There are three reasons why land policies in Africa are attracting greater amounts of attention. First, it is recognized that enhancing smallholder productivity is critical for sustainable and broad-based growth as well as poverty reduction (World Bank 2007). However, land-related investment, technology adoption, establishment of processing, markets, and value chains, all are unlikely to come about unless land tenure is secure. Moreover, increased productivity will be capitalized in land values and unless explicit attention is devoted to traditional land rights and land access by weaker groups, in particular women, interventions aiming to increase agricultural productivity may have negative social consequences. This is particularly relevant in contexts where current interpretations of customary systems define women's rights only through their relationship with men and women are often unable to inherit land which is considered the property of their husband's lineage. Negative implications for productivity can be severe, in particular if, as almost everywhere, women make a major contribution to agricultural production and its management.Second, demand for land, and in many cases land prices, have vastly increased with population growth, urbanization, and overall economic development. While higher land values makes land registration more rewarding, leaving land rights undefined increases the risk of having them appropriated by outsiders in a way that may neither be consistent with principles of equity nor conducive to the most productive use of this resource.Third, in a decentralized setting, land administration can not only help provide public goods and improve government finance but also that are rural areas will not develop based on agriculture alone. Nonagricultural development will imply migration of households out of agriculture that requires secure land rights so as to allow transfer of land rights, either through rental on a temporary basis or through sale, to others who are able to make more effective use of it without the fear of losing it. In many cases, this is now complemented by demand for land by investors who want to use it for food production, bio-fuels, or in anticipation of carbon payments has increased significantly in the wake of recent commodity price booms. It has highlighted that, without clear processes to process requests or assign of land rights, land acquisition by outsiders may end up fostering corruption and leading to inequality and dispossession of traditional land users rather than as a positive force for growth.This paper examines the theories identifying channels through which land rights can affect socioeconomic outcomes, points to realities which often prevent such effects from materializing, summarizes quantitative evidence on the actual impact of land registration interventions to assess the validity of theoretical arguments, and derives conclusions that can help guide applied work in this area. An example from Ethiopia is used to illustrate the potentially far-reaching impacts of ‘new' models of formalizing land rights and a number of policy conclusions are drawn.
Some health systems faced difficulties to ensuring equity and efficiency in resource allocation have generated processes reforms including decentralization policies. Argentina implemented: Decentralization of Public Hospitals, Strategy Primary Health Care, Plan Remediar and Provincial Health Insurance. The aim of this work is to analyze the decentralization policies since the economic and administrative approaches. The methodology included: a review of the conceptual framework of decentralization, historical analysis of decentralization in Argentina, description and conceptual analysis of public policies implemented in the ‘90s. In all cases involve policies transfer of administrative responsibilities to subnational levels with the incorporation of the processes, delegation and devolution. From the economic standpoint, the measures prioritized regional demands satisfaction, through the transfer of responsibilities for provision, financing and assurance of some goods and services.
This paper focuses on the fiscal decentralization in the Philippines after the 1991Local Government Code. It first examines the intergovernmental fiscal relationshipbetween central and local governments by using fiscal decentralization indicators,and then investigates its impact on local finance. After fiscal decentralization, thelocal expenditure responsibility is expanded while the local fiscal capacity is notstrengthened in the Philippines. Local governments consequently comes to dependheavily on fiscal transfers from the central government, internal revenue allotments(IRAs), which has a substantial influence on local finance. The heavy dependence onIRAs makes local finance unpredictable and unstable. The distribution of IRAs alsoaffects the horizontal balance between provincial governments.
Options for health financing reform are often portrayed as a choice between general taxation (known as the Beveridge model) and social health insurance (known as the Bismarck model). Ten years of health financing reform in Kyrgyzstan, since the introduction of its compulsory health insurance fund in 1997, provide an excellent example of why it is wrong to reduce health financing policy to a choice between the Beveridge and Bismarck models. Rather than fragment the system according to the insurance status of the population, as many other low- and middle-income countries have done, the Kyrgyz reforms were guided by the objective of having a single system for the entire population. Key features include the role and gradual development of the compulsory health insurance fund as the single purchaser of health-care services for the entire population using output-based payment methods, the complete restructuring of pooling arrangements from the former decentralized budgetary structure to a single national pool, and the establishment of an explicit benefit package. Central to the process was the transformation of the role of general budget revenues - the main source of public funding for health - from directly subsidizing the supply of services to subsidizing the purchase of services on behalf of the entire population by redirecting them into the health insurance fund. Through their approach to health financing policy, and pooling in particular, the Kyrgyz health reformers demonstrated that different sources of funds can be used in an explicitly complementary manner to enable the creation of a unified, universal system.
The fast process of urbanization in Brazil in recent decades has generated great discussions on urban reform, public policy and urban management. With 1988 Federal Constitution, these topics are in the spotlight, articulated by the city council as an equal federal entity and common jurisdiction in matters of urban policy. In this area, the question of housing policy becomes central and strategic for the city, as one of the main problems is the provision of adequate housing to the majority of the population. The Statute of the Cities (Estatuto das Cidades) in 2001, confirms this view. According to the National Housing Plan (Plano Nacional de Habitao) (Ministrio das Cidades, 2004), with the decentralization process, the management of social programs, among them the housing, either by themselves or by joining a federal program becomes responsibility of the state and city councils. It is in this context that new sources of financing are created sponsored by the federal government through Caixa Econmica Federal, benefiting both the state and local governments and also a share of the private sector. Therefore, this article will outline the path of housing policies in Brazil, through a survey of policies, plans and federal government programs, observing the neglect given to the planning of cities and the problems caused by unplanned urban expansion.
Every regions government must be able increasing their own regional income. The finance of resources in fiscal decentralization era, such as: regional original income, general allocation funds and natural resources revenue sharing and tax revenue sharing This research aims to analyze the fiscal decentralization impact to economic growth at regional district in sub province Semarang. The tool of analisis is regression using panel data with Generalized Least Square (GLS) method and Fixed Effect model. It uses district-level data and supplied by the Indonesian Central Bureau of Statistics during 2002 - 2006 The regression result shows that regional income, natural resources revenue sharing and tax revenue sharing, and labor forces have positive impact on economic growth at regional district in sub province Semarang. General allocation funds have negative effect towards economic growth at regional district in sub province Semarang. Fiscal decentralization brings more advantages for regions to manage their own fiscal capacities. The regions governments must be have informational advantages concerning resource allocation with optimal Keywords: Fiscal Decentralization, economic growth, Fixed Effect Model
This project tries to look at decentralization of VAT revenue and administration to sub national governments in Ethiopia in light of the international practices. It used individual in-depth interview to collect primary data from Ethiopian revenue and custom Authority (ERCA), Addis Ababa regional city administration tax office and ministry of finance and economic development (MOFED). The methods used for analysis were both qualitative and quantitative. The project discusses the problems in connection with decentralization of VAT administration and assignment of VAT revenue. The project suggests that decentralization of VAT administration needs capable and autonomous regional government and strong central government that could monitor and evaluate decentralization; and the assignment of VAT revenue also needs the central governments' follow up to minimize the distortions and should be applied in consistent with the constitution
Decentralization has the potential to lower corruption and alleviate poverty across the world. The true effects of this process are unclear since there are relatively few studies on decentralization and many of these studies, both theoretical and empirical, give conflicting results. One major problem in the literature for the effects of decentralization on corruption has been sample selection bias. The main cross-country dataset for decentralization, the IMF's Government Finance Statistics (GFS), has data for only about 40 countries, and most of these are developed. I attempt to mitigate this sample-selection problem by first estimating a Heckman model for decentralization in order to predict values for unobserved countries and then using these predicted values to estimate decentralization's impact on corruption. My results show that decentralization has an insignificant effect on corruption, suggesting that decentralization alone may not be a useful tool for mitigating corruption.
The paper intends to analyse a model of decentralization specific to Continental Europe, which shows that a transferof responsibility to the local authorities has not always been appropriately followed by a transfer of resource, the consequencebeing the appearance of budgetary imbalances at the level of local communities. In this situation, the local communities areforced to identify the funding source and, therefore, they have used the most rapid instruments provided by the law and thefinancial institutions – the borrowed sources. As long as the borrowed funding sources have been used to the restoration of thepublic infrastructure and, therefore, to the public investments, the solutions identified by the public manager are not to beblamed, the problem being the use of borrowed sources in order to cover certain consumerism needs which illegitimatelycharges, in our opinion, the public cost, the obligation to finance the maturity rates including the interest falling back on thefuture generations.
본 연구는 참여정부 복지분권화 개혁을 재정분권과 사무분권의 차원에서 평가하였다. 분권화 이후 복지분야 지방이양사업의 예산부족 현상이 발생하고 지방의 재정부담은 가중되는 한편, 서비스의 효율적 공급이나 지방의 자율성 신장 등의 긍정적 효과는 나타난다고 보기 어렵다. 재정분권의 측면에서, 분권교부세의 재원규모, 예산산정방식 등의 문제로 인해 지방비 부담이 크게 증가하였다. 사무분권의 측면에서, 지방이양 이후 노인, 장애인, 정신요양시설 등 생활시설 공급계획이 차질을 빚는 등의 문제가 발생하였다. 개선방안으로 사업 성격에 따른 국고보조/지방이양사업의 재분류, 서비스 사업의 장기적 지방이양, 소득보장과 취약계층 보호 목적 사업의 중앙정부 재정책임 강화 등을 제시하였다. There has been a continuous debate on decentralization of welfare. The proponents of decentralization argue that it will enhance the autonomy of local governments and the efficiency in the provision of service. However, the opponents argue that it will lead to the welfare reduction and the increased inequality among localities. This study attempts to deal with the question, focusing on the evaluation of decentralization reform of Roh Government. The main results are as follows: After the decentralization, local governments has undergone hardships in financing the welfare service, while there is no clear evidence that the local autonomy has enhanced. In respect of fiscal role-sharing, local duties has significantly increased because of the insufficient grants-in-aid for decentralization and inappropriate formula in assessing the grants. In respect of functional role-sharing, the decreased role of central government made it difficult for local governments to provide enough residential institution for the elderly and the disabled. To improve the decentralization reform, deliberate reclassification is needed to decide which item should be transferred to localities. Regarding the characteristic of the projects, social services could be transferred in the long run, while central government should take more responsibilities for the income guarantee and protection for the disadvantaged.
A hallmark of post-apartheid South Africa has been the introduction of bold and innovative policy in areas ranging from the national Constitution to resource management policy. In line with this approach, there has been a clear commitment to principles of decentralization and participatory development, with Local Economic Development (LED) featuring prominently in national, provincial and local government pronouncements and planning. Despite considerable policy and funding support for LED, results at best can be described as only modest. This paper critically reflects on the importance attached to LED in South Africa, what has been attempted over the last decade, and the various reasons that might explain the limitations experienced with applied LED, including those that are inherent in the nature of LED and those that can be attributed to local factors. The paper draws upon field-based research undertaken over more than a decade and the findings of a major study undertaken by an international development finance organization. The paper raises challenging questions about the nature, focus and potential of LED as an appropriate development intervention.
BACKGROUND: During the Suharto era public funding of health in Indonesia was low and the health services were tightly controlled by the central government; district health staff had practically no discretion over expenditure. Following the downfall of President Suharto there was a radical political, administrative and fiscal decentralization with delivery of services becoming the responsibility of district governments. In addition, public funding for health services more than doubled between 2001 and 2006. It was widely expected that services would improve as district governments now had both more adequate funds and the responsibility for services. To date there has been little improvement in services. Understanding why services have not improved requires careful study of what is happening at the district level. METHODS: We collected information on public expenditure on health services for the fiscal year 2006 in 15 districts in Java, Indonesia from the district health offices and district hospitals. Data obtained in the districts were collected by three teams, one for each province. Information on district government revenues were obtained from district public expenditure databases maintained by the World Bank using data from the Ministry of Finance. RESULTS: The public expenditure information collected in 15 districts as part of this study indicates district governments are reliant on the central government for as much as 90% of their revenue; that approximately half public expenditure on health is at the district level; that at least 40% of district level public expenditure on health is for personnel, almost all of them permanent civil servants; and that districts may have discretion over less than one-third of district public expenditure on health; the extent of discretion over spending is much higher in district hospitals than in the district health office and health centers. There is considerable variation between districts. CONCLUSION: In contrast to the promise of decentralization there has been little increase in the potential for discretion at the district level in managing public funds for health - this is likely to be an important reason for the lack of improvement in publicly funded health services. Key decisions about money are still made by the central government, and no one is held accountable for the performance of the sector - the district blames the center and the central ministries (and their ministers) are not accountable to district populations.
The paper deals with the equivalence between taxation and emission permits according to different viewpoints: the first one sets prices, the second one quantities. But equivalence is more formal than substantial: taxation is the generating fact, the market of permits does not exist spontaneously. Its price is unstable because supply is not independent from demand. It is manipulatable either ex ante when free allowances are allocated or ex post during the period of compliance through Walrasian tatonnement. A real economic determination of prices exists only when there are unit taxes or penalties on emissions exceeding the quotas. In order to avoid these drawbacks, pay-as-bid auctions must be used and free allowances avoided. Taxation or the price of emission permits are the real option value of changing techniques. An assignment rule is proposed : taxes are assigned to reduce average emissions and permits to reduce marginal emissions. In order to transform the cost into a real change of techniques, it is necessary to finance the sector of research and development of an amount greater than the taxes levied on pollution, which serve at paying the rent of innovation. These extra subsidies are used to move factors of production as capital from industry towards the innovation sector. The tax equivalence is ternary and concerns the taxes on pollution, capital and energy, because extracting fossil fuels is similar as innovation. Decentralization through market schemes induces that depollution has a marketable cost.
Every regions goverment must be able increasing their own regional income. The finance of resources in fiscal decentralization era, such as: regional original income, general allocation funds and natural resources revenue sharing and tax revenue sharing This research aims to analyze the fiscal decentralization impact to economic growth at regional district in sub provinsi Semarang. The tools of analisis is regression using panel data with Generalized Least Square (GLS) method and Fixed Effect model. It uses district-level data and supplied by the Indonesian Central Bureau of Statistics during 2002 - 2006 The regression result shows that regional income, natural resources revenue sharing and tax revenue sharing, and labour forces have positive impact on economic growth at regional district in sub provinsi Semarang.General allocation funds has negative effect towards economic growth at regional district in sub provinsi Semarang. Fiscal decentralization brings more advantages for regions to manage their own fiscal capacities. The regions governments must be have informational advantages concerning resource allocation with optimal Keywords: Fiscal Decentralization, economic growth, Fixed Effect Model
Péter Halmai, Viktória Vásáry, Halmai, Peter, Vasary, Viktoria
Is the Common Agricultural Policy unsustainable? Is agricultural spending a major distorting factor in the EU economy and an obstacle to the implementation of the Lisbon agenda? To answer these complex questions, detailed analysis is required along the following lines of thought: 1. Exploration of factors justifying Community level intervention. – Is the ’theory of decentralization’ applicable to budgetary issues and the common agricultural policy? Our hypothesis suggests that it is. 2. Assessing CAP as it currently exists, including its ability to generate public goods at the level of the Community (multifunctional elements which are indeed cross-border externalities) and its ability to create added value at the level of the Community. 3. Making an attempt to redefine the Community’s agricultural policy by identifying goals which can be achieved more effectively at the supranational level rather than by involving secondary levels of decision making. – Making an attempt to outline a Common Rural Policy, a new policy intended to promote the creation of public goods required by the society by means of targeted and decoupled economic policy measures. The concept of the new policy – a new policy requiring both national and Community funding – is in line with the requirements of sustainable development, i.e. sustainable agricultural activities such as sustainable land use, food and feed production, biofuels, forestry and fishing. Additionally, the new policy we outlined may also be an effective approach to meeting challenges arising from globalisation, trade liberalization, climate change and structural reform issues. ----------------------------------------- Fenntarthatatlan a Közös Agrárpolitika? Torzítják a mezőgazdasági kiadások az EU gazdaságá¬nak fejlődését, gátolják a Lisszaboni stratégia végrehajtását? Ezekre a bonyolult kérdésekre a követ¬kező pontok részletes elemzésével adhatjuk meg a választ: 1. A közösségi szintű beavatkozást igazoló tényezők feltárása, rendszerezése. – Alkalmazható a „decentralizációs elmélet” a költségvetési kérdések, illetve a közös agrárpolitika vonatkozásában? Hipotézisünk szerint: igen. 2. A KAP értékelése – figyelembe véve az EU-szintű közjavak (a multifunkcionális elemek va-lóban határokon átnyúló externalitások) és EU-szintű hozzáadott érték előállítására vonatkozó képességet. 3. Kísérlet az EU agrárpolitikájának átalakítására annak segítségével, hogy felmérjük, mely cél-kitűzések valósíthatóak meg eredményesebben szupranacionális szinten, és nem pedig másodla¬gos döntési szintek bevonásával. – Kísérlet a Közös Vidékpolitika körvonalazására, amely új poli¬tika célzott és szétválasztott szakpolitikai intézkedések segítségével járul hozzá a társadalom által megkívánt közjavak előállításához. Az új politika koncepciója – annak az új politikának a koncepciója, amely mind nemzeti mind Kö¬zösségi szintű finanszírozást is igényel – összhangban van a fenntartható fejlődés – azaz a fenntart¬ható mezőgazdasági tevékenységek: fenntartható földhasználat, élelmiszer- és takarmány-előál¬lítás, bioüzemanyag, erdészet és halászat – követelményeivel. Továbbá az általunk felvázolt új po¬litika megfelelően kezelheti a globalizációval, kereskedelem-liberalizációval, klímaváltozással és strukturális reformmal kapcsolatos kihívásokat.
Open access
Regional Development and Policy
Hungarian Social, Economic and Educational Studies
Decentralization of public responsibilities implies also financial decentralization. The effect of this process in EU countries’ budgets is important to be evaluated in order to correlate with macroeconomic indicators. From financial point of view, local revenues and expenditures and the balance of local budgets constitute the main research theme. Different experiences and realities reached under the same normative framework (European Charter of Local Self-Government) are analyzed in this paper.
By the early 1890s, the Japanese government had built centralized institutions to collect indirect taxes on alcohol and manage government finance. This institutional development helped the Japanese government safeguard the convertibility of the banknotes issued by the Bank of Japan and raise long-term domestic borrowings. The new centralizing institutions greatly enhanced the capacity of the Japanese state and paved its way to become a rising power in Asia after defeating China in 1894 and Russia in 1905. How shall we account for this institutional achievement which contrasted sharply with the fiscal decentralization and low creditworthiness of government borrowing only two decades earlier?
Pointed comparative description separate rice of the systems of of public welfare of Ukraїni and some foreign powers; certainly advantages and failings in adjusting of the domestic system of public welfare of 90th years and the features of financing of social sphere of at are analysed modern terms of decentralization of management.
The process of gradual administrative and political decentralization in Bulgaria started in 1991 with the adoption of the Local Self-Government and Local Administration Act, but the real financial decentralization process started in the beginning of 2003 with the adoption of a comparatively clear expenditure assignment and introduction of a transparent and predictable intergovernmental transfer system. Basically, a key issue in the design of fiscal federalism is the financing of subnational governments. Because of the advantages of taxation at the central level and spending at the decentralized level during the transition period Bulgaria has often ended up with vertical and horizontal fiscal imbalances. In most of the fiscal years the decentralization of expenditures was not accompanied by equivalent revenue-raising responsibilities and the taxable base was unevenly distributed within the country territory. The purpose of this paper is to study and critically analyze the financial decentralization reform in Bulgaria, outlining the key achievements and basic weaknesses of the local taxation and the intergovernmental fiscal relations. Key words: financial decentralization, local finance, intergovernmental fiscal relations, local
In today’s economic crisis in which banks do not have or do not want to give money to loan, the traders do not have resources to develop or even to continue their business; therefore, there remain only a few reliable sources of financing for Romania, international financial institutions (such as the International Monetary Fund, World Bank) and the European funds. For Romania, a possible chance to overcome the crisis is the absorption in a larger proportion of European funds. So far, the absorption of European funds was low. The work highlights the current use of these funds. In the last two years, were allocated structural funds worth EUR 3.1 billion of which were absorbed only EUR 203 million. Although we have a small budget in agriculture, compared to the financial needs of this area within a year of anticrises measures, the European Commission has penalized us with nearly EUR 8.4 million, the money will be borne by the state budget for APIA delays in surface payments. Also, the Sapard payments are suspended because of the shortcomings of management and control. The article analyses the existing obstacles in accessing European funds; bureaucracy, lack of decentralization, cumbersome regulations and long procedures causes a very low capacity to absorb money from the EU. An efficient use of European funds might be to Romania in general and for the Romanian agriculture in particular, a solution to exit the crisis. The work highlights the main ways to increase access to European funds.
According to the World Bank, over 80 countries currently plan some form of fiscal decentralization. This group includes Japan, a highly centralized tax state, which in 1995 put in place a law and associated high-profile institutions to promote fiscal and administrative decentralization. But the process in Japan has quickly become bogged down. This dissertation asks why there are hurdles confronting fiscal decentralization in Japan. My research uses the fiscal sociology approach and highlights bureaucratic interests in Japan's intergovernmental tax regime, one that is especially interesting in comparison with other advanced industrial countries. Fully 70 percent of all government spending in Japan is done by subnational levels of government, and 51 percent of the central state's current operating expenditures are transfers downward that serve to support that high rate of local spending. And though Japan is a centralized state, over a third of its taxation is collected locallly. In consequence, Japan is quite anomalous when set alongside a representrative sample of federal and unitary states. No other country among the nine OECD nations used, for comparative purposes, in this dissertation combines such high fiscal transfers with heavy levels of subnational spending and taxation. And no other country gives close control over a large terrain of subnational taxation to a central-state agency (the Ministry of Home Affairs). The ministry's vast bureaucratic turf brings it into conflict with the Ministry of Finance, as both seek to maintain or expand their fiscal jurisdiction. They are thus not interested in fiscal decentralization in large part because they are busy fighting "trench wars" with each other on these tax fields. This dissertation hence undertakes a detailed analysis of intergovernmental fiscal history in Japan, focusing in particular on the Ministry of Home Affairs' ambiguous role in the Japanese state. The case studies of inter-bureaucratic fiscal politics include the Local Allocation Tax (a large general subsidy) as well as an array of taxes on the fields of income, assets and consumption.
China has the largest urban public transport sector in the world. In principle, strategic policy is determined by the central government, and passed down through the organs of state for implementation. In recent years that strategy has included giving priority to public transport and reforming the supply arrangements to secure a more commercial and competitive sector. In practice, responsibility for implementation is completely decentralized, with municipalities having both complete responsibility for financing urban public transport and substantial freedom to interpret central government guidance at the local level. This paper considers the reforms that have already occurred under this regime, the constraints and limitations on the reform process, and the most recent initiatives being undertaken. It shows that a very wide range of systems are being experimented with simultaneously, with so far no sign that central government would intervene in detail or to provide central government finance specifically for the sector.