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Unveiling Hidden Districts: Assessing the Adoption Patterns of Business Improvement Districts in California

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  • Brooks, Leah

Abstract

I use the results of a survey on the adoption patterns of Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) in the state of California to begin filling a gap in our understanding of the role and prominence of the broader class of special assessment districts. A BID is formed when a majority of merchants or property owners in a commercial neighborhood votes in favor of a package of local taxes and expenditures; once passed, assessments are legally binding on all members of the commercial neighborhood. I find that roughly half of all larger cities in California have at least one BID; among the universe of cities in four Southern California counties, that figure falls to about one–fifth. I combine the survey data with demographic, institutional and political data and find that BID adoption modestly increases in residential heterogeneity and more strongly decreases in a city's year of incorporation, which I interpret as a measure of the importance of the collective action problem in older commercial neighborhoods.

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  • Brooks, Leah, 2007. "Unveiling Hidden Districts: Assessing the Adoption Patterns of Business Improvement Districts in California," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 60(1), pages 5-24, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:ntj:journl:v:60:y:2007:i:1:p:5-24
    DOI: 10.17310/ntj.2007.1.01
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    4. Leah Brooks, 2006. "Does Spatial Variation in Heterogeneity Matter? Assessing the Adoption Patterns of Business Improvement Districts," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 23(6), pages 1219-1234, November.
    5. Alberto Alesina & Reza Baqir & Caroline Hoxby, 2004. "Political Jurisdictions in Heterogeneous Communities," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(2), pages 348-396, April.
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    Cited by:

    1. Cheung, Ron, 2008. "The interaction between public and private governments: An empirical analysis," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(3), pages 885-901, May.
    2. Miller, Mark V., 2013. "Valuing local collective goods: the case of business improvement districts," 2013 Annual Meeting, August 4-6, 2013, Washington, D.C. 150635, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    3. Pengju Zhang, 2018. "The unintended impact of tax and expenditure limitations on the use of special districts: the politics of circumvention," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 19(1), pages 21-50, February.
    4. KONDO Keisuke & OKUBO Toshihiro, 2020. "The Revitalization of Shrinking Cities: Lessons from the Japanese Service Sector," Discussion papers 20050, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    5. Jonathan B. Justice & Chris Skelcher, 2009. "Analysing Democracy in Third‐Party Government: Business Improvement Districts in the US and UK," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(3), pages 738-753, September.
    6. Leah Brooks, 2006. "Volunteering To Be Taxed: Business Improvement Districts And The Extra-Governmental Provision Of Public Safety," Departmental Working Papers 2006-04, McGill University, Department of Economics.
    7. Meltzer, Rachel, 2012. "Understanding Business Improvement District formation: An analysis of neighborhoods and boundaries," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(1), pages 66-78.
    8. Brooks, Leah, 2008. "Volunteering to be taxed: Business improvement districts and the extra-governmental provision of public safety," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(1-2), pages 388-406, February.
    9. Brooks, Leah & Strange, William C., 2011. "The micro-empirics of collective action: The case of business improvement districts," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(11), pages 1358-1372.
    10. Wonhyung Lee, 2016. "Struggles to form business improvement districts (BIDs) in Los Angeles," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 53(16), pages 3423-3438, December.
    11. Andrew Hanson, 2021. "Taxes and Economic Development: An Update on the State of the Economics Literature," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 35(3), pages 232-253, August.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • R5 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Regional Government Analysis
    • H7 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations

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