Title

Restrictive zoning’s deleterious impact on the local education property tax base: Evidence from zoning district boundaries and municipal finances

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

3-1-2019

Abstract

This paper employs a boundary-discontinuity research design to estimate land-use regulations’ causal impact on residential value per student within Massachusetts municipalities. Zoning restrictions hostile toward small dwellings are found to actually reduce residential value per student. This is because small dwellings, although valued less than larger dwellings, house disproportionally fewer school-aged residents than larger dwellings do. It is then shown that restrictive zoning policies, through their mitigating effect on the local stock of smaller dwellings, force municipalities to rely on higher effective property tax rates to self-fund a particular level of per-student education expenditure, holding all else equal.

DOI

10.17310/ntj.2019.1.01

Publication Title

National Tax Journal

Volume Number

72

Issue Number

1

First Page

11

Last Page

44

ISSN

00280283

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