Conceptualizing high local fiscal stress as a variable which includes low fiscal capacity, high local tax effort and high local need requires building a typology reflecting this conceptualization. This study builds such a typology for 166 counties in the northeastern United States and examines the effects of variables taken from a series of…

Demographic and socioeconomic changes are reshaping the fortunes of small communities and pose policy issues. Such communities find it especialy difficult to deal with rapid growth or decline, or a switch from one to the other. Small communities now enjoy greater autonomy, but at the cost of reduced federal aid. Freed from federal mandates, each…