Environmental protection, land-use regulation and local government taxation: theory and evidence on Italian municipalities

Titolo Rivista ECONOMICS AND POLICY OF ENERGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT
Autori/Curatori Barbara Ermini, Fabio Fiorillo, Raffaela Santolini
Anno di pubblicazione 2013 Fascicolo 2013/2 Lingua Inglese
Numero pagine 20 P. 93-112 Dimensione file 574 KB
DOI 10.3280/EFE2013-002006
Il DOI è il codice a barre della proprietà intellettuale: per saperne di più clicca qui

Qui sotto puoi vedere in anteprima la prima pagina di questo articolo.

Se questo articolo ti interessa, lo puoi acquistare (e scaricare in formato pdf) seguendo le facili indicazioni per acquistare il download credit. Acquista Download Credits per scaricare questo Articolo in formato PDF

Anteprima articolo

FrancoAngeli è membro della Publishers International Linking Association, Inc (PILA)associazione indipendente e non profit per facilitare (attraverso i servizi tecnologici implementati da CrossRef.org) l’accesso degli studiosi ai contenuti digitali nelle pubblicazioni professionali e scientifiche

Property taxation can be used in a Pigouvian way to raise the costs of environment and decrease land use consumption for the benefit of enviromental protection. However, in presence of a growing shortage of funding over time, local governments can use property taxation in order to ‘fill the coffers’ rather than to pursue enviromenal safeguard. A negative effect on the budget side could be associated with a weeker control on land use regulation from local governments, since higher enviromental consumption leads to higher tax revenues. In this paper we address this issue developing a theoretical model which shows a positive (negative) relationship between tax revenue and the number of land use permissions when there is complementariety (substitutability) between environmental and human uses of land. We test this relationship on a panel of Italian municipalities from 1999 to 2006. Our results show a positive and significant correlation between property tax revenue and the issuance of land use permits, suggesting the prevalence of the complementariety relationship. This result implies that Italian municipalities are more concerned about funds raising rather than environment preservation.

Keywords:Land use, Land taxation, Building permits, ‘Fill the coffers’

Jel codes:H21, R14, R52

  1. Anderson J.E. (1993). Land development, externalities, and Pigouvian taxes. Journal of Urban Econmics, 33: 1-9. DOI: 10.1006/juec.1993.1001
  2. Besley T., Case A. (1995). Does Electoral Accountability Affect Economic Policy Choices? Evidence from Gubernatorial Term Limits. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 110: 769-798. DOI: 10.2307/2946699
  3. Bianchi D., Zanchini E. (Eds.) (2011) Ambiente Italia 2011 - Il consumo di suolo in Italia. Milano: Edizioni Ambiente s.r.l.
  4. Brueckner J.K. (2000). Urban sprawl: Diagnosis and remedies. International Regional Science Review, 23: 160-171. DOI: 10.1177/016001700761012710
  5. Brueckner J.K., Kim H. (2003). Urban Sprawl and the Property Tax. International Tax and Public Finance, 10: 5-23. DOI: 10.1023/A:1022260512147
  6. Cameron A.C., Trivedi P.K. (1998). Regression analysis of count data. Cambridge University Press. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511814365
  7. Dubin J.A., Roderick K., Noussair C. (1992). Voting on growth control measures: Preferences and strategies. Economics and Politics, 4: 191-213. DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0343.1992.tb00062.x
  8. European Environment Agency (2006). Using the market for cost-effective
  9. environmental policy, EEA Report 1/2006.
  10. Fischel W.A., (2001). Homevoters, Municipal Corporate Governance, and the Benefit View of the Property Tax. National Tax Journal, 54: 157-174.
  11. Frankena M.W., Scheffman D. (1981). A theory of development controls in a ‘small’ city. Journal of Public Economics, 15: 203-234. DOI: 10.1016/0047-2727(81)90033-5
  12. Glaeser E.L., Gyourko J., Saks R.E. (2005). Why have housing prices gone up? American Economic Review-Papers and Proceedings 95: 329-333. DOI: 10.1257/000282805774669961
  13. Glaser E.L., Ward B.A. (2009). The causes and consequences of land use regulation: Evidence from Greater Boston. Journal of Urban Economics, 65: 265-278. DOI: 10.1016/j.jue.2008.06.003
  14. Johnston R.A. (1980). The Politics of Local Growth Control. Policy Studies Journal, 9: 427-439. DOI: 10.1111/j.1541-0072.1980.tb00951.
  15. Ladd H.F. (1998a). Theoretical controversies: land and property taxation. In: Oates W.E. (Eds.) Local government tax and land use policies in the United States. Understanding the links. Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, Edward Elgar Publishing Limited.
  16. Ladd H.F. (1998b). Land use regulation as a fiscal tool. In: Oates W.E. (Eds.) Local government tax and land use policies in the United States. Understanding the links. Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, Edward Elgar Publishing Limited.
  17. Ladd H.F. (1998c). Effects of taxes on economic activity. In: Oates W.E. (Eds.) Local government tax and land use policies in the United States. Understanding the links. Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, Edward Elgar Publishing Limited.
  18. Oates W.E. (1969). The effects of property taxes and local public spending on property values: An empirical study of tax capitalization and the Tiebout
  19. hypothesis. Journal of Political Economy, 77: 957-971. DOI: 10.1086/25958
  20. Ortalo-Magne F., Prat A. (2011). On the Political Economy of Urban Growth: Homeownership against Affordability, Mimeo, London School of Economics, http://econ.lse.ac.uk/staff/prat/papers/polecon.pdf.
  21. Padovano F., Petrarca I. (2011). From taxes to politics, from politics to taxes: Evidence of yardstick competition in the Italian municipalities. Condorcet Center for Political Economy Working paper 2011-01-ccr., http://crem.univ-rennes1.fr/wp/2011/2011-01-ccr.pdf.
  22. Pileri P. (2009). Suolo, oneri di urbanizzazione e spesa corrente. Una storia
  23. controversa che attende una riforma fiscale ecologica. Territorio, 51: 88-92. Solé-Ollé A., Viladecans-Marsal E. (2012). Lobbying, political competition, and local land supply: Recent evidence from Spain. Journal of Public Economics, 96: 10-19. DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2011.08.001
  24. Song Y., Zenou Y. (2006). Property tax and urban sprawl: Theory and implications for US cities. Journal of Urban Economics, 60: 519–534. DOI: 10.1016/j.jue.2006.05.001
  25. Tiebout C. (1956). A pure theory of local expenditures. Journal of Political Economy, 64: 416-424. DOI: 10.1086/257839

  • Overview of ecofiscal powers for municipalities: Implementation of new measures in Québec Fanny Tremblay‐Racicot, Marie‐Claude Prémont, Kamille Leclair, in Canadian Public Administration /2023 pp.191
    DOI: 10.1111/capa.12521

Barbara Ermini, Fabio Fiorillo, Raffaela Santolini, Environmental protection, land-use regulation and local government taxation: theory and evidence on Italian municipalities in "ECONOMICS AND POLICY OF ENERGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT" 2/2013, pp 93-112, DOI: 10.3280/EFE2013-002006