PA 3311 / PS 3315 — Course Spine Datasets (Codebook)

Two related files. Use the panel as the primary course dataset.

PRIMARY: TX_City_Sales_Panel_2013_2024

Unit: Texas city × year. 13,930 rows; 1,180 cities; years 2013–2024. Long format (one row per city per year).

Sources (all free, no API key)

• Texas Comptroller, data.texas.gov — Sales Tax Allocation (vfba-b57j, annual sum of monthly payments), Quarterly Sales Tax Historical (7z4d-yf2c, taxable sales + outlets, 2016+), City–County Comparison (53pa-m7sm, local rate).
• Census 2022 Census of Governments directory — county, metro_status, and a 2022 reference population (time-invariant).

Variables

| Variable | Description | Units | Notes | |—|—|—|—| | city | City name | — | | | county | County | — | time-invariant | | metro_status | Metro (in a Metropolitan Statistical Area) vs. Non-Metro | category | time-invariant; OMB/Census CBSA 2023 | | cbsa_type | Metropolitan / Micropolitan / Neither | category | time-invariant; OMB/Census CBSA 2023 | | population_2022_ref | 2022 reference population | persons | fixed across years — denominator only | | year | Calendar year | 2013–2024 | | | sales_tax_alloc | Sales-tax allocation payments | $/yr | 2013–2024 | | sales_tax_alloc_per_capita | alloc / 2022 ref population | $ | | | sales_tax_alloc_real2024 | allocation in constant 2024 dollars | $/yr | CPI-U deflated | | sales_tax_alloc_per_capita_real2024 | real (2024$) allocation per capita | $ | derived | | taxable_sales | Total taxable sales | $/yr | 2016+ only (blank 2013–15) | | taxable_sales_per_capita | taxable_sales / 2022 ref population | $ | 2016+ | | business_outlets | Avg. active business outlets (quarterly mean) | count | 2016+ | | sales_tax_rate | Local sales-tax rate | percent | | | has_edc | 1 if the city operates a Type A and/or Type B economic-development corporation (EDC) sales tax | 0/1 | TX Comptroller EDC reports (see below) | | edc_type | A, B, A&B, or blank (none) | category | TX Comptroller EDC reports | | edc_first_report_year | Earliest fiscal year the city appears in EDC report data — left-censored proxy for adoption, not a clean date | year | TX Comptroller EDC reports |

Economic-development sales tax (has_edc, edc_type, edc_first_report_year) — Case A. Source: Texas Comptroller EDC Report Data (“big table,” data.texas.gov d4dd-rd43, annual EDC reports FY1997–present). 637 of 1,180 panel cities operate an EDC (B = 369, A&B = 190, A = 78). Use has_edc/edc_type as a cross-sectional treatment (EDC vs. non-EDC cities). Caveat: EDC reporting began in FY1997, so edc_first_report_year is left-censored at 1997 — by 1998 some 384 Texas cities had already adopted (TEDC). Most adoption therefore predates this 2013–2024 panel (only ~45 cities first report in 2013+), so the column does not support a clean adoption-date difference-in-differences; a credible adoption-date DiD would require an open-records request to the Comptroller for per-jurisdiction tax effective dates. Rebuild with scripts/add_edc.py. (4A/Type A authorized 1989; 4B/Type B 1991.)

metro_status and cbsa_type use the official OMB / Census CBSA delineation (2023): a city is Metro if its county belongs to a Metropolitan Statistical Area, Non-Metro otherwise (Micropolitan or neither). cbsa_type keeps the full three-way distinction.

Panel notes / teaching points

• Mostly balanced: 1,143 of 1,180 cities have all 12 years; the rest incorporated or began receiving allocations mid-period (unbalanced panel — a real teaching point).
• population_2022_ref is fixed at 2022, so per-capita values change only through the numerator. Free annual city population isn’t available without the Census API; flagged as a deliberate simplification.
• Taxable sales/outlets begin in 2016, so 2013–2015 are blank for those columns.
• 2020 shows the COVID demand shock in most cities — a great motivating example (e.g., Austin allocation dips 2019→2020 then surges).

How this single file powers each module

• Descriptives & graphs: filter to one year (e.g., 2024) → skewed distributions of sales_tax_alloc_per_capita, histograms, mean vs. median, outliers.
• z-scores & probability: standardize per-capita sales tax within a year.
• Hypothesis testing / CIs: mean per-capita sales tax with a confidence interval (one year).
• Independent-samples t-test: per-capita sales tax for Metro vs. Non-Metro (one year); or per-capita taxable sales for EDC vs. non-EDC cities (has_edc) — a Case A treatment comparison (note the skew: EDC median $24k vs. $10k, but means not significantly different — a selection/skew lesson).
• Paired-samples t-test: sales_tax_alloc 2019 vs. 2023 (or 2019 vs. 2020, COVID) — same cities, two years.
• Correlation & simple regression: sales_tax_alloc ~ taxable_sales (one year).
• Multiple regression + OVB: sales_tax_alloc ~ business_outlets (simple) → add taxable_sales (watch the coefficient move).
• Trends/growth (panel bonus): plot one city over time; compute year-over-year growth; compare metro vs. non-metro recovery after 2020.
• Final project: students pose their own question from the panel.

In Excel, get a single-year cross-section with Data → Filter on year, or a PivotTable.

SUPPLEMENT: TX_City_Finance_2022 (has debt)

Cross-section, one row per city (N=1,202), 2022. Carries the same city/county/county_fips/place_fips/metro_status/cbsa_type/population keys as the panel, and adds variables not available annually: property_tax, gen_sales_tax, total_taxes, tax_per_capita, lt_debt_os, st_debt_os, total_debt_os, debt_per_capita — from the U.S. Census 2022 Census of Governments individual unit file (amounts in dollars; debt = long-term 49U + short-term 64V). Use this if you want a debt outcome for the regression/OVB module. No fund balance exists in any free source (so the literal Chapter 8 fund-balance variable can’t be reproduced). ~30% of small cities carry $0 debt (real; good for discussing zeros/skew).

Summary statistics (auto-generated)

All dollar amounts in nominal dollars unless marked real. Heavy right-skew (mean ≫ median) throughout — itself a teaching point.

Panel — all 13,930 city-years (2013–2024)

Cross-section — 1,202 cities (2022)

The same tables ship as a Summary worksheet inside each .xlsx, alongside a Codebook worksheet of these definitions.

Built 2026-06-01. Rebuild: python3 build_panel.py (primary) and python3 build_dataset.py (supplement). Each auto-downloads its source files (Census finance zip + OMB CBSA file) to _raw/.