This study explores the effects of state-imposed school district tax and expenditure limits (TELs) on contributions and total revenues for education-supporting nonprofits. These nonprofits provide resources and services to schools
May 2025
Dollars, Desks, and Development: The Impact of Local Sales Tax Revenue Redistribution on Recipient Programs in North Carolina
North Carolina identified local sales tax leakage as a contributor to local inequity and created a revenue-sharing pool funded by local sales taxes, where revenues are earmarked for schools, economic
Jan 2024
Local Responses to School Finance Equalization: Wealth Or Place?
Over the past 50 years, a combination of court cases and legislative actions has greatly reduced the variance in revenues across school districts within states by removing local property tax
Jan 2024
Plugging the Tax Leak: An Analysis of North Carolina’s Local Sales Tax Redistribution Policy
Amid rising concerns over the urban-rural divide, taxation equity, revenue generation, and local tax leakage, several states are contemplating measures to support jurisdictions perceived as bearing the brunt of evolving
Aug 2023
Natural Resource Exploitation and Military Spending
Why do some states allocate more resources to their military than others? Governments are likely to perceive acute threats to their authority and legitimacy when they face insurgencies in which
May 2023
The Role of Property Assessment Oversight in School Finance Inequality
This paper explores an under-studied channel for school finance inequality: property assessment. School districts have historically relied on local tax revenues (typically property taxes) to fund schools, which can generate
Mar 2023
High School Student Achievement and College Enrollment in the Absence of School Improvement Interventions: Evidence from Kentucky
One challenge of accountability in education is balancing local discretion over the use of resources with state and federal constraints designed to improve performance. This study isolates the impact of
Sep 2018
State Subsidy Composition In Higher Education: Policy and Impacts
Higher education is the third largest state expenditure behind K-12 and Medicaid but is generally more discretionary than most other budget categories. As demographic trends and economic downturns constrain state
Sep 2017
Does Kentucky’s Merit-based Scholarship Program, KEES, Improve College Completion?
College completion is a complex process involving numerous socioeconomic factors at the individual, institutional, and governmental levels. One important factor is the way in which financial aid is disbursed so
