To constrain legislative taxing power, 16 U.S. state constitutions require a supermajority in both chambers to increase or impose taxes. Both supporters and opponents of the requirement argue that its effect fades away because states circumvent it in various ways, especially by raising fees that are not subject to the requirement. Existing literature, however, offers little and inconsistent evidence on whether the effect decays over time and whether the decay results from fee hikes. This article documents legal cases to show the ways in which states have responded to the requirement, estimates whether the effects of the requirement decay over time, and tests whether states raise fees instead of taxes after adopting such a requirement. Using state-level panel data, I find that the initial effectiveness of the requirement on tax burden does decay approximately a decade after enactment and that the decay is not the result of fee increases.
This research note examines the relationship between public attitudes toward universal basic income (UBI) and country-level socio-economic conditions in 21 European Countries. Despite abundant theoretical and empirical research on UBI, a comparative analysis of public appetite for UBI has been unavailable due to data limitations. This research note takes advantage of the 2016 European Social Survey to explore the connection between public support for UBI and levels of social protection and economic insecurity.
We propose the concept of inclusive economic resilience to examine intra-regional economic recovery in American metropolitan areas after the Great Recession. Previous studies have treated regional and municipal economic resilience separately, with little attention to within-region variations in economic resilience. We contribute to the understanding of regional economic resilience by focusing on intra-regional economic recovery in cities. We also introduce an important yet overlooked regional factor in the context of American federalism – fragmentation of local governments. Examining US metropolitan areas from 2007 to 2017, we find that different dimensions of local fragmentation exert different impacts on intra-regional economic resilience. Our results indicate that a large number of municipal governments and greater service responsibilities borne by special and school districts lead to uneven economic recovery. In contrast, similar fiscal responsibilities taken by municipal governments promote inclusive income recovery.
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