The Impact of Tax Price on Spending Preferences

Robbins, Mark D.; Simonsen, Brandi; Feldman, Barry

doi:10.1111/j.0275-1100.2004.02403005.x

Cited by 18 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…For more expensive services, however, knowing the tax amount reduced support for services. Robbins, Simonsen, and Feldman () conducted a similar experiment in West Hartford, CT with comparable results.…”

Section: Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Information, Tax Salience, and Support for School Bond Referenda

Brunner

Robbins

Simonsen

2018

Public Budgeting & Finance

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We examine whether the salience of the property tax liability implications of voting yes on a school bond referendum affects bond approval rates. We exploit the fact that school districts in Minnesota are required to explicitly note the property tax implications of voting yes on bond referenda in bold capital letters on a ballot while districts in the neighboring state of Wisconsin are only required to inform voters of the amount of bonds to be issued. Using data on local school bond passage rates from Minnesota and Wisconsin over the period 2008–2017, we find that when the property tax implications of voting yes are more salient, the fraction of voters favoring bond passage declines by approximately four to seven percentage points and the probability of bond passage falls by approximately ten percentage points. These results are robust to numerous specification checks including propensity score weighting methods and leveraging the geographic distance between school districts in Minnesota and Wisconsin.

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Section: Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Information, Tax Salience, and Support for School Bond Referenda

Brunner

Robbins

Simonsen

2018

Public Budgeting & Finance

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“…While there are certainly other factors, these can be expected to cover a significant portion of the potential variance. Interestingly, although there is a modest but growing literature examining the nexus of e-government and fiscal transparency (e.g., Cárcaba García andGarcía-García 2008, 2010;Gandía and Archidona 2008;Justice, Melitski, and Smith 2006;Robbins, Simonsen, andFeldman 2004, 2008;Styles and Tennyson 2007), there is little empirical research examining the role of e-government or social capital and related phenomena in determining government transparency in the United States.…”

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confidence: 99%

Social Capital, E-Government, and Fiscal Transparency in the States

Justice

McNutt

2013

Public Integrity

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Transparency is one requisite of democratic governance. Many American states have implemented online checkbooks and similar forms of fiscal e-transparency, but not universally or with uniformly high quality. This article seeks to explain why. Correlation and regression results support hypotheses that higher-quality implementation responds to lower state levels of social capital, more traditionalistic political cultures, greater perceptions of official corruption, and larger populations.Fiscal transparency can generally be understood as one requisite for extending the practice of democracy. It broadly encompasses efforts to make meaningful fiscal information available to citizens, in order to facilitate their ability to directly shape budget allocations and processes and enable them to hold officials accountable for allocations (Ebdon and Franklin 2006;Franklin, Ho, and Ebdon 2009;Justice and Dülger 2009;Justice and Tarimo 2012). Researchers have begun to accumulate a body of conceptual and empirical work focused on the relationships among fiscal transparency, participatory budgeting, and the processes and outcomes of democratic governance. While there are a number of tensions within the literature regarding normative models, goals, and processes of democracy, it is safe to say that "the ability to see how government uses the public purse is fundamental to democracy. Spending transparency checks corruption, bolsters public confidence in government, and promotes fiscal responsibility" (Baxandall and Wohlschlegel 2010, p. 6).

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“…The very presence of fiscal or cost information influences support for government services. Arrington and Jordan (1982), Simonsen and Robbins (2000a, 2000b), Robbins, Simonsen, and Feldman (2004), and Schuler and West (2015) found that across many local government services, support is lower when respondents are informed about tax amounts or costs 3…”

Section: Theory and Conceptual Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Property Tax Information and Support for School Bond Referenda: Experimental Evidence

Brunner¹,

Robbins²,

Simonsen³

2020

Public Administration Review

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This article reports on an experiment testing whether additional information influences support for bond referenda. Respondents were randomly assigned to treatment conditions that varied the way the potential implications of property tax increases were presented to voters. The results show a persistent negative effect of tax information on the probability of support for school bond referenda across all treatments. Specifically, the results show that the probability of voting yes decreased by 6 to 9 percentage points, depending on the treatment. This result persists across multiple specifications and robustness tests. The effects are consistent across populations, with only those with high levels of education showing no statistically significant effect of the treatment on their support for school referenda. Evidence for Practice Some states require bond referenda to include statements that seek to make plain the connection between ballot passage and property taxes, while others do not. We find a persistent negative effect of property tax information on the probability of support for school bond referenda of 6 to 9 percentage points, depending on the wording. This line of research has become increasingly important to public policy making given that about half the states, including the largest state, California, have some type of property tax wording requirements for referenda. We argue that providing wording connecting property taxes to bond referenda passage is consistent with transparency efforts governments have pursued for decades. However, such wording might not improve the accuracy of information for citizens since, ultimately, the ensuing property tax levy depends on myriad factors, only one of which is debt service on bonds.

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The Impact of Tax Price on Spending Preferences

Cited by 18 publications

References 8 publications

Information, Tax Salience, and Support for School Bond Referenda

Information, Tax Salience, and Support for School Bond Referenda

Social Capital, E-Government, and Fiscal Transparency in the States

Property Tax Information and Support for School Bond Referenda: Experimental Evidence

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