CITIES, CAPITAL MARKETS AND PROPERTY TAX LIENS

This dissertation investigates the growing integration between global capital markets and municipal finance. In the United States, financial activities make up an increasingly large proportion of overall economic activity, an expansion which is often referred to as financialization. One of the primary ways that financial markets have grown is through the transformation of various income streams into new financial instruments. In recent decades, financialization has drawn land, local governments and the built environment into relationships with capital markets in unprecedented ways. I examine a key and under-explored moment in the financialization of urban governance: the first experiments in municipally-sponsored property tax lien securitization beginning in the 1990s. Most cities that engaged in this form of financial engineering quickly abandoned it, with the notable exception of New York City, which has continued its tax lien securitization program for almost two decades. My study considers the experiences of these cities, how and why they undertook securitization, and the results of their efforts. Examining qualitative and quantitative data including ratings agency documents, private placement memoranda for tax lien backed securities, and the New York City Departmen