IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ums/papers/2006-01.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Border Wars: Tax Revenues, Annexation, and Urban Growth in Phoenix

Author

Listed:
  • Carol E. Heim

    (University of Massachusetts Amherst)

Abstract

Phoenix and neighboring municipalities, like many in the South and West, pursued a growth strategy based on annexation in the decades after World War II. This paper explores the link between annexation and competition for tax revenues. After discussing arguments for annexation, it traces the history of annexation in the Phoenix metropolitan area. A long-running series of "border wars" entailed litigation, pre-emptive annexations, and considerable intergovernmental conflict. The paper argues that tax revenues have been a key motivation for annexation, particularly since the 1970s. It then considers several related policy issues and argues that while opportunities for annexation are becoming more limited, competition for tax revenues (particularly sales tax revenues) continues to be fierce and to create dilemmas for municipalities in the region. JEL Categories: H71, H77, N92, R51

Suggested Citation

  • Carol E. Heim, 2006. "Border Wars: Tax Revenues, Annexation, and Urban Growth in Phoenix," UMASS Amherst Economics Working Papers 2006-01, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Department of Economics, revised Aug 2008.
    • Handle: RePEc:ums:papers:2006-01
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.umass.edu/economics/publications/2006-01.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    annexation; municipal revenues; sales tax; Phoenix; urban growth; intergovernmental relations;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H71 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue
    • H77 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - Intergovernmental Relations; Federalism
    • N92 - Economic History - - Regional and Urban History - - - U.S.; Canada: 1913-
    • R51 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Regional Government Analysis - - - Finance in Urban and Rural Economies

    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:ums:papers:2006-01. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Daniele Girardi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deumaus.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.