TY  - GEN
AU  - Beltran, Alejandro
AU  - Martínez-Vázquez, Jorge
AU  - Muñoz Miranda, Andrés
AU  - Slack, Enid
TI  - Property Tax Performance in Mexico: Asymmetric Assignment of Cadastral Management and the Role of Local Capacity
PY  - 2026
Y1  - 2026/06/09
DO  - 10.18235/0014072
AB  - Despite the equity and efficiency advantages of property taxes, revenues from this source are low for most local governments in Latin America and around the world. Weak cadastral management is a well-known obstacle to collecting these taxes. Countries' cadaster systems, which are used to identify, register, and value properties, are often outdated or poorly maintained. While lack of political will and the unpopularity of property taxes could explain this weak management, it could also be attributed to low government capacity more generally, since effective property tax collection hinges on a strong cadastral administration, which is complex and costly. Data from 2016 to 2022 from thousands of Mexican municipalities reveal that as the overall capacity of local governments increases, they specifically become more capable of managing cadasters and collecting more property taxes. Moreover, low-capacity governments increase their property tax income when they delegate cadastral management to the central government. These findings support an asymmetric approach to cadastral management in which low-capacity local governments delegate this responsibility while high-capacity ones retain it to collect more property tax revenue.
UR  - https://doi.org/10.18235/0014072
ER  -