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During the 1980s, many urban areas in the United States experienced a widespread expansion in the use of drugs in general and crack cocaine in particular. This expansion of crack use is thought to have resulted in various behavioral changes, e.g., an increase in crime and an increase in expenditures to reduce drug use. This paper examines how local police spending responded to the spread of crack cocaine. We use a pooled cross-section, time series data set consisting of 18 cities over the period 1982 through 1989 to estimate the impact of crack cocaine use on police spending, and find that police expenditures increased significantly as crack cocaine use rose.

INTRODUCTION Much has been made over time of the existence of a marriage tax and subsidy. This literature has focused on the issue of the equity of a marriage tax [...], The effect of the differential tax treatment of married and unmarried couples, the so-called marriage tax, on the rate and timing of marriages is analyzed Using time-series data, we study the effect of the marriage tax on the fraction of unmarried women over the age of 15 years who marry in each year. We find no effect We also investigate whether couples shift the timing of their marriage from the end of one year to the beginning of the next year in response to an increase in the marriage tax. We find empirical support for this behavior.

Travel costs and metropolitan decentralization account for differences in the employment rates, wages, durations and travel time between white and black youth. The 'spatial mismatch hypothesis' accounts for this phenomenon, stating that inner-city blacks are at a disadvantage relative to suburban residents as jobs shift toward the suburbs. Previous findings have supported this hypothesis by documenting an inverse relation between job access in terms of travel time and employment rates for blacks, across metropolitan areas. The persistence of the labor market mismatch is examined in the context of barriers to the relocation of blacks to the suburbs, in order to explain why blacks do not adjust to job decentralization by moving out of the inner cities. Analysis of data from the 1981-1982 National Longitudinal Survey Youth Cohort suggests that high travel costs in terms of time for blacks living in these areas prevent them from commuting to follow jobs.

Two specifications of a simple general equilibrium model of a local public goods economy with median voters setting tax-expenditure package in each location arepresented. Property tax and local income tax are compared within the specifications of the model. It is shown that price, income, utility level and allocation of individuals across jurisdictions are dependent on the tax regime used.

Summary. This paper examines the effect of access to employment opportunities on the employment probabilities of black and white youth aged 16-19 years. The empirical results, based on data from the central cities of 43 SMSAs, suggest that the nearness of jobs is an important determinant of teenager employment probability.

Economists have devoted much attention to understanding the effects of state–local fiscal policies, particularly taxes, on the growth of state-level employment. However, no one has investigated whether the effects differ by wage level. Using a state-level panel data set, the authors investigate the link between state–local taxes and the growth of employment for three wage-level categories. The authors find relatively consistent evidence supporting the proposition that the response of employment growth to changes in taxes differs by wage level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]