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In the wake of the euro area crisis, the debate on instruments to deepen economic integration among its members has intensified, among others putting forward a fiscal stabilization capacity for Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) members. Contributions made so far to further this idea have mostly concentrated on the expenditure side and possible stabilization properties. This analysis reviews the most important proposals and discusses design choices and institutional conditions to develop the revenue side of such a fiscal instrument.

The recent scholarship has made distinction between two generations of literature in fiscal federalism. The study has critically analysed the first generation theory and second generation theory of fiscal federalism. Though the latter approaches the problem of fiscal federalism from different perspectives, it does not challenge but complements the former. The paper argues that the second generation theory is an ongoing effort to build a theory in response to fiscal challenges facing a number of countries. In brief, it is aimed at explaining present-day institutional arrangements which can no longer be adequately explained by employing the first generation theory.

This paper examines how fiscal incentives affect the policy choices of local governments in the context of China. Based on exogenous changes in the intergovernmental revenue-sharing scheme, we construct a simulated instrumental variable to resolve the endogeneity problem. We find evidence that local governments shifted their efforts from fostering industrial growth to “urbanizing” China, i.e., to developing the real estate and construction sectors, when their retention rate of enterprise tax revenue was reduced. The increase from the new revenue source compensated for half of the losses in revenue that resulted from the reassignment of fiscal rights. The reassignment had also the effect of retarding the industrial growth of domestically-owned firms in particular.

Economic models of Fiscal Federalism, according to different settings, are generally linear and static, offering unique and deterministic solutions starting with simplifying assumptions. This paper rises from the idea to investigate how the decision-makers, abandoning their traditional economic models and focusing, instead, the attention on innovative components of evolutionary economics, can achieve better performance results, to organize and to optimize an economic system based on Fiscal Federalism. For this purpose, Fiscal Federalism must be understood as a dense network of economic relationships between different complex adaptive and co-evolving systems, the jurisdictions, linked by strong interdependencies. A better understanding of the links between interdependence will be provided by the Kauffman’ NK-model. The relevance of the NK-model in the study of economic organizations has been detected several times in the literature. These studies, however, neglect the problem of co-evolution, which instead underpins this paper.

In this paper we offer a comprehensive and updated review of the impact of fiscal decentralization on the economy, society and politics. We start with the examination of two crucial and yet unsolved issues in the literature on decentralization: its proper measurement and the potential endogeneity of fiscal decentralization with many of the variables of interest we are trying to investigate. Then we discuss the main findings in the existing literature on the effects of decentralization on a relevant list of socio-economic variables. The impact of fiscal decentralization reforms on political institutions is also considered. Complete answers to the many questions on the impact of fiscal decentralization are not likely to be certain but overall there are reasons to be optimistic about the overall positive impact of the decentralized systems that have been introduced all over the world in the past several decades. The survey offered in this paper by necessity has to be selective but it presents a balanced view of what is known and what is not yet known opening room for further research and practice on fiscal decentralization.

The effectiveness of public funds in increasing public employment has long been a question on public and labor economists’ minds. In most federal countries local governments employ large fractions of the working population, meaning that a tool for stimulating local public employment can substantially affect the overall unemployment level. This paper asks whether general grants to lower-level governments have the potential of doing so. Applying the regression kink design to the Swedish grant system, we are able to estimate causal effects of intergovernmental grants on personnel in different local government sectors. Our robust conclusion is that personnel in the central administration increased substantially after a marginal increase in grants, but that such an effect was lacking both for total personnel and personnel in child care, schools, elderly care, social welfare and in technical services. We suggest several potential reasons for these results, such as heterogeneous treatment effects and bureaucratic influence in the local decision-making process.

En este trabajo se ofrece una panorámica de las evaluaciones que las CCAA de régimen común han hecho públicas en marzo de 2014 sobre el modelo de financiación autonómica aprobado en 2009 y sobre su aplicación por la administración central. Para ello, la exposición se organiza a partir del análisis sucesivo de los principios de suficiencia, equidad horizontal y autonomía. El trabajo se complementa con una valoración de los resultados del modelo entre 2009 y 2012 y concluye con las propuestas de reforma sobre las que, aparentemente, el consenso autonómico es mayor., This paper summarizes the judgments expressed by Spanish Autonomous Communities in March 2014 on the regional financing model passed in 2009 and its implementation by the central government. With this aim, the article is organized around the principles of sufficiency, horizontal equity and autonomy. The analysis is complemented by our own assessment of the model results between 2009 and 2012 and concludes with those reform proposals on which consensus among regions is apparently greater.

Cooperative federations are usually characterized by the existence of bailout guarantees and intergovernmental transfer schemes. This paper explores whether such features of cooperative federations lead to subnational soft budget constraints using panel data from the German States covering the 1975–2005 period. The methodology is based on the premise that subnational governments’ borrowing will exhibit vertical and horizontal strategic interactions if they operate under soft budget constraints. Therefore, a test for strategic interactions in subnational borrowing can be used to infer whether a cooperative federation like Germany is susceptible to soft budget constraints. The results suggest that state borrowing in Germany exhibited horizontal but not vertical interactions during the time-frame of the analysis. This indicates (i) that German States faced soft budget constraints and (ii) that they were more concerned about the likelihood of a bailout than about its volume.

The effects of inter-government fiscal arrangements on variation in regional economic growth are analyzed for Russia, a country with large cross-regional differences and considerable fiscal redistribution. Moreover, fiscal reforms implemented in the first half of 2000s, which followed to some extent scientific advice, make analysis of this case particularly interesting. We observe that post-reform fiscal redistribution became more rational and this resulted in fewer incentive distortions. We found no negative association between federal transfers and regional growth. Furthermore, there are no major differences between donor and recipient regions in the way how inter-governmental fiscal arrangements influence regional growth. Overall, fiscal policy variables have become less important growth determinants than it was the case in the 1990s. Still further reforms in federalism arrangements would be desirable.

A lump-sum intergovernmental transfer has a “price effect”, as well as an “income effect”, because it allows the recipient government to reduce its tax rate, which lowers its marginal cost of public funds, while still providing the same level of public service. This reduction in the effective price of providing the public service helps to explain the “flypaper effect”—the empirical observation that a lump-sum grant has a much larger effect on spending than an increase in personal income. Contrary to the assertions of Mieszkowski (Modern Public Finance, 1994) and Hines and Thaler (J. Econ. Perspect. 9:217–226, 1995), a model of a benevolent local government financing its expenditures with a distortionary tax predicts flypaper effects from lump-sum grants that are similar to those observed in many econometric studies.

Fiscal competition and tax harmonisation are two of the main current issues in the enlarged European Union. Achieving these goals and thus improving the EU economic governance is partially dependent by the way we understand and practice the so-called fiscal federalism and fiscal decentralization at the national and European level. Our paper aims to emphasize the similitude and differences between fiscal federalism and fiscal decentralization and revealing the way in which the functioning of the European Union is affected by them.

This paper examines broadly the intergovernmental structure in the Middle East and North Africa region, which has one of the most centralized government structures in the world. The authors address the reasons behind this centralized structure by looking first at the history behind the tax systems of the region. They review the Ottoman taxation system, which has been predominantly influential as a model, and discuss its impact on current government structure. They also discuss the current intergovernmental structure by examining the type and degree of decentralization in five countries representative of the region: Egypt, Iran, West Bank/Gaza, Tunisia, and Yemen. Cross-country regression analysis using panel data for a broader set of countries leads to better understanding of the factors behind heavy centralization in the region. The findings show that external conflicts constitute a major roadblock to decentralization in the region.

Excessive borrowing by subnational governments is considered to be one of the perils of fiscal decentralization. On the other hand, fiscal decentralization might ensure the fiscal stability of the public sector by constraining Leviathan governments. Since the impact of decentralized government on fiscal outcomes is therefore ambiguous from a theoretical perspective, we explore this question empirically with a panel of 17 OECD countries over the 1975-2001 period. Our findings suggest that expenditure decentralization significantly reduces public indebtedness, whereas tax decentralization and vertical fiscal imbalances are insignificant.

An ideal scheme of intergovernmental transfer should be determined by equalization and efficiency with taking account of fiscal effort of local governments. In this regard, this paper provides a comprehensive review of Chinese transfer system since the decentralized taxation system (DTS) starting from 1994. To begin with, we make numerical analysis on equalization in economic and fiscal aspects since the 1994 DTS reform. A Panel Data model is then developed to analyze correlations between each of three types of transfer and fiscal effort of provincial governments based on Chinese experience during 1994–2006. The authors further research respective situation of eastern, middle and western parts of China and finally draw a conclusion through the above analysis that the current fiscal transfer system does not tangibly contribute towards improving fiscal effort devoted by local governments. In addition to that, it even has a somewhat counter-equalizing effect.

To remove cascading effect of taxes and provide a common nation-wide market for goods and services, India is moving towards introduction of Goods and Services Tax (GST). Under the proposed indirect tax reform both Central and State Governments will have concurrent taxation power to levy tax on supply of goods and services. It is expected that the proposed regime will improve tax collection and minimize leakage, as both Central and State Tax Administrations will monitor and assess same set of taxpayers. There are several challenges before introduction of GST and these can be classified into two broad heads - a) GST Design and Structure related, and b) GST Administration and Institutional. On design related issues, broad consensus on choice of revenue neutral rates (RNRs), harmonization of GST rate(s) across States, harmonization of list of exempted and excluded goods and services and thresholds for mandatory GST registration across States are yet to be reached. Similarly, there are several issues involved in tax administration (between Central and State Tax Administrations and also across State Tax Administrations) which are not yet solved. Taking cognizance of discussion available in the public domain this paper attempts to provide a broad contour of the proposed GST regime and highlights major challenges which require immediate attention of the Governments.

This paper provides a simple political agency model to explain the effect of political alignment between different tiers of government on intergovernmental grants and election outcomes. Key features of the model are: (i) rational voters interpret public good provision as a signal of incumbent competence, and (ii) realistically, grants are unobservable to voters. In this setting, the national government will use the grant as an instrument to manipulate the public good signal for the benefit of aligned local incumbents and challengers. Then, aligned municipalities receive more grants, with this effect being stronger before elections, and the probability that the aligned local incumbent is re-elected is higher. These predictions are tested using a regression discontinuity design on a new data-set on Italian municipalities. At a second empirical stage, the national grant to municipalities is instrumented with an alignment indicator, allowing estimation of a flypaper effect for Italian municipalities.

In the EU there are longstanding and ongoing pressures towards a tax that is levied on the EU level to substitute for national contributions. We discuss conditions under which such a transition can make sense, starting from what we call a "decentralization theorem of taxation" that is analogous to Oates (1972) famous result that in the absence of spill-over effects and economies of scale decentralized public good provision weakly dominates central provision. We then drop assumptions that turn out to be unnecessary for this results. While spill-over effects of taxation may call for central rules for taxation, as long as spill-over effects do not depend on the intra-regional distribution of the tax burden, decentralized taxation plus tax coordination is found superior to a union-wide tax.

In many federations, fiscal equalization schemes soften fiscal imbalances across the member states. Such schemes usually imply that a member state internalizes only a small fraction of the additional tax revenue from an expansion of the state-specific tax base, while the remainder of the additional tax revenue is redistributed horizontally or vertically. We address the question as to which extent state-level authorities in such a federation under-exploit their tax bases. By means of a stylized model we show that the state authorities in such a federation have incentives to align the effective tax rates of the state residents to the internalized marginal return from a stricter enforcement of the tax law. We empirically test the model using two approaches. In a state-level approach, we explore whether the state-specific internalized marginal returns matter for the states investments in tax enforcement. In a micro-econometric approach, using OLS regressions and natural-experiments, we explore whether internalized marginal returns matter for the effectiveness of the states tax enforcement activities, captured by the tax deductions granted to tax units. All our estimates support the results from our theoretical model.

In the European Union (EU), there are longstanding and ongoing pressures toward a tax that is levied on the EU level to substitute for national contributions. We discuss conditions under which such a transition can make sense, starting from what we call a ‘decentralization theorem of taxation’ that is analogous to Oates’ (1972) famous result that in the absence of spillover effects and economies of scale, decentralized public good provision weakly dominates central provision. We then drop assumptions that turn out to be unnecessary for this result. While spillover effects of taxation may call for central rules for taxation, as long as spillover effects do not depend on the intra-regional distribution of the tax burden, decentralized taxation plus tax coordination is found superior to a union-wide tax.

A theoretical analysis considers the impact of a typical system of redistributive “fiscal equalization” transfers on the tax effort of local jurisdictions. More specifically, it shows that the marginal contribution rate, i.e. the rate at which an increase in the tax base reduces those transfers, might be positively associated with the local tax rate while the volume of grants received is likely to be inversely related to the tax rate. These predictions are tested in an empirical analysis of the tax policy of German municipalities. In order to identify the incentive effect the analysis exploits discontinuities in the rules of the fiscal equalization system as well as policy changes. The empirical results support the existence of an incentive effect, suggesting that the high marginal contribution rates induce the municipalities to set significantly higher business tax rates compared with a situation without fiscal equalization.

This paper provides a political-economy explanation of the degree of centralization in economic policy making. To determine which policies are to be centralized, regions select representatives who then negotiate the degree of centralization and the regional cost shares of centrally decided policies. We show that the resulting degree of centralization is suboptimally low. Voters strategically delegate to representatives who are averse to public spending and hence prefer decentralized decisions in order to reduce their region's cost share. When spillovers are asymmetric, strategic delegation is stronger at the periphery than at the center.

Combining local council election data with fiscal data on grant allocations in a German state, we study partisan favoritism in the allocation of intergovernmental transfers within a quasi-experimental framework. We hypothesize that state governments pursue two distinct goals when allocating grants to local governments: (1) helping aligned local parties win the next election and (2) buying off unaligned municipalities that may obstruct the state government’s policy agenda. We argue furthermore that the relative importance of these two goals depends on local political conditions. In line with this argument, we show empirically that the effect of political alignment on grant receipts varies depending on the degree of local support for the state government. While previous contributions find that aligned local governments always tend to receive larger transfers, our results imply that the political economy of intergovernmental transfers is more intricate.

In the literature on fiscal federalism, vertical fiscal imbalances have been widely studied, while the theme of horizontal fiscal imbalances and inequality between local governments’ fiscal capacities is still less explored. This paper contributes to fill the gap. A new method to compute fiscal capacities based on regression analysis is proposed, which can overcome some of the drawbacks of traditional methods such the representative tax system. This new approach is then employed to evaluate the fiscal capacities of Italian municipalities over the period 2002-2010. Finally two global measures of the horizontal fiscal imbalance are then used to evaluate the equity implication of a major policy change occurred in 2008 in Italian municipal finance.

This paper models the behavior of states in a federal country wishing to attract foreign firms to locate within their own individual jurisdictions. The essential intertemporal character of this decision is modeled as a multi-stage game to attract such foreign investment in these states. It is found that, when states with unequal political or economic infrastructure compete, the resulting Nash equilibrium profiles are inefficient. Under certain conditions, states that have won once, can “allow” a rival to win in a subsequent stage. The resulting Nash Equilibrium is more efficient. If the option of “allowing” a rival to win is not available, then states may resort to “suicide” strategies defined as outcomes created by history of losses.

This paper empirically investigates the underlying determinants of expenditure decentral- ization, based on the predictions of a new political economy model of partial decentralization. The analysis is based on an agency model, in which two levels of government are involved in the provision of a public good and voters are imperfectly informed about each government’s contribution to the good, creating a shared accountability problem. Under shared expenditure responsibility, the degree of decentralization is endogenous and depends on the relative politi- cal conditions prevailing at each level of government. Consistent with the model’s predictions, empirical results from a panel of Canadian provinces show that decentralization in a province increases with the electoral strength of the provincial government and decreases with the electoral strength of the federal government, in addition to being affected significantly by the partisan affiliation of both levels of government. A series of alternative empirical specifications, including an IV regression exploiting campaign spending data, are presented to assess the robustness of these results.

Jurisdictions that engage in inter-regional tax competition usually try to attenuate competitive pressures by substituting salient tax instruments with hidden ones. On this effect, we investigate the efficiency consequences of inter-regional tax competition and fiscal equalization in a federal system when taxpayers fail to optimally react on shrouded attributes of local tax policy. If the statuary tax rate is a relatively salient instrument and taxpayers pay low attention to the quality and the frequency of tax enforcement, the underlying substitution of tax instruments with the aim of reducing the perceived tax price may suppress the under-exploitation of tax bases that is typically triggered by fiscal equalization.

This paper assesses how decentralization can contribute, if proper political and fiscal institutions are present, to improving service delivery in Asia. In other words, decentralization is an opportunity and a challenge at the same time. The paper presents the salient characteristics of decentralized government in Asia and then focuses on the analysis of critical issues leading to “partial decentralization” that is common to most models. Consideration is also given to the emerging challenges common to most Asian systems. Finally, the paper addresses the issue of decentralization in the education sector. This is a crucial sector in terms of costliness and of impact on national growth and individual opportunities, where, however, the outcomes of decentralization are difficult to assess.

The implications of delegating fiscal decision making power to sub-national governments has become an area of significant interest over the past two decades, in the expectation that these reforms will lead to better and more efficient provision of public goods and services. The move towards decentralization has, however, not been homogeneously implemented on the revenue and expenditure side: decentralization has materialized more substantially on the latter than on the former, creating "vertical fiscal imbalances". These imbalances measure the extent to which sub-national governments’ expenditures are financed through their own revenues. This mismatch between own revenues and expenditures may have negative consequences for public finances performance, for example by softening the budget constraint of sub-national governments. Using a large sample of countries covering a long time period from the IMF’s Government Finance Statistics Yearbook, this paper is the first to examine the effects of vertical fiscal imbalances on fiscal performance through the accumulation of government debt. Our findings suggest that vertical fiscal imbalances are indeed relevant in explaining government debt accumulation, and call for a degree of caution when promoting fiscal decentralization.

This paper uses cross-national data to examine the effects of different dimensions of decentralization on the efficiency of educational policies in OECD countries. The results show that the autonomy of subnational governments, both on the expenditure and revenue sides of their activities, is what really matters in determining the effect of decentralization on educational outcomes. The decision-making autonomy of subnational governments with regard to the regulation and management of the educational system has a significant and positive effect on educational attainment, though this varies with the degree to which subnational governments are held accountable for their taxing decisions. These results are robust to the different analyses conducted, thus corroborating that they are not driven by the potential endogeneity of decentralization policies.

This paper develops a two-country model to study two questions. How do the degrees of centralization of redistribution and of factor mobility affect the productive efficiency of the economies? What degrees of centralization of redistribution and of factor mobility are likely to be chosen by majority rule? The model shows that a system of centralized redistribution can lead to less efficient outcomes if labor or capital are not mobile; and an inefficient outcome, with incomplete or no factor mobility, receives a majority of votes in both countries, whenever the structure of labor markets is very different in the two countries. (JEL D72, E62, H50, H77)

Following half a century of fiscal activism and federal leadership, the call now is for downsizing the federal budget and a devolution of fiscal responsibilities to states and localities. The call for "federalism," meant to secure a stronger center in James Madison's time, now seeks to decentralize. This paper outlines the main features of fiscal federalism as I see them, sketching a vision which differs in major respects from that offered by the lead paper in this symposium. First I highlight the role of distribution, which I see as a central function. Then, I focus attention on grants-in-aid and their role in the federal system. Finally I consider competition, cooperation, and coordination between jurisdictions.

I formulate a political-economy model of a fiscal union where the threat of secession imposes a limit on fiscal redistribution between regions. I argue that the trade-off between implementing the region's preferred fiscal policy and benefiting from inter-regional risk sharing depends on the nature of economic shocks. Specifically both correlation of shocks across regions and their persis- tence over time are important. The gains from inter-regional risk sharing are potentially large when shocks are negatively correlated and temporary. In con- trast, unions with negatively correlated permanent shocks are likely to prove politically unviable.

The second generation fiscal federalism (SGFF) approach is used as a reference to analyze the political and fiscal institutional design of Bolivia’s decentralization model and its evolution. Subnational public finance data up to 2008 is used to verify that decentralization of expenditure was higher than that of revenue, establishing a context of vertical fiscal imbalance that increased due to growing fiscal transfers during the positive external shock (boom) period. Consequently, the subnational fiscal surplus was not a result of internal efficiency but of excess revenues from such transfers. Panel models were estimated to identify and assess the implicit incentives embedded in fiscal institutions of the decentralization model.Findings at the municipal level are: i) misalignment of local spending with local interests due to dominance of transfers over own revenue (dominance of central government development policies); ii) incentive to spend transfers faster than own revenue (flypaper effect); iii) greater marginal contribution of own revenue to positive fiscal balances compared to transfers, thus introducing the seed for a soft budget constraint but hidden by the fiscal surplus; iv) disincentive to generate own revenue (tax and non-tax) due to the size and growth of transfers (disincentive to the culture of contributing to own revenue). Findings at the prefectural level are: i) misalignment with regional interests given the dominance of transfers over own revenue due to absolute lack of tax powers (until 2009); ii) high tendency to a soft budget constraint and, eventually, also fiscal bail-out, hidden by the fiscal surplus; iii) in only two departments collection of national-level taxes were higher, compared to transfers received in the same departments; iv) disincentive to pay the VAT (national-level tax) due to higher royalty transfers received, an effect not extended to other national-level taxes; v) high dependence from hydrocarbon-based transfers, and fiscal risk when this natural resource declines (both in volume and prices) due to volatility of international oil prices. Also, as a result of the decentralization model a positive and significant impact was found on education-coverage indicators, an important development objective of the national government.

We develop a political economy model of intergovernmental transfers. Vertical fiscal balance occurs in a federation when the ratio of the marginal benefit of the public services provided by the federal and provincial governments is equal to their relative marginal costs of production. With majority voting in national elections, the residents of a "pivotal province" will determine the level of transfers such that the residents of that province achieve a vertical fiscal balance in spending by the two levels of government. We test the predictions of the model using Canadian time series data and cross-section data for nine federations.

This paper addresses the issues of whether and how the degree of economic integration may affect central government tax revenues and the intensity of decentralisation. To this purpose, we empirically test the direct impact of economic integration on central tax revenues using the concept of implicit tax rates (ITRs) updated to take into account mobile and immobile capital taxation. On this basis we derive a country-specific measure of tax erosion that is used as a determinant of the decentralisation of the public sector in an Arellano-Bond environment. We find that: i) an increase of economic integration generates a downward pressure on ITRs on mobile capital, which is growing at increasing rates as far as economic integration increases; ii) the process of tax erosion gives rise to a corresponding process of increasing public sector decentralisation.

Federal states in Germany are characterized by low fiscal autonomy. Equalization systems in place balance revenue differences to a considerable extent and states cannot independently set taxes of any major relevance. Although these features of German federalism are notorious for their disincentives none of the recent reform initiatives of German federalism have been able to change the system. This study makes use of a unique survey among the members of all 16 state parliaments to explain the formation of autonomy preferences. It tests to which extent the preferences of state policy makers for tax autonomy and fiscal equalization are driven by states self-interest, party ideology and individual characteristics. The results point, inter alia, to the role of state deficit and the structural differences between states. States with high permanent deficits are more opposed to tax autonomy and more in favour of higher fiscal equalization transfers.

This is the authors' accepted and refereed manuscript to the article Recent theoretical research suggests that financing sub-national governments’ expenditure out of own revenue sources is linked to more responsible budgeting, because the financial implications of spending decisions then are internalized within a jurisdiction. We test this proposition empirically on a sample of 23 OECD countries over the 1975–2000 period, and find evidence in line with the hypothesis that greater revenue decentralization (measured as sub-national governments’ share of own source tax revenues in general government tax revenue) is associated with improved sub-national government budget deficits/surpluses. This finding is cross-validated with a novel, independent dataset consisting of all 34 OECD member states from 2002 to 2008. 1, Forfatterversjon

The right way to measure the degree and extent of the different aspects of fiscal decentralization has been a long-debated, yet underdeveloped issue. There has been little consensus on the right approach to developing a single indicator which is sometimes needed to show a general trend in fiscal decentralization and reveal relationship to other variables in empirical studies. In particular, several composite indicators of fiscal decentralization have been proposed, but there are very few attempts to evaluate and compare these measures in terms of implicit biases and different weights between revenue and expenditure decentralization. Critically reviewing and comparing various types of fiscal-relation indicators in a systematic way, this paper proposes two criteria to classify similar-looking composite indicators for fiscal decentralization while it also presents two new composite measures. The new fiscal decentralization indicators are symmetric in terms of the relative effects of revenue and expenditure decentralization on the value of the composite indicators at the same time that they are weighted for/against fiscal gaps and imbalances. It is argued that different composite indicators reflect different perspectives on which aspect of fiscal decentralization is more important and whether a growing fiscal gap means less fiscal decentralization or not.

The aim of this paper is to analyze the effect of revenue decentralization on the provision of infrastructure at the sub-national level. We estimate the effects of revenue decentralization and earmarked grant financing on the level of sub-national infrastructure investment in 20 European countries over the period 1990-2009. The results are interpreted in light of the predictions of the theory on fiscal federalism. We find that it is sub-national infrastructure investment that increases after revenue decentralization and not investment in redistribution. However, the effect of revenue decentralization is lower the higher the use of earmarked grants to fund infrastructure investment.

Norwegian local governments that violate the balanced budget rule (BBR) are placed in a register. The consequence of being in the register is that the budget and resolutions to raise new loans must be approved by the county governor, the central government's representative in the county. Local governments in the register are subject to stronger central government control and must tighten their budgetary policy in order to be removed from the register. The findings suggest that local governments in the register improve their operating surplus, mainly due to cost reductions.

This paper re-examines the question of whether federal ex-post redistribution in terms of public funds leads to under-provision of public goods by adding the assumption that the member states are free to leave the economic federation. We show that federal ex-post redistribution leads to e¢ cient provision of local and federal public goods under certain conditions.

This paper tests the hypothesis that the stimulative effects of intergovernmental grants increase with the marginal cost of public funds of the recipient government. We present a simple theoretical framework that shows how a lump-sum transfer stimulates the marginal expenditures of a recipient government through an income effect and a price effect. We then test the prediction of this model using Canadian provincial data and exploit the discontinuity in the equalization grants allocation formula to identify the effects of grants. Our results indicate that the stimulative effects of lump-sum grants on spending increase with the provincial government’s marginal cost of public funds (MCF). One policy implication of our results is that higher intergovernmental transfers may be welfare improving if the federal government has a lower MCF than the provinces.

In 2009, Germany introduced a new debt rule in its federal constitution (Grundgesetz). The socalled ‘debt brake’ prescribes a balanced budget for both the federal level and the states. However, the states have leeway regarding transposition and specification of the national requirements into their own state constitutions and budgetary laws. This analysis presents a comprehensive comparison of the 16 state provisions. We develop an indicator which quantifies the stringency of state rules (Strength of Fiscal Rule Indicator). Two results emerge: First, despite the common constitutional rule at the federal level, the analysis reveals a considerable heterogeneity across German states. Second, several highly indebted states miss the chance to make their fiscal regime more credible. This finding corresponds to the disincentives of the German federation. Due to bailout-guarantees enshrined in German federalism, German states do not have incentives to impress bond markets through particularly strict budgetary rules.

This paper analyzes the high fiscal dependence of Venezuelan states and municipalities on the central government and the political economy process embedded in the interaction between the central government and sub-national entities. Also explored is whether there is scope to increase sub-national governments' revenues, improve the current intergovernmental transfer system, and reduce horizontal imbalances; of particular importance is analyzing the impact of current transfer mechanisms on sub-national governments' revenues volatility. Following a presentation of Venezuela's economic background, public sector and fiscal variables, the paper describes the process of decentralization, inter-governmental transfer mechanisms and revenue volatility, and local governments' own revenues. Subsequently presented are sub-national governments' fiscal dependence and its determinants, followed by options for revenue mobilization and improving the transfer mechanism. The paper concludes with a summary and policy recommendations.

El presente Documento de Trabajo recoge los artículos seleccionados en el marco del Call for Papers sobre Fiscalidad en América Latina que convoco el Instituto de Estudios Latinoamericanos de la Universidad de Alcalá. Este número presenta los artículos relativos a la temática económica, This survey first discusses general characteristics, advantages, and disadvantages of different types of fiscal rules. It then reviews the experience with fiscal rules in seven Latin American countries. Only Chile targets cyclically adjusted indicators although Colombia is going the “Chilean way” and the Mexican rule offers some stabilization properties. Argentina, Brazil and Peru apply numerical rules targeting the overall/primary public balance and/or the public spending. The Venezuelan framework has been substantially diluted or abandoned after introduction. The institutional coverage depends on the degree of decentralization of the fiscal systems with many countries including debt limits to the subnational governments as a key tool to face the common pool problem that emerges in federal states. All in all, it seems that fiscal rules in Latin America have been more effective in helping to strengthen the long term sustainability than in responding to shocks as proved by the recent financial crisis. Fiscal rules have had to be fine‐tuned along the years and a “second generation” of fiscal rules may be necessary in order to increase their efficiency

Does democracy lead to the creation of too many municipalities? We analyze this issue within the context of the Alesina e Spolaore (1997) model where the quality of municipal services deteriorates with the distance from the center of a municipality. Individuals can vote in a referendum to split an existing municipality. We show that social welfare will decline when municipalities are split if the level of the public service, as chosen by the median voter, is lower in the new smaller municipalities. In general, the model indicates that there may be a democratic bias in favour of creating too many municipalities. Democracia leva à criação de muitos municípios? Este assunto é analisado com base no modelo Alesina e Spolaore (1997) onde a qualidade dos serviços municipais pioram devido à distância do centro municipal. Sendo assim, habitantes são levados a decidir, através de voto, pela divisão de um município existente em outros novos municípios. Quando um município é dividido, o bem-estar social também irá deteriorar se o nível do serviço público escolhido pelos eleitores para os novos municípios é ruim. Em geral, o modelo indica que a tendência democrática pode favorecer à criação de muitos municípios.

Fiscal decentralization is high on the agenda in policy fora. This paper empirically investigates the underlying causes of …fiscal decentralization, based on the predictions of a simple political economy model. We argue that the likeliness that a central government engages in devolution of powers depends in important ways on the political forces that it faces, the theory’'s main insight being that the central government’'s electoral strength should, all else being equal, decrease that government’'s share of spending. Consistent with the model'’s predictions, empirical results from a panel of democracies support the relevance of political factors as determinants of fi…scal decentralization. The relationship between central government electoral strength and both expenditure and revenue centralization emerges as negative and non-linear.

Il decreto legislativo 68/2011 su costi e fabbisogni standard in sanità introduce, rispetto al sistema di riparto fra le regioni delle risorse destinate ai livelli essenziali di assistenza in vigore dagli anni novanta, due innovazioni: il depotenziamento della ponderazione della quota capitaria per (sole) classi di età della popolazione e la individuazione di regioni benchmark. La prima innovazione aspira, senza successo, a stemperare il conflitto nord –sud, la seconda è ininfluente sull’allocazione delle risorse, posto che il finanziamento complessivo è determinato esogenamente. Il dettato normativo presenta tuttavia rilevanti ambiguità: in caso di fabbisogni stimati inferiori agli stanziamenti globali si potrebbero produrre benefici a favore delle regioni con spesa procapite pesata più contenuta. Una previsione distributiva fondata su una metodologia approssimativa incapace di esprimere un legame con le inefficienze di produzione, che appare tanto più rischiosa quanto più i costi e i fabbisogni standard costituiranno il riferimento cui rapportare a regime il finanziamento integrale della spesa sanitaria.

Under cooperative federalism, when an identical tax tariff applies to all regions of a federation, usually redistribution rules are implemented to smooth fiscal differences. The administration of tax collection, however, is sometimes delegated to the regional level, leaving the regional administrations some discretion concerning the auditing of tax returns. Building on a stylized model, we show that under such conditions granted discretionary tax deductions at the level of tax units is positively related to state-specific marginal rates of loss (MRL), i.e., the fraction of an additional tax Euro raised in a region that the fiscal-equalization system redistributes to other jurisdictions. We empirically test the model's presumption using administrative income-tax micro data from Germany. Regression estimates comply with the implications of our model.

A region suffering a recession and rising unemployment in an otherwise prosperous country will benefit from lower tax contributions and a rise in transfer payments. Independently, the continuation of certain regular government contributions to the region's resources will attenuate the percentage reduction in its income. In these ways the budgetary activities of the center supports the region in difficulty and provides regional insurance. Much emphasis has been placed on this sort of insurance in discussing common currency areas. The insurance is said to compensate for the inability of a region to modify its terms of the trade with the rest of the world, including other parts of the monetary union, by altering the exchange rate of its currency. The matter appears to be particularly important in regard to fledgling monetary unions, such as the prospective European Monetary Union would be in its early years, since there may still be a tendency to move out of the union during this time if things do not go well. The lesson would seem clear: the European Community ought to consider arming itself with similar security measures if it decides to go ahead with monetary union. But the features of central-government budgets that provide regional insurance are mainly designed for other purposes, such as income redistribution and general revenue-raising. Thus, the adoption