Local governments rely heavily on sales tax revenue. We use national bankruptcies of big-box retail chains to study sudden plausibly exogenous decreases in this type of revenue. Treated localities respond by reducing spending on law enforcement and administrative services. We further study how cities with different degrees of autonomy vary in their response. Cities in home rule states, who have greater autonomy, react more swiftly by raising other types of revenue. A regression discontinuity analysis of cities in Illinois, where home rule status is triggered by crossing a population threshold, shows that this effect of local autonomy is causal: home rule leads to smaller revenue drops and stronger bond ratings.

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I estimate the effect of access to food stamps on criminal recidivism. In 1996, a federal welfare reform imposed a lifetime ban from food stamps on convicted drug felons. Florida modified this ban, restricting it to drug traffickers who commit their offense on or after August 23, 1996. I exploit this sharp cutoff in a regression discontinuity design and find that the ban increases recidivism among drug traffickers. The increase is driven by financially motivated crimes, suggesting that the cut in benefits causes ex-convicts to return to crime to make up for the lost transfer income. (JEL H75, I38, K42)

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