A revenue maximizing local government must obey a migration constraint when levying taxes. Using this insight, I develop simple theory of taxation that suggests natural amenities are key factor influencing tax rates. Natural confer rents to residents which governments and interest groups compete extract. Revenue rates increasing in the level amenities, moving costs, decreasing households’ reser...

The governance and accountability arrangements for local government capital expenditures under the new Prudential Borrowing Framework (PBF) appear to adopt a much narrower set of evaluative and precautionary criteria than those of Public Private Partnerships and the Private Finance Initiative. The PBF seems to have been developed in complete ignorance of the critical accounting perspective and ...

This paper introduces a discrete-time intertemporal investment model in which the flow of profits affects the risk premium on the cost of finance, and, as a consequence, the rate of discount of future profits. While public investments, according to a consolidated literature, constitute the main bulk of innovation policies, this model is used to comment and interpret the potential use of another...

The paper presents a historical overview of the relations between housing, housing finance and capital markets in Brazil, while embedding it into an analysis of the recently launched housing program My House My Life (MCMV). Considering the absence of a consolidated market for mortgage finance and a public housing stock, Brazilian financialization doesn't fit standard narratives that have either...