Although municipal budgets fared well on average during the Great Depression, many suffered greatly. In newspapers and trade publications, observers blamed distress in real estate markets as well as the rise in tax delinquency and real debt obligations. This paper uses a sample of large US cities to estimate how those factors influenced municipal revenue and expenditures during the Depression. Results show that city finances were stable when facing the housing market distress that plagued many urban areas in the 1930s. The principal elements of fiscal strain were actually rising delinquency, which was associated with diminished revenue and operating expenditures, and growing real debt obligations, which were associated with reduced capital outlays. Thus local budgets were driven more by the behavior of taxpayers and obligations to city creditors than by the downturn in real estate markets. These findings illuminate municipal governments’ responses to the fiscal strain wrought by the Depression.

尽管大萧条期间市政预算的平均表现不错，但许多政府蒙受了沉重打击。在报纸和贸易出版物中，观察家们将罪魁祸首归咎于房地产市场的困境，税款拖欠和实际债务负担的增加。本文使用了一个美国大城市的样本来估计在大萧条期间这些因素如何影响市政收支。结果表明，面对1930年代困扰许多城市地区的住房市场困境，城市财政状况稳定。财政紧张的主要因素实际上是违法行为增加，这与收入和营业支出的减少有关，以及实际债务义务的增加，与资本支出的减少有关。因此，地方预算更多是由纳税人的行为和对城市债权人的义务所驱动，而不是房地产市场低迷。这些发现阐明了市政府对大萧条造成的财政压力的反应。