Readings in State and Local Public Finance

"Readings in State and Local Public Finance by Drennan and Netzer is highly suitable to accompany the Fisher text, at least based on the first edition of the book. The articles serve several purposes:
* They provide exposure to some of the well-known economists in the field, such as Richard and Peggy Musgrave, James Buchanan, Charles Tiebout, and Peter Mieszkowski.
* They illustrate some of the controversy in the field, for example, by comparing Buchanan's views on which level of government should be responsible for redistributing income with the view of the Musgraves.
* They go into more depth than is possible in a text, in specific topic areas, such as the Tax Reform Act of 1986 and urban fiscal problems.
* They push the students hard in some areas and thereby give a sense of the potential for more sophisticated conceptual and empirical analysis, as in the Mieszkowski and Zodrow article and the Ladd and Yinger article." Helen F. Ladd, Professor of Public Policy at Duke University

"I think that this is an excellent collection. It is well organized, the introductions by the editors are helpful, the selections are sensible, and it would be an ideal supplement for State and Local Public Finance by Ronald Fisher. The Fisher book is very good, but it does not present the analytical arguments in much depth or with much sense for the broader issues in the literature. The readings in this collection add those dimensions." John Yinger, Professor of Economics, Syracuse University