Capitalization and the Median Voter.
分析了地方财政变量资本化如何影响中位选民决策，并探讨了在资本化条件下，通过实际投票而非用脚投票才能实现地方服务效率，为评估州和联邦政策提供框架。
The past decade has witnessed a strong interest among students of local public finance in models of voting with one's feet and in models of actual voting. Several authors, including Noel Edelson, Susan Rose-Ackerman, and Michael Lea, have recognized that these two types of voting must be considered simultaneously. The capitalization of local fiscal variables into house values, which is a by-product of voting with one's feet, influences the decisions of the median voter; and the pattern of local services that arises through actual voting influences the allocation of households to communities. A full-fleged merger of the two types of voting requires an analysis of capitalization in a model that considers both the housing market and the local voting process in a metropolitan area with diverse local governments financed by property taxes. Previous articles have focused on pieces of this puzzle. This paper reviews my attempt to bring these pieces together. My analysis reveals that, regardless of supply responses, capitalization is a feature of long-run equilibrium. Furthermore, in the presence of capitalization, an efficient pattern of local services cannot be obtained through voting with one's feet, but must be obtained instead through actual voting. If preferences in a community are not too diverse, the median voter will pick the efficient level of services with or without capitalization. However, the median voter's choice may not be efficient in an extremely heterogeneous community. In addition, capitalization breaks the link between tax payments and the choice of a community, and thereby insures that the property tax is not a benefit tax; in other words, it insures that housing is underconsumed relative to other goods. These results provide a framework for evaluating state and federal policies toward local governments. Without much heterogeneity within communities, one could achieve efficiency by eliminating the property tax or offsetting it with large subsidies to housing. These approaches are not realistic, however, and a second best solution is to cut back local services. The form of such a cutback is important. I show that tax limitations do not lead to efficiency, but that a second best solution could be obtained by redesigning intergovernmental grants.