Taxes, Public Goods and Urban Economics

The 27 articles reprinted in this volume are among Peter Mieszkowski's most important contributions to public, urban and regional economics. Several of these pieces concern income distribution theory and policies for promoting equality in wages, housing and education.The first part of this book includes studies of labour markets, tax incidence and the distributive effects of trade unions and wage subsidies. Two important conclusions presented in these papers concern the local property tax: it is a tax on capital and it results in under-provision of local public goods. The second and third parts of the book address, respectively, the decentralization of cities and and tax reform. Issues discussed include: racial discrimination in housing markets, the design of land use regulation, the negative income tax, consumption taxes, and tax reform in transition countries, particularly Eastern European countries. These outstanding essays bring together, in an accessible form, the work of one of the most important scholars in the field of public finance and urban economics.