Abstract
Does the rate of property taxation in an urban area influence its occurrence of “urban sprawl”? Theory, which relies on the land value component of this taxation, is not clear on this. Furthermore, methodological concerns in earlier empirical analyses of this issue cast doubt on their reliability. The proposed use of panel data from 400 plus United States urban areas, various measures of population density as dependent variables, and a more fully specified set of explanatory variables results in greater confidence that the estimated effect of an urban area’s rate of property taxation on its population density is valid.