Are PILOTs property taxes for nonprofits?

Nonprofit charitable organizations are exempt from most taxes, including local property taxes, but U.S. cities and towns increasingly request that nonprofits make payments in lieu of taxes (known as PILOTs). Strictly speaking, PILOTs are voluntary, though nonprofits may feel pressure to make them, particularly in high-tax communities. Evidence from Massachusetts indicates that PILOT rates, measured as ratios of payments to the value of local tax-exempt property, are higher in towns with higher property tax rates: a one percentage point higher property tax rate is associated with a 0.2 percentage point higher PILOT rate. PILOTs appear to discourage nonprofit activity: a one percentage point higher PILOT rate is associated with 0.8% lower real property ownership by local nonprofits, 0.2% lower total assets, and 0.2% lower revenues of local nonprofits. These patterns are consistent with voluntary PILOTs acting in a manner similar to low-rate, compulsory real estate taxes.     

Implementing property tax reforms in Bangalore: an actor-network perspective

Many municipal governments in developing countries are experiencing serious difficulties in dealing with the rapid growth of population in cities. Catalysed through processes of globalisation, the growth of cities, especially the so-called ‘mega-cities’, has not been matched by investments in infrastructure like roads and power due to the inability of local government organizations to collect adequate revenues from sources like property tax. Recognizing these difficulties, agencies such as the Asian Development Bank have initiated systems for property tax reforms in a number of Asian cities, including Bangalore. In this paper, we discuss the story of this reform process drawing upon the actor-network perspective on translations. We argue that such a perspective helps to go beyond studying innovation processes through the lens of ‘technology diffusion’, and provides a more interesting and insightful perspective of ‘technology translation’.     

国际大都市新城发展特点比较

进入21世纪,以北京、上海、广州为代表的中国大城市开始着眼于"大城市、大郊区"发展战略的实施,郊区新城成为这些城市新一轮城市发展的重要空间.早在20世纪中期,发达国家的一些大城市便实行了重点开发郊区新城的城市发展战略,在半个多世纪的发展过程中,形成了比较丰富的经验和教训.本文着重分析了国际大城市郊区新城建设的历史经验和发展趋势,期待能对我国大城市郊区新城规划建设有所裨益.     

Property tax and urban sprawl: Theory and implications for US cities

We develop a model that adopts a log-linear utility function with a variable elasticity of substitution greater than one and show that increasing the property tax reduces city size unambiguously. We then test this result using a dataset of effective property tax rates we developed using GIS methods for 448 urbanized areas. The empirical analysis estimates a regression equation relating an urbanized area's size to the property tax rate measure and other control variables such as population, income, agricultural rent, and transportation expenditure. We find that higher property taxes indeed result in smaller cities.     

小城镇的分化趋势评价及分化类型——以浙中地区为例

随着城市化进程的加快,小城镇开始分化与重组,一批具有要素集聚优势的小城镇逐步提升发展为小城市,另有大批小城镇则走向衰落。浙中小城镇发展目前正处于分化的关键时期,如果能够科学地评价浙中小城镇分化的趋势,将有助于浙中小城镇的发展。首先对影响小城镇分化的因素进行分析,建立小城镇分化趋势评价指标体系,采用合适的评价方法对小城镇分化进行评价,最后论述了浙中小城镇分化的基本类型和发展方向。     

The shrinking mining city: urban dynamics and contested territory

Shrinking mining cities — once prosperous settlements servicing a mining site or a system of mining sites — are characterized by long-term population and/or economic decline. Many of these towns experience periods of growth and shrinkage, mirroring the ebbs and flows of international mineral markets which determine the fortunes of the dominant mining corporation upon which each of these towns heavily depends. This dependence on one main industry produces a parallel development in the fluctuations of both workforce and population. Thus, the strategies of the main company in these towns can, to a great extent, determine future developments and have a great impact on urban management plans. Climate conditions, knowledge, education and health services, as well as transportation links, are important factors that have impacted on lifestyles in mining cities, but it is the parallel development with the private sector operators (often a single corporation) that constitutes the distinctive feature of these cities and that ultimately defines their shrinkage. This article discusses shrinking mining cities in capitalist economies, the factors underpinning their development, and some of the planning and community challenges faced by these cities in Australia, Canada, Japan and Mexico.     

Consolidation in the financial services industry: Are there industry gains for acquisitions of security firms?

We examine the revaluation of target security firms, their respective acquirers, both banks and non-banks, and their corresponding rivals before and after the major consolidation wave of 1994 to 1997. We find that target security firms as well as their respective acquirers are favorably revalued at the time of their acquisitions. The valuation effects are more favorable for non-bank acquirers and for acquirers with more growth potential and a lower degree of financial leverage. This suggests that investors expect greater synergies for mergers by better capitalized, faster growing, non-bank acquirers. In contrast to previous merger studies that generally find negative wealth effects for acquiring firms, cumulative abnormal returns (CARs) are on average positive for acquirers, targets, and portfolios of competing security firms, with the highest positive CARs for targets.     

东北地区城镇化的类型、特点及问题

改革开放以来,东北地区城镇化有了新的发展,大城市数量成倍增长,涌现出一批新型城镇,小城镇建设取得长足进步;东北地区城镇化具有鲜明特点,主要是大城市群集中,城镇化水平高,城镇类型齐全,同时存在城镇分布不均衡、农村城镇化发育不充分、资源枯竭型城镇转型任务重和城镇化率虚高等问题.     

论物业税开征对我国城市发展的影响

物业税属于地方税种,统一的物业税开征对于提高中国城市发展的效率和水平具有积极意义.我国的物业税体制改革应注意与地方公共服务的发展联系在一起,通过开征统一的物业税,构建公共财政框架,规范政府土地管理,改善城市公共服务,促进城市房地产业健康发展.     

'Out' in The Valley

Building on previous work by Castells, and Adler and Brenner, I explore the public character of a lesbian concentration in the Connecticut River Valley region of Massachusetts. From the late 1980s this area has gained national media attention for its lesbian population. Using a number of data sources I examine how lesbian residences and services are distributed in the Valley. I find a strong service core in the small city of Northampton, but residences, while showing some clustering around Northampton, reach well into a rural hinterland. In these rural towns lesbians live at low physical densities while forming relatively high proportions of the towns’ populations. Unlike previous studies of gay male and lesbian space that have tended to focus on center cities, this paper starts to chart this space on the low-density, semirural edge of a metropolitan area. Previous studies of residential concentrations of gay and lesbian persons have also found highly visible gay male territories - sometimes with a lesbian minority - but showed lesbians forming social networks or somewhat underground concentrations. Several parts of the Valley area are different; comprising a visibly lesbian space. This paper contributes to analyses of diverse populations in contemporary metropolitan and exurban regions and to discussions of methods in research on lesbian and gay populations.     

MULTIPLE LABOR GROUPS AND THEIR EFFECTS ON SMALL CITY AND TOWN SAMS AND CGE MODELS

This paper extends Schwarm and Cutler (2003) by incorporating three labor groups while using their methods to source data and provide an organizational framework that allows effective and straightforward creation of social accounting matrices (SAMs) and regional computable general equilibrium (CGE) models. While CGE models typically describe relatively large geographical areas and are therefore not able to capture the uniqueness of individual cities or towns within the region, our model allows simulations of small cities and towns that highlight regional similarities or differences. The differing effects of both an increase in manufacturing and a change in the sales tax are examined to demonstrate the insights and regional characteristics that such methods allow a researcher to obtain.     

西部油气资源型城市镇可持续发展形势及对策

随着经济社会的发展,油气资源型城市(镇)长期积累的结构性、体制性、生态性、功能性等方面矛盾和问题日益凸现。分析了西部油气资源型城市(镇)发展面临的挑战和机遇,提出了可持续发展措施建议。     

公共资本生产率的比较研究——基于长三角21城市公共资本边际生产率的实证分析

近10年来长三角的政府公共投资（分配）过多地流向了上海、苏州、杭州、南京等核心城市，使这些城市的人均公共资本拥有量大幅上升，从而引发了其边际生产率递减情况的发生。但它们的资本利用效率或技术创新水平没有明显提升（或下降），不足以抵消其资本边际生产率下降的趋势。对这些大城市的经济发展来说，公共投资对其经济增长的意义已经在数量上表现得不明显，但对正处于经济快速增长期且资本边际生产率呈递增态势的长三角外缘中小城市而言，公共投资却有着积极意义。     

Local tax management in Spain: A study of the conditional efficiency of provincial tax agencies

This paper reports an efficiency analysis of local tax management by provincial tax agencies in Spain based on supramunicipal delegation. To conduct this study, we used the robust order-m conditional model that directly accounts for some socioeconomic environmental variables to estimate the efficiency scores. This is a key issue, as tax agencies do not have control over the context in which they operate, and this may have a severe impact on their performance. Our results suggest that several of the provincial contextual variables accounted for (the net property tax base, population density and inhabitants of the municipalities that have delegated management to the provincial tier of government) have a negative impact on efficiency, especially at higher variable value levels. Considering that the provincial tier of government can opt to set up specific self-governing agencies to perform these tasks, we also applied metafrontier analysis to assess their share in inefficiency. We concluded that the establishment of such self-governing agencies does not lead to higher efficiency levels.     

三峡地区城镇可持续发展研究

三峡地区城镇的可持续发展具有非常重要的现实意义.通过对三峡地区城镇的发展现状和研究现状的分析,指出城镇可持续发展的必要性与可行性,运用区域经济理论中的增长极理论和资源配置理论,探讨了三峡地区城镇可持续发展的空间结构、功能定位与发展路径.     

从居民消费角度看城市化道路的选择

十六大报告明确提出了我国城市化应坚持走大中小城市和小城镇协调综合发展的道路,从而摈弃了改革开放以来实行的"农村人口就地城镇化"的小城镇化模式.笔者就此现象从居民消费的角度作了原因分析,并对我国现在的城市化道路提出了几点建议.     

武汉市域城镇体系空间结构分析

基于GIS ,对现阶段武汉市域城镇体系层次、等级规模及分布进行分析发现 ,城镇分布不平衡 ,沿城镇中心 (点 )向外围呈圈层分布和沿江沿路轴线扩展 ,卫星城分布也不均衡 ,重点镇不突出 ,集镇多而分散。用回归分析方法说明城镇分布的地域差异的原因 ,最后提出合理布局城镇体系的对策。     

Local employment, poverty, and property value effects of geographically-targeted tax incentives: An instrumental variables approach

The federal Empowerment Zone (EZ) program is a set of tax incentives targeted to areas of select cities. I estimate the effect of the EZ program on employment, poverty, and property values by comparing areas that received an EZ to areas that applied (and qualified), but were rejected. Because of endogeneity concerns, I use political representation to instrument for EZ designation. OLS results show a positive and statistically significant effect of the program on employment and poverty. IV estimates suggest the program had no effect on employment and poverty, and instead had a large statistically significant effect on property values.     

黑龙江垦区居民消费结构变动度分析

学者们依据不同的研究方法,对我国的农村、城镇以及某一省的消费结构均进行了比较广泛的研究。在已有研究基础上对黑龙江垦区居民人均消费结构的变动度进行了测算,结果表明在研究期间内,从消费支出构成项目看,黑龙江省垦区居民人均食品消费支出变动幅度最大,其他商品及服务支出变动幅度最小。     

关于中国大学城区位变迁驱动城市发展的思考

为提升城市竞争力,一些城市建设了大学城(高教园区);有些原来没有大学教育基础的城市也"邯郸学步",规划专门文教区、高校区.一些位于市中心的高校,出于各种原因考虑搬迁.实践证明,有些大学城确定发挥了应有作用,但有些却经营不善.在这个大背景下研究高校位置选择、变迁以及高校选址、发展与城市建设的关系,明确高校区位变迁影响因素,阐明大学城区位变迁对城市经济、文化、生态环境和空间结构的影响.