported in this paper indicates more nuanced results. In particular, the impacts of property taxes on sprawl depend upon the population of the metropolitan area.

Suggested Citation

  • McMillan, Melville L., 2018. "“Causes of Sprawl”: A (Further) Public Finance Extension," Working Papers 2018-4, University of Alberta, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:ris:albaec:2018_004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://sites.ualberta.ca/~econwps/2018/wp2018-04.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Melville L. McMillan, 2016. "Municipal Revenue Generation and Sprawl: Implications for the Calgary and Edmonton Metropolitan Regions Derived from an Extension of "Causes of Sprawl"," SPP Technical Papers, The School of Public Policy, University of Calgary, vol. 9(40), December.
    2. Philip Bazel & Jack Mintz, 2014. "The Free Ride is Over: Why Cities, and Citizens, Must Start Paying for Much-Needed Infrastructure," SPP Research Papers, The School of Public Policy, University of Calgary, vol. 7(14), May.
    3. Albert Saiz, 2010. "The Geographic Determinants of Housing Supply," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(3), pages 1253-1296.
    4. Melville McMillan & Bev Dahlby, 2014. "Do Local Governments Need Alternative Sources of Tax Revenue? An Assessment of the Options for Alberta Cities," SPP Research Papers, The School of Public Policy, University of Calgary, vol. 7(26), September.
    5. Marcy Burchfield & Henry G. Overman & Diego Puga & Matthew A. Turner, 2006. "Causes of Sprawl: A Portrait from Space," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 121(2), pages 587-633.
    6. Walid Oueslati & Seraphim Alvanides & Guy Garrod, 2015. "Determinants of urban sprawl in European cities," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 52(9), pages 1594-1614, July.
    7. Hansjörg Blöchliger & Christian Hilber & Olivier Schöni & Maximilian von Ehrlich, 2017. "Local taxation, land use regulation, and land use: A survey of the evidence," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 1375, OECD Publishing.
    8. Helen F. Ladd, 1998. "local government tax and land use policies in the united states," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 1332.
    9. Jan K. Brueckner, 2003. "Strategic Interaction Among Governments: An Overview of Empirical Studies," International Regional Science Review, , vol. 26(2), pages 175-188, April.
    10. Duranton, Gilles & Puga, Diego, 2015. "Urban Land Use," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: Gilles Duranton & J. V. Henderson & William C. Strange (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 467-560, Elsevier.
    11. Banzhaf, H. Spencer & Lavery, Nathan, 2010. "Can the land tax help curb urban sprawl? Evidence from growth patterns in Pennsylvania," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(2), pages 169-179, March.
    12. Amy Ellen Schwartz (ed.), 2004. "City Taxes, City Spending," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 3079.
    13. Miguel Gómez-Antonio & Miriam Hortas-Rico & Linna Li, 2016. "The Causes of Urban Sprawl in Spanish Urban Areas: A Spatial Approach," Spatial Economic Analysis, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(2), pages 219-247, June.
    14. Gilles Duranton & J. V. Henderson & William C. Strange (ed.), 2015. "Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 5, number 5.
    15. Wassmer, Robert W., 2016. "Further empirical evidence on residential property taxation and the occurrence of urban sprawl," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 73-85.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Gilles Duranton & Diego Puga, 2023. "Urban Growth and Its Aggregate Implications," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 91(6), pages 2219-2259, November.
    2. Richard Bluhm & Axel Dreher & Andreas Fuchs & Bradley C. Parks & Austin M. Strange & Michael J. Tierney, 2020. "Connective Financing - Chinese Infrastructure Projects and the Diffusion of Economic Activity in Developing Countries," CESifo Working Paper Series 8344, CESifo.
    3. Joachim Zietz & Heiko Kirchhain, 2023. "Determinants of Urban land development: A panel study for U.S. metropolitan areas," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 50(6), pages 1486-1501, July.
    4. Miquel-Àngel Garcia-López, 2018. "All roads lead to Rome ... and to sprawl? Evidence from European cities," Working Papers 2018/02, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    5. Jedwab, Remi & Loungani, Prakash & Yezer, Anthony, 2021. "Comparing cities in developed and developing countries: Population, land area, building height and crowding," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    6. Galdo, Virgilio & Li, Yue & Rama, Martin, 2021. "Identifying urban areas by combining human judgment and machine learning: An application to India," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    7. Baragwanath, Kathryn & Goldblatt, Ran & Hanson, Gordon & Khandelwal, Amit K., 2021. "Detecting urban markets with satellite imagery: An application to India," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    8. Francis Ostermeijer & Hans R A Koster & Jos van Ommeren & Victor Mayland Nielsen, 2022. "Automobiles and urban density [Urban spatial structure]," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 22(5), pages 1073-1095.
    9. Achim Ahrens & Seán Lyons, 2019. "Changes in Land Cover and Urban Sprawl in Ireland From a Comparative Perspective Over 1990–2012," Land, MDPI, vol. 8(1), pages 1-14, January.
    10. Krebs, Oliver & Pflüger, Michael, 2023. "On the road (again): Commuting and local employment elasticities in Germany," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(C).
    11. Sanghoon Lee & Jeffrey Lin, 2018. "Natural Amenities, Neighbourhood Dynamics, and Persistence in the Spatial Distribution of Income," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 85(1), pages 663-694.
    12. Arribas-Bel, Daniel & Garcia-López, M.-À. & Viladecans-Marsal, Elisabet, 2021. "Building(s and) cities: Delineating urban areas with a machine learning algorithm," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    13. Tan, Ronghui & Liu, Pengcheng & Zhou, Kehao & He, Qingsong, 2022. "Evaluating the effectiveness of development-limiting boundary control policy: Spatial difference-in-difference analysis," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).
    14. Melanie Krause & André Seidel, 2020. "Land Scarcity and Urban Density within Cities," CESifo Working Paper Series 8660, CESifo.
    15. de Abreu e Silva, João & Correia, Marcos, 2023. "The main drivers of urban sprawl in Portuguese medium cities between 2001 and 2011," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    16. John I. Carruthers & Gudmundur F. Úlfarsson, 2008. "Does `Smart Growth' Matter to Public Finance?," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 45(9), pages 1791-1823, August.
    17. Garcia-López, Miquel-Àngel, 2019. "All roads lead to Rome … and to sprawl? Evidence from European cities," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    18. Barbara Ermini & Raffaella Santolini, 2017. "Urban sprawl and property tax of a city’s core and suburbs: evidence from Italy," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 51(9), pages 1374-1386, September.
    19. Miguel Gómez-Antonio & Miriam Hortas-Rico & Linna Li, 2016. "The Causes of Urban Sprawl in Spanish Urban Areas: A Spatial Approach," Spatial Economic Analysis, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(2), pages 219-247, June.
    20. Liotta, Charlotte & Viguié, Vincent & Lepetit, Quentin, 2022. "Testing the monocentric standard urban model in a global sample of cities," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    urban sprawl; local taxes; property taxes;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H71 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue
    • R51 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Regional Government Analysis - - - Finance in Urban and Rural Economies
    • R52 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Regional Government Analysis - - - Land Use and Other Regulations

    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:ris:albaec:2018_004. 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: Joseph Marchand (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deualca.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.