This paper brings together the concepts of fiscal health and resilience as they are understood in a contemporary context while seeking to establish whether a quantitative model of analysis can be meaningfully derived and applied to major American cities. Using major recessions from 1977 to 2015 as an exogenous shock, the values for fiscal health are assessed temporally to arrive at an assessment for whether a certain group of cities is inherently more resilient than others. Given subjective nature of the concepts used, this paper also grapples with the fact that any results must be analyzed within a local context. The end result is aimed to produce a tool for cities to compare how they performed in the wake of a recession and eventually work towards an understanding of what policy actions can be done to make a city more resilient. / Master of Urban and Regional Planning

A sizeable literature documents patterns of competition between local governments in metropolitan regions, while also exploring variation in such local government financial attributes as efficiency, budget size, fiscal disparity, and service equity, which are frequently bound together under the concept of fiscal health. However, the concept of fiscal health is broader and more sophisticated than any one fiscal measure, and empirical studies tend to focus only on multi-purpose governments. This study brings these concepts together to investigate how interlocal competition affects the fiscal health of different government types. This study answers three questions: What is a measure of fiscal health applicable to different government types? How does competition among cities and towns affect local fiscal health? How does the proliferation of special districts affect the fiscal health of local governments? This study measures the concept of fiscal health using factor analysis and examines the effects of competition among different government types on the fiscal health of both municipalities and special districts. Utilizing a pooled cross-sectional time-series approach and data from the U.S. Census Bureau for metropolitan statistical areas for every five years between 1972 and 2012,the study finds that competition among municipalities has adverse influences on the fiscal health of both municipalities and special districts, whereas interlocal competition among special districts results in improved fiscal health for special districts without a significant effect on the fiscal health of municipalities.

This dissertation analyzes how local governments adapt to the fiscal stress of major disasters. Unifying theories of fiscal stress with emergency management theories, the dissertation presents a model of what influences local governments coping strategy use following disasters. Using new survey data and secondary financial data on cities, counties, and school districts that experienced Hurricane Harvey, findings show that local governments adapt in a variety of ways; of 137 local governments that responded, 66 percent used some number of coping strategies, with only 5 of 62 possible strategies not being used by any local governments. For those which did adapt, they on average used 7.06 strategies, and tended to show a preference towards revenue increasing strategies and rebuilding the community through new capital projects, with less emphasis on expenditure cuts compared to some prior literature findings on fiscal stress. The results indicate that local governments step up and provide new services necessary during the recovery process, to serve their community, despite fiscal stress. A negative binomial model shows partial support for the hypotheses that local governments with lower prior fiscal condition and greater hazard exposure will use more coping strategies. The findings show mixed results on whether institutional rules that restrict financial structures lead school districts to use more coping strategies than cities during the recovery process.

L’objectif de cette thèse est d’étudier si la dette des gouvernements locaux doit faire l’objet d’inquiétudes, en se focalisant sur les cas français et canadiens (Québec et Ontario principalement). Le premier chapitre réalise une analyse descriptive des territoires à l’étude, et montre également que la dette municipale est nettement plus faible en Ontario qu’en France ou au Québec. Le deuxième chapitre analyse la santé financière des 30 plus grandes villes françaises et canadiennes. Il ressort notamment que les municipalités ayant un fort endettement ne sont pas nécessairement caractérisées par une situation financière précaire. Le troisième chapitre explore l’hypothèse d’une capitalisation négative de la dette publique municipale dans les valeurs foncières résidentielles moyennes de 130 municipalités au Québec et en Ontario. Les différents tests menés conduisent à des résultats instables, ne nous permettant pas de confirmer hors de tout doute notre hypothèse initiale. Un constat demeure cependant : le fardeau des ménages québécois qui doivent absorber des dettes publiques plus importantes est compensé par des valeurs de logement et un endettement privé plus faibles par rapport aux ménages de l’Ontario. Enfin, le quatrième chapitre étudie l’hypothèse d’un lien entre le degré d’intégration au sein du bloc communal (EPCI à fiscalité propre et communes membres) et la dette consolidée de ce dernier. Les tests réalisés font ressortir un impact négatif de l’intégration sur la dette du secteur communal et sur la dette des communes membres, indiquant qu’une plus grande intégration constituerait un levier efficace pour contribuer, avec les limitations légales, à une bonne maitrise de l’endettement du bloc / The aim of this thesis is to study if the debt of local governments is a threat to their fiscal health, by focusing on French and Canadian cases (mainly Québec and Ontario). The first chapter provides a descriptive analysis of the studied territories, and reveals that the local debt is significantly lower in Ontario, in comparison with France and Québec. The second chapter focuses on the fiscal health of the 30 largest French and Canadian cities. It shows that municipalities with a large debt are not always in a precarious financial situation. The third chapter investigates the hypothesis of a negative capitalization of municipal public debt in the average residential property values in 130 municipalities of Québec and Ontario. Our estimations give mixed results, and do not allow us to confirm our initial hypothesis beyond any doubt. Nevertheless, the household’s burden in Québec which have to finance larger municipal debts is offset by lower property prices and lower private indebtedness compared to Ontario’s households. Finally, the fourth chapter examines a French issue: the potential link between the integration level within intermunicipal community (EPCI and member municipalities) and the consolidated debt. Results show a negative effect of integration on the consolidated debt and on the debt of member municipalities, suggesting that a larger integration could be a complementary method to the legal restrictions of local indebtedness.