We study the $L^{q}$ -spectrum of measures in the plane generated by certain nonlinear maps. In particular, we consider attractors of iterated function systems consisting of maps whose components are $C^{1+\alpha }$ and for which the Jacobian is a lower triangular matrix at every point subject to a natural domination condition on the entries. We calculate the $L^{q}$ -spectrum of Bernoulli measures supported on such sets by using an appropriately defined analogue of the singular value function and an appropriate pressure function.

For the class of self-similar measures in $\mathbb{R}^{d}$ with overlaps that are essentially of finite type, we set up a framework for deriving a closed formula for the $L^{q}$-spectrum of the measure for $q\geq 0$. This framework allows us to include iterated function systems that have different contraction ratios and those in higher dimension. For self-similar measures with overlaps, closed formulas for the $L^{q}$-spectrum have only been obtained earlier for measures satisfying Strichartz’s second-order identities. We illustrate how to use our results to prove the differentiability of the $L^{q}$-spectrum, obtain the multifractal dimension spectrum, and compute the Hausdorff dimension of the measure.