















































Commonwealth Forum


COMMONWEALTH Forum

Should Pennsylvania Abolish  

the Property Tax for Schools? 

In November 2015, the Pennsylvania Senate narrowly failed to pass legislation 
abolishing the local school property tax and replacing it with state revenues 
raised by higher income and sales tax rates and the extension of the sales tax to 
a range of goods and services now exempt. The legislation, supported by dozens 
of citizen tax reform groups across Pennsylvania, was defeated 25–24 when Lt. 
Governor Michael Stack cast a tiebreaking vote against an amendment em-
bodying the changes.

State Senators David Argall and Judith Schwank were principal sponsors of 
the legislation and vowed to continue the fight. Indeed, legislation to replace, 
reform, and reduce the property tax, particularly for schools, has been proposed 
and debated for decades, and some relief measures have been enacted, but the 
tax remains the principal levy to fund schools in Pennsylvania and in most 
states. Citizens in Pennsylvania and nationally consistently tell pollsters that 
it is the worst tax, and few if any elected officials will defend the levy, except 
on the pragmatic grounds that replacing it would require unrealistically large 
increases in state taxes.

COMMONWEALTH invited Senator Argall, chair of the Senate Republican 
Policy Committee, and Jon Hopcraft, the committee’s executive director, to sum-

COMMONWEALTH, Volume 18, Issue 1 (June 2016). © 2016 The Pennsylvania Political Science Association. 
ISSN 2469-7672 (online). http://dx.doi.org/10.15367/cjppp.v18i1.81. All rights reserved.



8 DAVID G. ARGALL AnD Jon HoPCRAFT

marize the argument that the tax is an antiquated and unfair levy and should 
be abolished. We invited Dartmouth College economist William A. Fischel, a 
nationally recognized expert who attended Pennsylvania public schools, to sum-
marize his argument that, compared to statewide taxes, the local levy provides 
voters—even in households without school children—with stronger incentives 
to support high quality public schools.

Yes, Abolish the Property Tax:  
It Is the Worst Tax for Schools

DAVID G. ARGALL
Pennsylvania Senate and Chair of  

the Senate Republican Policy Committee

JON HOPCRAFT
Executive Director of the Senate Republican 

 Policy Committee

At the start of his career in 1890 at Columbia University, Edwin Selig-
man deemed the property tax as “the worst tax known in the civi-
lized world” (Brunori et al. 2006). One hundred twenty-six years 

later, Seligman’s declaration would be met with raucous applause at town hall 
meetings across much of Pennsylvania.

The property tax is one of the oldest taxes in history—Athens levied a land 
tax in 596 bc (Jennings 2015). In 1982, former Pennsylvania Senate Majority 
Leader John Stauffer hypothesized that the first complaint about real estate 
taxes was likely submitted in Athens in 596 bc. 

Article III, Section 14 of the Pennsylvania Constitution requires, “The 
General Assembly shall provide for the maintenance and support of a thor-
ough and efficient system of public education to serve the needs of the Com-
monwealth.”

We would challenge anyone today to argue that Pennsylvania’s current 
school property tax system actually promotes a “thorough and efficient sys-
tem of public education.”

Think what has changed in Pennsylvania education since the first school 
property tax was enacted in the 1830s: Teachers are no longer paid partly in 
vegetables, our children no longer learn in one-room schoolhouses, teachers 
are much better educated, and students have moved from chalk and slate to 



COMMONWEALTH Forum 9

textbooks and computers, but taxpayers still pay for public education through 
an outmoded, archaic, and unfair property tax.

Today, Pennsylvania school districts receive most of their funding from 
local property taxes with the state and federal governments contributing 
approximately 45%. Again, let us quote the late Senator Stauffer, who served 
in the Pennsylvania General Assembly from 1965–1988 and summed it up 
best: “Although [the property tax’s] use has become nearly universal, it is the 
most unfair, fastest-rising and most capricious tax. Property tax assessments 
and reassessments have become bywords for political manipulation.” Accord-
ing to the input we have received at countless town hall meetings, the situation 
has not improved since Senator Stauffer’s unsuccessful efforts to reform the 
school property tax system in the 1980s.

This debate has gone on for decades in the Pennsylvania General Assem-
bly with the key question “What is the best way to fund our public schools?”

In 1953, Governor Fine enacted the state Sales and Use Tax at 1%—while 
this tripled state aid for education, it failed to kill off school property taxes 
(PHMC 2015a). In 1971, Governor Shapp won a long-fought battle with the 
legislature and created the state income tax at 2.3%, dubbed the “Emergency 
Income Tax.” Shapp increased aid to public schools and also signed a bill into 
law creating the Pennsylvania State Lottery with the intent to provide proper-
ty tax relief to senior citizens (PHMC 2015b), but it failed to kill off the school 
property tax. In 2004, Governor Rendell legalized casino gaming with a por-
tion of the revenue dedicated toward property tax relief, but the hated school 
property tax continued to grow. In 2006, the approval of Act 1 tied allowable 
school property tax increases to inflation for the first time. The exemptions 
in Act 1, however, have allowed school districts to raise property taxes above 
the Act 1 index. In 2014, the state granted exceptions to 164 public schools 
across the Commonwealth to raise their property taxes above the Act 1 index 
(Frantz 2014). Since 2008, nearly one-third of the state’s 500 public school 
districts annually received exceptions from the state to raise taxes above the 
Act 1 limit (Welton 2015).

The pattern over the last six decades is clear—any temporary tax becomes 
permanent and any tax relief effort is temporary. Due to the state government’s 
inability to prevent school property taxes from rising each year, the calls to 
eliminate—not reform—this hated tax continue to grow louder each year.

Why do people across Pennsylvania hate the school property tax? Here’s one 
major reason: From 1993–1994 to 2012–2013, while the average annual regional 
Consumer Price Index increased approximately 2.5%, the annual average school 
district property tax increased by nearly double the inflation rate at 4.9%. In 
other words, over that period, as Figure 1 indicates, the Consumer Price Index 



10 DAVID G. ARGALL AnD Jon HoPCRAFT

Figure 1. Historic Trends. (Data Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2015.) 

cumulatively increased by 61% while the school property tax increased by 146% 
(Independent Fiscal Office 2013). The annual increases to school property taxes 
continue to outpace any other economic indicator despite Act 1 limitations. 
This is why so many people show up at town hall meetings across Pennsylvania 
to demand the elimination of school property taxes. Tweaking this hated tax 
or reforming this unfair and archaic system is not what people are requesting. 
They are demanding its complete elimination.

Article VIII, Section 1 of the Pennsylvania Constitution requires, “All 
taxes shall be uniform, upon the same class of subjects, within the territorial 
limits of the authority levying the tax, and shall be levied and collected under 
general laws.” The subjective nature of the school property tax flies in the face 
of the uniformity clause.

Today, property owners are subject to higher property taxes based on a 
variety of outmoded factors, including when the property was purchased, 
upgrades to the interior and/or exterior of a dwelling, reverse appeals, addi-
tions to the dwelling, changes to the productive use of the land, among several 
others factors. Cherry-picking homeowners based on the sale of or upgrades 
to the property not only discourages individuals from purchasing property in 
certain school districts but also removes any incentive to improve properties 
due to the threat of future tax increases. The school district property tax is, 
at best, only remotely tied to an individual’s ability to pay. Is this really how 
we want to fund the education of Pennsylvania’s students in the 21st century? 
The only way to eliminate the unfairness of the school property tax system is 
to kill it off once and for all.



COMMONWEALTH Forum 11

The plan to eliminate school property taxes in Pennsylvania was first 
developed and drafted by more than 70 grassroots taxpayer advocacy groups 
from across the state known as the Pennsylvania Coalition of Taxpayer Asso-
ciations. The coalition brought us a plan that would eliminate—not reduce—
school property taxes in Pennsylvania by shifting to an increased Personal 
Income Tax (increasing the rate from 3.07% to 4.95%) and an increased and 
expanded Sales and Use Tax (increasing the rate from 6% to 7% and broad-
ening the tax base). Each year, school districts would receive a cost of living 
adjustment tied to the Statewide Average Weekly Wage. The plan would also 
allow school districts to raise additional revenue through a local Personal 
Income Tax or Earned Income Tax increase contingent on voter approval. To 
put that in perspective, 34 other states require school districts to receive voter 
approval to levy or increase the local tax rate (Paul 2015).

Opponents frequently argue that income and sales taxes are too volatile 
for school funding. They usually fail to mention, however, that Pennsylvania’s 
overall state budget receives over 70% of its revenue from the Personal Income 
Tax and Sales and Use Tax. Why should we require school districts to depend 
upon hated and unfair property taxes when the state has long since decided 
that the sales and income taxes are much fairer and more appropriate taxes 
to meet our needs?

The plan created by the Pennsylvania Coalition of Taxpayer Associations 
is a shift from an unfair, archaic school property tax to a hybrid income and 
sales tax-based approach. When Pennsylvania voters are asked, they agree 
with this concept. Here’s a sampling of the polling data: Harper Polling deter-
mined that Pennsylvanians believe that the property tax is the worst tax in 
Pennsylvania (50%)—eclipsing the combined dislike of income (27%) and 
sales (14%) taxes (Harper Polling 2015). Local tax reform continues to be a 
key priority statewide, narrowly trailing education funding as the top issue 
for Pennsylvania voters (Klinger 2015). During a telephone town hall event 
on October 6, 2015, with Berks and Schuylkill County residents, participants 
overwhelmingly supported elimination (81%) over reduction (11%) and caps 
on future growth (8%). KQV Radio in Pittsburgh in April of 2012 found 85% 
of their listeners support a plan to eliminate school property taxes; the York 
Dispatch in May of 2012 asked a similar question with 73% support of com-
plete elimination; the Easton Express Times surveyed readers in March of 2015 
asking about supporting a state budget deal or school property tax elimination 
with 84% supporting the latter.

This proposal, Senate Bill 76 and House Bill 76, would change our archaic 
school property system to one more in line with what taxpayers can afford to 
pay. Property owners would no longer bear the primary burden of funding 



12 DAVID G. ARGALL AnD Jon HoPCRAFT

public schools. Utilization of the income and sales tax will broaden the tax 
base creating fairness and uniformity in taxation. Urban areas with popula-
tion outmigration would no longer be tied to an eroding tax base for future 
revenue needs. Instead, more than 12.7 million Pennsylvanians plus tourists 
and other visitors would contribute to the state’s public education system.

After a comprehensive review, the Pennsylvania Independent Fiscal Office 
determined that eliminating school property taxes would provide the largest 
relative tax cut to retired homeowners and increase disposable income for 
homeowners (Independent Fiscal Office 2012). Seniors and homeowners of 
all ages continue to be the strongest advocates for this legislation.

When the plan was first introduced in the state Senate in 2011, it gar-
nered the support of roughly one-quarter of the Senators. After considerable 
grassroots lobbying across Pennsylvania, the number of Senate cosponsors 
has doubled. The plan was reintroduced in 2013 by 14 Republicans and 11 
Democrats, and again in 2015 with one-half of the Senate cosponsoring the 
measure. On November 23, 2015, the Senate debated this proposal for the first 
time in history. The result was a 24–24 tie vote, which was then defeated by 
the lieutenant governor’s vote against the measure.

How can we finally resolve this decades-long debate and eliminate our 
archaic school property tax system? We are now meeting with the proponents 
and the opponents of the measure to find ways to improve the bill. Every day, 
we are searching for that one additional vote that we need to secure passage 
in the Senate and send it to the House for its consideration.

We now face a unique window of opportunity in Harrisburg. Franklin 
and Marshall College Professor G. Terry Madonna and consultant Michael 
Young believe that this issue could unite—not further divide—state govern-
ment leaders during this era of extraordinary partisanship in Harrisburg. In 
an often quoted column titled “RIP: The School Property Tax,” Madonna and 
Young (2015) wrote:

Pennsylvania’s property tax, like property taxes in many other states, 
is a fossilized artifact from the 19th century that faltered badly in the 
20th century and failed spectacularly into the 21st century. . . . Now in 
the 21st century, talking about “reforming” the 19th century property 
tax really is just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic long after 
the iceberg has been hit. The property tax cannot be reformed—but 
it can be abolished. . . . Both sides really want the same thing here—
a sane tax system in support of a stable revenue source for schools. 
Realizing that comity of interest is half the journey. Getting rid of the 



COMMONWEALTH Forum 13

property tax means Wolf wins, the GOP wins—and most important 
of all, the long-suffering taxpayers of Pennsylvania win. 

Homeownership has been the bedrock of the American Dream, but how 
can one achieve true homeownership when you are merely renting it from a 
school district? Eliminating the 1830s school property tax system and replacing 
it with a broader, fairer, and more equitable system will not only remove one 
of the biggest hurdles to achieving the American Dream, it will finally bring 
Pennsylvania’s public education financing system into the 21st century.

If you do not believe us, come with us to our next town hall meeting. The 
constituents of the 29th Senatorial District would love to share their thoughts 
with you on this issue.

REFERENCES

Brunori, David, Richard Green, Michael Bell, Chanyung Choi, and Bing Yuan. 2006. The 
Property Tax: Its Role and Significance in Funding State and Local Government Ser-
vices. Washington, DC: George Washington Institute of Public Policy.

Frantz, Jeff. 2014. “Pa. Granted Exceptions Allowing 164 School Districts to Raise Prop-
erty Taxes More Than 2.1 Percent.” PennLive, May 2. http://www.pennlive.com/mid 
state/index.ssf/2014/05/school_property_tax_act_1_exec.html (March 1, 2016).

Harper Polling. 2015. Pennsylvania Statewide Poll. http://harperpolling.com/polls/penn 
sylvania-statewide-poll-May-2015 (March 1, 2016).

Independent Fiscal Office. 2012. Analysis of HB 1776 and SB 1400 of 2012. Harrisburg, PA.
———. 2013. Analysis of Proposal to Replace School Property Taxes: House Bill 76 and Sen-

ate Bill 76 of 2013. Harrisburg, PA.
Jennings, Marianne M. 2015. Real Estate Law. 11th ed. Boston: South-Western College.
Klinger, Jason. 2015. “Franklin & Marshall College Poll: Voters Support Medical Mari-

juana, Suspension of Death Penalty.” June 18. http://www.fandm.edu/news/latest-
news/2015/06/18/franklin-marshall-college-poll-voters-support-medical-mari 
juana-suspension-of-death-penalty (March 1, 2016).

Madonna, G. Terry, and Michael L. Young. 2015. “Politically Uncorrected: RIP: The School 
Property Tax.” PoliticsPA, March 24. http://www.politicspa.com/politically-uncor 
rected-rip-the-school-property-tax/64671/ (March 17, 2016).

Paul, James. 2015. “For Property Tax Relief, Give Voters Control.” Commonwealth Foun-
dation, November 13. http://www.commonwealthfoundation.org/policyblog/detail/
for-property-tax-relief-give-voters-control (March 16, 2016).

Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC). 2015a. August 26. http://
www.phmc.state.pa.us/portal/communities/governors/1951-2015/john-fine.html 
(March 1, 2016).

———. 2015b. August 26. http://www.phmc.state.pa.us/portal/communities/gover 
nors/1951-2015/milton-shapp.html (March 1, 2016).

Welton, Allison. 2015. “What Is Act 1 and How Did It Impact Property Taxes and School 
Funding?” Keystone Crossroads, June 22. http://crossroads.newsworks.org/index.php/
local/keystone-crossroads/81310-what-is-act-1-and-how-did-it-impact-property- 
taxes-and-school-funding (March 15, 2016).



14 WILLIAM A. FIsCHEL

No, Keep the Property Tax:  
It Is the Best Tax for Schools

WILLIAM A. FISCHEL
Dartmouth College

The local property tax is an important part of funding public school 
systems in most states. It should be clear from the outset that it would 
be unwise to rely entirely on local taxes of any sort to fund a system 

of public schools. Some school districts contain a disproportionate num-
ber of poor and disadvantaged students, and such districts may need state 
assistance to give their children an adequate education. State mandates for 
special-needs students should also be accompanied by funds to pay for the 
additional expense. But aside from these exceptions, a properly and fairly 
administered system of local property taxation gives local voters—even those 
without school-age children—the right incentives to provide a thorough and 
efficient education.

The Basic Argument for Property Taxes

Here is the basic economic argument, which is a distillation of an impor-
tant paper by Stanford’s Caroline Hoxby (1999). Suppose that the local school 
superintendent, after consulting with principals and teachers, decides that the 
local high school needs to hire a group of teachers to teach in a newly created 
STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) program. The voters 
are asked, directly in a referendum or indirectly through the school board, to 
finance this program with an increase in local property taxes.

In most communities, almost two-thirds of the voters will not have any 
direct interest in this because they have no children in schools (Kurban, Gal-
lagher, and Persky 2012). An increase in property taxes will seem quite unpal-
atable to them. Considered in isolation, the tax increase would lower their 
home values (Do and Sirmans 1994).

But the superintendent points out that the STEM program will make the 
school district more attractive to families with school-age children. If the 
STEM program has this effect, it will raise the value of existing homes, which 
offsets the adverse effect of the property tax rise. This will apply even to vot-
ers who currently have no children in school, as long as their homes could 
be purchased by a family with children. If the offsetting rise is greater than 
the reduction caused by the tax, most voters would regard this as a desirable 



COMMONWEALTH Forum 15

program. And from an economic standpoint, a net gain in the value of homes 
is an indicator that the program is efficient (Brueckner 1982).

It also follows that if there are no gains in home values from the program, 
or there are net losses, then the project is inefficient—the costs are registered 
as being less than the benefits. In this case, local property taxation provides 
incentives to reject boondoggles, since the net effect of the tax increase and 
the misconceived project will reduce home values. Local property taxation 
encourages local voters and their school boards to accept cost-effective proj-
ects and reject those that are losers in the eyes of homebuyers.

That’s the basic theory: Local property taxation subjects school spend-
ing to an effective benefit-cost test. The rest of this note will briefly address 
the evidence supporting this theory—there’s plenty more than I can review 
here—and add a personal, Pennsylvania story to illustrate some overlooked 
advantages of local control.

Evidence from Economic Studies

The connection between school quality, property taxes, and local home values 
has been established in literally hundreds of studies, starting with a pioneer-
ing study of New Jersey cities by Wallace Oates (1969). Controlling for differ-
ences in location, size, and condition of the homes, Oates found that levels of 
school spending and property taxes affected—were “capitalized in”—the aver-
age value of houses in each community. He concluded that this provided a test 
for the efficiency of local decisions: “[F]or an increase in property taxes unac-
companied by an increase in the output of local public services, the bulk of the 
rise in taxes will be capitalized in the form of reduced property values. On the 
other hand, if a community increases its tax rates and employs the receipts to 
improve its school system, the coefficients indicate that the increased benefits 
from the expenditure side of the budget will roughly offset (or perhaps even 
more than offset) the depressive effect of the higher tax rates on local property 
values” (Oates 1969, 968).

Studies since then have shown that voters are actually motivated by the 
connection between their property’s value and the effects of the program 
(Sonstelie and Portney 1980). Homeowners are especially attuned to local 
public decisions because so much of their personal wealth is tied up in their 
homes (Fischel 2001). That local voters without children still support schools 
because of their beneficial effects on property values is well established (Hil-
ber and Mayer 2009).

The discipline of local funding from property taxes and the encourage-
ment it provides for local improvements explains why states that rely more 



16 WILLIAM A. FIsCHEL

on locally controlled property taxes have better schools. Thomas Husted and 
Larry Kenny (2000) found that states that reduced their reliance on local 
property taxes and increased state funds ended up with lower SAT scores and 
other indicators of overall educational quality. Joshua Hall (2007) concluded 
that Ohio districts that relied more heavily on property taxation performed 
better than those that got more money from the state. In my own review of a 
national study of SAT scores and state financing that ranked states from high-
est to lowest, I found that “In their top ten, none had more than 50 percent 
state funding. In the bottom ten, all but three states had more than 50 percent 
state funding” (Fischel 2002, 98).

The most dramatic and long-lasting experiment in school finance cen-
tralization—and rejection of local property tax financing—occurred in Cali-
fornia in 1978. The state’s voters approved Proposition 13, which cut most 
property taxes by more than half and left funding for the public school system 
almost entirely up to the state (O’Sullivan, Sexton, and Sheffrin 1995). Because 
of this tax revolt and because the state’s court had severely constrained most 
local districts’ ability to use local funds, California provides what economists 
call a “natural experiment” in school finance (Fischel 1989). It was “natural” 
in that Prop 13 was sudden and unexpected by most state and local officials.

The results of this clean shift from local to state funding could not be more 
stark. Total spending declined, educational quality declined, and more affluent 
families abandoned the system for private schools. Spending in the poorest dis-
tricts was increased somewhat, but the gap in test scores between the affluent 
and poorer districts did not narrow at all (Brunner and Sonstelie 2006).

The local property tax also has the advantage of stability. In 2012 North 
Dakota voters were invited to eliminate the local property tax and substitute 
for it the state’s swelling revenue from oil extraction (fracking) taxes (Davey 
2012). The voters rejected this plan overwhelmingly, and it turned out to be 
a wise choice: Oil prices have since tumbled, and the state’s school spend-
ing would have suffered as well. Voters may not love the property tax when 
considered in isolation, but they appear to realize that it is a more dependable 
source of revenue for services they care about.

Local Control: A Family Story

As an economist, I have emphasized the economic benefits providing for pub-
lic education through local taxation. It has a long history in America, and it 
flourished during the period in which the American high school became the 
world leader in education (Goldin and Katz 2008). But local control of edu-
cation through the property tax also has a less quantifiable aspect. Political 



COMMONWEALTH Forum 17

scientists have mentioned the community-building aspects of local education 
finance. Alvin Sokolow (1998, 182), observes: “In its traditional and relatively 
unlimited version, the property tax also contributes to representative democ-
racy in two interconnected ways: (1) by giving locally elected officials the dis-
cretion to allocate resources in a fashion that represents community priorities; 
and (2) by engaging citizen-taxpayers directly in the actions of government.” 
I will illustrate this with a family story.

I grew up in Lower Saucon Township, just outside of Bethlehem, Pennsyl-
vania. The home my parents built and that my four siblings and I were raised 
in was then (in the 1950s) in a semirural area. The township schools were 
mostly remnants of one-room schools of the 19th century. Although they were 
not run as traditional one-room schools (all ages in one room), most of them 
were “doubled up” with two grades per room.

Despite the antiquarian appeal of the system, my parents were not too 
pleased with this arrangement, and my mother persuaded my dad to run for 
the school board. Despite a retiring personality and a complete absence of cam-
paign activity, he won the election. He and other new board members helped 
consolidate the elementary schools into a new facility that offered a much better 
education (one grade per classroom). After 12 years on the board, he declined to 
run again. One of my proudest moments for my dad was when a delegation of 
neighbors arrived one evening to try to persuade him to run again.

I would be projecting too much on this to say that Dad was motivated by a 
concern for property values. He did own a fair amount of land and paid prop-
erty taxes on it, but his chief concern was for the education of his children and 
that of other children in the township. The point I want to make here is that 
this virtue does not run contrary to the financial incentives of a system that 
ties local schools to local property taxes. Had the state of Pennsylvania built 
and paid for all public schools from statewide taxes, it is more than possible 
that education would have progressed much more slowly.

Harvard economists Claudia Goldin and Larry Katz (2008) contrast the 
robust expansion of locally financed American education in the early 20th 
century to the lagging European system, which was centrally financed. In 
Europe, advances in education standards had to wait until a national consen-
sus was reached. In America, local school directors like my dad could seize the 
initiative and move the system ahead with only local approval. Such initiatives 
would be noticed by other districts, who would worry that they might fall 
behind (and have their home values decline). This benign competition results 
in more experimentation and keeps education in the forefront of public issues. 
The property tax as an institution helps make “doing good” match up with 
“doing well.”



18 WILLIAM A. FIsCHEL

REFERENCES

Brueckner, Jan K. 1982. “A Test for Allocative Efficiency in the Local Public Sector.” Jour-
nal of Public Economics 19:311–321.

Brunner, Eric J., and Jon Sonstelie. 2006. “California’s School Finance Reform: An Ex-
periment in Fiscal Federalism,” in The Tiebout Model at Fifty, ed. William A. Fischel. 
Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Davey, Monica. 2012. “North Dakota Considers Eliminating Property Tax. New York 
Times, June 11. 

Do, A. Quang, and C. F. Sirmans. 1994. “Residential Property Tax Capitalization: Dis-
count Rate Evidence from California.” National Tax Journal 57:341–348.

Fischel, William A. 1989. “Did Serrano Cause Proposition 13?” National Tax Journal 
42:465–474.

———. 2001. The Homevoter Hypothesis: How Home Values Influence Local Government 
Taxation, School Finance, and Land-Use Policies. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer-
sity Press.

———. 2002. “School Finance Litigation and Property Tax Revolts: How Undermining 
Local Control Turns Voters Away from Public Education,” in Developments in School 
Finance, 1999–2000 (NCES 2002–316.), ed. William J. Fowler. Jr. Washington, DC: 
National Center for Education Statistics.

Goldin, Claudia, and Lawrence Katz. 2008. The Race between Education and Technology. 
Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Hall, Joshua. 2007. “Local School Finance and Productive Efficiency: Evidence from 
Ohio.” Atlantic Economic Journal 35:289–301.

Hilber, Christian A. L., and Christopher Mayer. 2009. “Why Do Households without Chil-
dren Support Local Public Schools? Linking House Price Capitalization to School 
Spending.” Journal of Urban Economics 65:74–90.

Hoxby, Caroline M. 1999. “The Productivity of Schools and Other Local Public Goods 
Producers.” Journal of Public Economics 74:1–30.

Husted, Thomas A., and Lawrence W. Kenny. 2000. “Evidence on the Impact of State Gov-
ernment on Primary and Secondary Education and the Equity-Efficiency Trade-Off.” 
Journal of Law and Economics 43:285–308.

Kurban, Haydar, Ryan M. Gallagher, and Joseph J. Persky. 2012. “Estimating Local Re-
distribution through Property-Tax-Funded Public School Systems.” National Tax 
Journal 65:629–652.

Oates, Wallace E. 1969. “The Effects of Property Taxes and Local Public Spending on 
Property Values: An Empirical Study of Tax Capitalization and the Tiebout Hypoth-
esis.” Journal of Political Economy 77:957–971.

O’Sullivan, Arthur, Terri A. Sexton, and Steven M. Sheffrin. 1995. Property Taxes and Tax 
Revolts: The Legacy of Proposition 13. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Sokolow, Alvin D. 1998. “The Changing Property Tax and State-Local Relations.” Publius: 
The Journal of Federalism 28 (1): 165–187.

Sonstelie, Jon C., and Paul R. Portney. 1980. “Take the Money and Run: A Theory of Vot-
ing in Local Referenda.” Journal of Urban Economics 8:187–195.




