This paper presents an analysis of the decentralization process that has been taking place in Bolivia over the last couple of decades. It starts with a review of the legal framework that determines the distribution of responsibilities and financial resources to the sub-national governments (9 departments and 339 municipalities), and continues with an analysis of the evolution and distribution of financing to these entities between 2001 and 2013. It then proceeds to describe the resulting progress in social indicators between 2001 and 2012 at the municipal level, and identifies the main remaining gaps in basic services by 2012. Finally, the paper offers an analysis of the factors that are most closely associated with progress in the main social indicator used by the Bolivian government - the Unsatisfied Basic Needs index. This provides the basis for a final section on recommendations for public investment in Bolivia.
Fiscal decentralization has been established in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), but crises emerge at the local government level due to remaining problems of the fiscal administration system of tax allocation and the impact of replacing the business tax with a value added tax. The PRC taxation system requires readjustment and local governments have begun to focus on innovative financing models. The main path to stable and sustainable government finances is to maintain the general public budget and the government fund budget. The present chapter shows that use of innovative fundraising and financing channels will lead to the upgrading of local government infrastructure and public services. Suggestions for enhancing local government fiscal stability and sustainability include: reducing the fiscal burden at the local level by standardizing and legalizing outlay establishing a modern taxation system; establishing a standardized and predictable transfer payment system by introducing block transfer payments and prioritized transfer payments as a basis for a stable growth mechanism for general transfer payments; promoting public–private partnership legislation to encourage participation of social capital and maximize the multiplier effect of public expenditure; and improving the mid-term budget and debt-annexed budget and establishing a government planning mechanism for investment and debt financing of major infrastructure construction projects.
The current financial predicament of Local Government Councils and constant pressure for increase allocation has been in the front burner of Local Governments Administration in Nigeria. The focus of this paper therefore is an examination of Local Government Finance in Nigeria using Iwo Local Government as a Case Study. Data for the study were gathered from face-to-face interview, available records in Iwo Local Government, text books, lecture notes, journals, reports, seminar presentation and internet materials. The data collected were subjected to descriptive statistics (simple percentage) and content analysis. The study explored various sources of financing local governments in Nigeria. It also explained financial relationship of Nigerian local government vis-a-vis State and Federal Government using theory of decentralization. The study went further to explain financial management in Iwo L.G. Result obtained from the analysis shows that financial transfers from federal government (Statutory Federal Allocation) are the most viable and reliable source of local government revenue and that without Federal Allocation no capital project can be embarked on. Therefore, to arrest this financial situation that local government find itself, that is over dependence on federal allocation, this work submitted that local government should increase their revenue base by laying more emphasis on the internal revenue sources, especially those areas that are hitherto neglected or not been fully exploited. Keywords: Local Government, Administration, Finance, Decentralization, Nigeria, Iwo
The first Constituent Assembly (CA) was dissolved without producing the constitution. The Constitution of Nepal as Federal Democratic Republic was promulgated on September 20, 2015 by the second CA. The primary objective of this study is to review the modality presented in the new constitution on the natural resources, economic rights and revenue allocation and recommend some amendments. The study finds that the fiscal decentralization initiatives have not been successful in minimizing the political, social, economic, regional and ethnic inequalities inherent for nearly 240 years of a unitary system of governance in Nepal. The study recommends: VAT and income taxes will have to be collected concurrently at both the central and sub-national levels. Other taxes including excise duties will have to be collected by the sub-national governments which will support the expenditure responsibilities of the sub-national governments adequately in federal Nepal. Intergovernmental transfer modality has to be included in the constitution. A Federal Finance Commission (FFC) and the National Planning Commission will have to be constituted at the central level to make national level development plans and to make recommendations for additional grants and loans. A State Planning Commission (SPC) and a State Finance Commission can be established in each state to prepare state development plans and to deal with the transfers to be made to local bodies.
There is an extensive literature on the impact of fiscal decentralization on economic growth, development, and public sector effectiveness. However, the empirical literature on fiscal decentralization has exclusively focused on measuring the finances of elected or “devolved” local governments. Other types of decentralized expenditures, including deconcentrated and delegated expenditures, have been systematically excluded from measurement and analysis in the public finance and development literature. Our analysis considers the extent to which using devolved expenditures as a proxy for all devolved expenditures may have impacted the findings of the empirical literature. We collect comprehensive vertical expenditure profiles for health and education services in twenty-nine developing and transition countries and find that by exclusively focusing on devolution, previous analyses have overlooked two-thirds of local public sector expenditures. By excluding these “nondevolved” decentralized expenditures, the previous (often inconclusive) empirical analyses are likely to have suffered from omitted-variable bias.
Indonesia has been implemented decentralization era since 2001 in order to increasing local empowerment and local capability. During this period central government gave a all of the authority to the local government excepted authority for the political, finance,national defence, justice and religion. Beside gave the authority to the local government, central government also gave the source of the financing to the local government to meet the money follows function principle. Financial stability is the most important things on the monetary area. Many theorytical background described that decentralization have relation with the local financial stability.Using statistic approach (panel data) we could be proved that decentralization have negative relation with the local financial stability and also the other variable such as population, GRDP, constriction price index and volatility of money
Many developing countries use tax incentives to attract foreign direct investment, sacrificing immediate revenue from foreign capital, even though the effects of tax incentives on investment, growth, and revenue are empirically dubious. This leads to the puzzle of why states adopt tax incentives. Extant studies of tax incentive adoption overlook the fact that many countries have decentralized fiscal authority, allowing subnational governments to offer tax incentives. Public finance scholars argue that fiscal federalism intensifies tax competition among regions. Hence, drawing on the public finance scholarship, one may ask: Does fiscal decentralization lead to a race to the top among subnational governments and an oversupply of tax incentives in a country? This article argues that fiscal decentralization affects tax incentives in complex ways. When subnational governments are authorized to set tax policies, their politicians have economic and political incentives to engage in tax competition for mobile capital, providing more tax incentives in a country. However, the politicians are less likely to do so if they are held accountable and have to fund most expenditures through own-source tax revenues. An empirical analysis of over 50 developing countries in early 2000s produces robust supporting evidence. This research challenges both the view that fiscal decentralization is always beneficial and the view that horizontal competition invariably produces inefficiently low tax rates. The impact of fiscal decentralization on tax incentives and by implication, revenue mobilization depends on the design of the central–local government relations.
Ady Soejoto, Waspodo Tjipto Subroto, Suyanto Suyanto
Goal of this research is promoting human development in Indonesia through fiscal decentralization. In general, funds decentralization, economic growth, public expenditure, and a decline in total poor population in the autonomous region provide significant positive effect on human development index, thus increasing decentralization funds as balance grants to autonomous regions can be used to finance local expenditure, especially public social expenditure in education and health increased more years. Fiscal decentralization policy is instrumental in supporting the success of Indonesia's human development. In particular the research of fiscal decentralization policy yield in promoting human development as an economic overview of democracy in Indonesia counties and cities were assessed based on a review of theoretical and empirical can be concluded as follows: (1) Increased decentralization funds proven to provide significant positive effect on the amount of public expenditure. (2) Increased decentralization funds proved to have a positive effect on economic growth. (3) The increasing of total poor population in the autonomous region. (4) Regional economic growth is increased not provide significant effect on reducing total poor population. (5) Decentralized funds that transferred from central government to autonomous region proven to provide significant positive effect on human development index. (6) Economic growth provides significant positive effect on human development. (7) Public expenditure of autonomous regions provides significant positive effect on human development. (8) The decline in total poor population of autonomous region provide significant positive effect on human development. (9) In general decentralization funds policies have positive impacts on human development of each autonomous region counties and cities.
This paper shows that the inefficiency of fiscal decentralization in the presence of spillovers, a main tenet of the decentralization literature, is overturned in a particular transportation context. In a monocentric city where road (bridge) capacity is financed by budget-balancing user fees, decentralized capacity choices (made by individual zones within the city) generate the social optimum despite the presence of spillovers. Optimality also requires the correct population distribution across the city's zones, conditional on bridge capacities. This outcome is achieved because the user fees function as optimal congestion tolls, a result that follows from the famous self-financing theorem of transportation economics.
This thesis explored, in two parts, the macroeconomic impacts of exchange rate regimes (ERR), as well as the recent developments in fiscal policy and fiscal decentralization. Part I has reconsidered the role of ERR and its interplay with fiscal, monetary and tax policy. The first result that emerges (Chapter 1) is that fixed ERR can serve as a credible policy tool for stabilizing fiscal policy. However, this stabilizing effect is conditional upon the inter-temporal distribution of the costs of loose fiscal policy. In assessing the linkage between ERR and crises (banking/financial, currency and debt), Chapter 2 evidenced that the bipolar view is no longer valid, and that, crisis proneness rather depends on the macroeconomic fundamentals (the volatility of private sector credit, the deficit-financing mechanism, and the debt-to-GDP ratio). In Chapter 3, we unveiled a strong relationship between ERR and tax policy. Countries with pegged regimes have greater reliance on domestic taxation -such as the VAT- to make up for the loss of seigniorage revenue (substitution effect). Moreover, peggers tend to collect more VAT revenue to offset the shortfall in cross border taxes following the trade liberalization reform (competitiveness effect). Part II discussed the cyclical response of fiscal policy in high debt periods, and focused on fiscal decentralization issues. In Chapter 4, we showed that the reaction of fiscal policy to the business cycle is non-linear and conditional to the level of public debt. When the debt-to-GDP ratio goes beyond a certain threshold (87%), fiscal policy loses its counter-cyclical properties. Further, we highlighted that carefully-designed fiscal rules help maintaining counter-cyclicality through an ex ante disciplinary effect. Chapters 5 and 6 analyzed the impact of fiscal decentralization on the efficiency of public service delivery and fiscal policy performance, respectively. Chapter 5 revealed that a sufficient level of expenditure decentralization, coupled with revenue decentralization, improves the efficiency of public service delivery. However, the political and institutional environment is critical for reaping decentralization-led benefits. Lastly, Chapter 6 concluded that fiscal decentralization has destabilizing effect by reducing the counter-cyclicality of fiscal policy. In addition, we found that decentralization strengthens the structural fiscal balance; however, vertical fiscal imbalances reduce the benefits of decentralization. It is therefore critical to limit asymmetries between expenditure and revenue decentralization, so as to reduce the transfer-dependency of local governments to the central level, and thus prevent decentralization from weakening the fiscal stance at the general government level.
This paper considers an overlapping-generations model with pay-as-you-go social security and retirement decision making by an old agent. In addition, the paper assumes that labor productivity depreciates. Under this setting, socially optimal allocations are examined. The first-best allocation is an \nallocation that maximizes welfare when a social planner \ndistributes resources and forces an old agent to work and \nretire as she wants. The second-best allocation is an allocation that maximizes welfare when she can use only pay-as-you-go social security in a decentralized economy. The paper finds a range of an old agent’s labor productivity such \nthat the first-best allocation is achieved in the decentralized economy. This differs from the finding in Micheland Pestieau [“Social security and early retirement in an overlapping-generations growth model”, Annals of Economics & Finance, 2013] that the first-best allocation cannot be achieved in the decentralized economy.
The present theme is conditioned by the directions of public finance reform in Moldova. The aim of the research is focused on assessing the fiscal decentralization in the Republic of Moldova, aimed at: analyzing financial decentralization conceptual approaches and examining amendments to the administrative and legislative level to strengthen the level of fiscal decentralization in the country. Research methodology is based on processes and of legislative analysis, as well as on literature. As a result, it appears that in Moldova was first adopted a policy document that clearly dimensioned an action plan to achieve a qualitative decentralization in all areas and village structures. Therefore, the author conducted a comprehensive analysis of the process of reforming the central and local public administration in Moldova, presenting argumentative scientific conclusions and formulating own recommendations which would contribute to the continuity of the reform and strengthening budgetary fiscal capacity.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.12957/rdc.2015.16954 Trabalho enviado em 27 de junho de 2015. Aceito em 29 de junho de 2015. Resumo O Brasil está organizado como uma federação trina desde que, em 1988, os municípios tornaram-se entes federativos. O fortalecimento institucional do Município incluiu a responsabilidade pela execução das políticas sociais, que eles são obrigados a co-financiar. Ao longo do tempo, a maior gama de responsabilidades administrativas e financeiras tem indicado os limites da descentralização das políticas públicas já que a maior parte dos municípios não tem condições de atender às expectativas criadas com o seu papel na estrutura federativa. Trata-se de um problema derivado do federalismo simétrico no Brasil, que trata igualmente todos os municípios, sem distingui-los por porte demográfico ou função na rede urbana. Esse é o contexto em que se estabelece a disputa federativa pela crescente receita que as empresas pagam ao poder público pela extração de petróleo. Tal receita deixa de ser percebida como compensação pelos impactos ambientais e sociais causados pela atividade extrativa e torna-se mais uma transferência intergovernamental aos entes federativos. Tal situação tende a torna-los todos mais dependentes desta fonte de receita e, assim, mais sensíveis aos interesses da economia do petróleo, o que diminui o ímpeto governamental na defesa da política de substituição de energia fóssil por renováveis. Palavras chave: petróleo, energias renováveis, disputa, federação. Abstract Brazil is organized as a federation in three levels including the federal union, states and municipalities since 1988 when municipalities have become federal entities. The institutional strengthening of the municipality included the responsibility for the implementation of social policies which they are required to co-finance. Over time, the larger range of administrative and financial responsibilities has indicated the limits of decentralization of public policies since most municipalities cannot afford to meet the expectations created by its role in the federal structure. It is a problem of the symmetric federalism in Brazil, which treats all municipalities without distinguishing them by population size or function in the urban network. This is the context of the dispute by the increasing federal revenues that companies pay to the government from oil. This income is no longer seen as a compensation for environmental and social impacts caused by extractive activity and becomes an intergovernmental transfer to states and municipalities. This situation tends to make them all more dependent on this source of revenue and thus more vulnerable to the interests of the oil economy, which reduces the government interests to defend the replacement policy of fossil energy by renewable. Keywords: oil, renewable energy, dispute federation
The current decentralization process escalating in Brazil since 1980 flanked by the endeavor of the democratization in the country, strengthened the role of the municipality once it was elevated to the status of autonomous federal entity by the Brazilian Federal Constitution of 1988. Upon 25 years of the given new democratic legacy, the municipal revenues increased in volume, in comparison to other spheres, due to the establishment of law and regulations accrediting new responsibilities and new obligations for the municipality. Although it was transformed into politics generator-making agent with potential to promote the local development, by means of power entitlement to be effective as well as the decision towards the design of such politics, the municipality has restricted autonomy towards political decision-making: most part of the resources tend to be transferred to a pre-defined destination via legislation or in the several programs set by the central government. Thus, public expenditures are increasingly as much as to be defined by federal rules as well as financial releases by conditional transfers to sectorial funds, restricted, in practice, to the autonomy of the local expenses. Henceforth, this essay is focused on the contribution to the debate about the possibility of municipal administrations to perform fundamental role of promotions of local development, with greater citizen participation and reduction of social inequalities of which surrounds Brazil, by highlighting elements for the proper analysis of the decentralization process towards the impact of public finance and municipal autonomy.
Public sector viewed as important with its numerous functions for a long time has recently become the locus of criticisms by many due to its unproductive and excessive size. One of the most emphasized factors which downsizes the public sector and makes it more efficient is the decentralization, moving more weight of this sector towards local administrations. There in fact, exists some predictions of how decentralization, leaving more of the public services and revenue sources to finance them, to sub-national government provides discipline in public sector. In this study, the disciplinary effects of decentralization on the public sector is tested using panel corrected standard errors procedure and the from OECD countries. The results show that decentralized public services and taxes up to some degree, limits the growth of public sector
Local Government finance is of immense importance for a state and for the government functions of rendering services to the citizens. Local finances reflect the fiscal independence of municipalities and the financial capacity to carry out its responsibilities under the legal provisions of the central government. It is therefore very important to monitor the development of local finance in transition countries and in transferring experiences from countries with higher fiscal decentralization to countries which are pre-accesion candidates to EU. Countries with higher fiscal decentralization are more acceptable bycountries that are recently new members of the European Union under similar region. In this study, a parallel overview of the local finances of new member country in the EU, Slovenia and pre-accesion candidate country to the EU i.e. Macedonia, was taken
This PhD thesis falls within the fields of public finance and public choice. It studies the following issues: ideological polarization, decentralization and conflict. It consists of three chapters can be read independently.
In the first chapter the focus is on the importance of ideological polarization between but also within political parties on the level and composition of cantonal public spending. The analysis is on Swiss cantonal parliaments and is based on the use and econometric treatment of a very rich database. We made two contributions to the literature on the impact of political fragmentation on public spending. First, we showed that ideological dispersion within political parties is associated with higher public spending while the dispersion between political parties is associated with less public spending. This finding implies that the mode of organization and discipline within political parties are both important. This result is particularly interesting given that previous literature has completely abstracted from ideological dispersion within political parties. Lastly, we showed that ideological dispersion between and within political parties is mainly relevant for current expenditures.
The second chapter focuses on the conflict of objectives that may exist between economic agents in a two-stage game with asymmetric payoffs. The literature showed that coordination failures are frequent in one-stage games and that communication can help individuals coordinate with the use of take turn strategies that allow for a reduction in the payoffs’ inequality in the long run. Our contribution was to study whether communication has the same capacity in a two-stage game where the subgame perfect Nash equilibrium requires both players to make opposite choices at both stages of the game and accept unequal payoffs. Our results show that coordination failures occur half of the time and that 18% of the pairs use the take turn strategy. Communication significantly increases coordination on the subgame perfect Nash equilibrium because it increases the ability of subjects to initiate a take turn strategy and to maintain it. Thus, communication allows subjects to establish a long-term strategy that increases efficiency and reduces payments differences, induced by the asymmetry in payoffs, by exchanging their relative positions in a fair way. Our results show that communication can solve coordination conflicts, even in more complex situations than in one-stage games usually studied until now.
The last chapter focuses on a particular type of conflict: political secessions. Specifically, it addresses the link between secessions, decentralization and group identity. We aim at determining, by means of a laboratory experiment, if decentralizing the provision of public goods reduces the likelihood of secession. We emphasize the importance of local identity. Our experimental design, obviously, do not reproduce all the trade-offs that separatist movements face in the real world. It allows, however, capturing at least two key forces that drive these movements: the proximity to public goods that reduces the phenomena of free-riding and brings public goods closer to citizens’ preferences and the importance of local identities. Our results indicate that the Decentralization treatment increases contributions to local public goods and decreases the likelihood of secessions also when identity is made more salient. If fact, reinforcing local group identity increases the likelihood of secession only when local group members are cooperators.
Introduction A successful local government is vital for the stability and economic success of developing countries in Africa. South Africa illustrates the importance of governance. Post-1994 South Africa emerged from a highly fragmented intergovernmental fiscal Contents Introduction ......................................................................................................297 Fiscal Decentralization: The Role of National Substructures ............................. 300 Overarching Legislative and Policy Frameworks of the Fiscal System .................302 Legislative Basis for Financial Management .......................................................305 Assignment and Division of Revenue ............................................................... 306 How to Manage Vertical and Horizontal Imbalances ................................... 308 Conclusion ........................................................................................................309 References ......................................................................................................... 311 relations system based on the ethnic homelands and African townships but within a unitary and highly centralized local government system. The postapartheid government tried to move to a radically decentralized fiscal system. Given the historical and geographical diversities of 283 newly established local government structures, fiscal decentralization raised a new set of questions of how national government could achieve horizontal and vertical equity.
Based on concluding the experience of US municipal debt management,this paper analyzes the constraint mechanism of local government debt under the framework of decentralization and tax-sharing system.Viewed from intergenerational cost sharing) it is necessary to set up a demand-oriented constraint mechanism in the financing of public project,as the repayment capital of local government debt comes from the increasing tax burden of residents.Empirical analysis also shows that the demand response is better in welfare public project than that in monopoly and general public project.So we should pay more attention to the default risk of the latter ones.We believe that setting up demand constraint mechanism of public project financing and keeping the balance between investment cost of public projects and tax burden are keys to prevent local government debt from unordered expansion.
This thesis brings out the important roles that the public sector finance and reforms play in shaping nations' welfare through providing empirical evidence using new data sets on the links between government spending and inflation, and between fiscal decentralization and development outcomes for the four Asian emerging economies of India, China, Indonesia and Vietnam. Chapter 2 empirically tests the nexus between government spending and inflation for the three countries of India, China and Indonesia utilizing the cointegration and the Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) method on time series data for the period 1970-2010. This chapter employs a bivariate VECM of government spending and inflation and, to address potential endogeneity concerns, two trivariate models with real GDP and nominal exchange rate separately added. The results show a cointegrating long-run relationship between government spending and inflation and that, in the short run, government spending can significantly influence the rate of inflation (positively for India and Indonesia while negatively for China). An important policy implication is that governments in the region would need to be more prudent regarding decisions to change government spending, which can potentially result in large fluctuations in inflation. Chapter 3 shifts the focus to fiscal policy matters at sub-national levels. This chapter examines the effects of fiscal decentralization on economic growth at the provincial level in Vietnam, an Asian economy with rapid growth performance resulting from the comprehensive reform, 'Doi Moi', starting in 1986. Using a newly available provincial-level dataset spanning the period 2004-2010, this chapter provides evidence that fiscal decentralization has had a significant and positive impact on provincial economic growth in Vietnam during the period of analysis. The measure of fiscal decentralization adopted captures both the fiscal capacity and autonomy of provinces. The fixed-effect and the Generalized Methods of Moments (GMM) models help address the unobserved heterogeneity and potential endogeneity issues. Finally, Chapter 4 further quantitatively investigates the effects of fiscal decentralization on development outcomes. Specifically, the two main hypotheses to be tested in this chapter are whether fiscal decentralization had significant effects on poverty outcome and health outcome at the provincial level in Vietnam during the period 2006-2011. Given the important role of the agriculture sector, the chapter also tests for other hypotheses that are concerned with sectoral growth patterns, the contribution of agricultural growth to poverty reduction, and the urban-rural gap in poverty. The main results suggest that fiscal decentralization had a positive effect on health outcomes but, surprisingly, did not contribute to poverty reduction. Another finding is that agricultural sector has made a significant contribution to poverty reduction in dominantly agricultural provinces. Also, the poorer regions have benefited from agricultural growth more than growth in other sectors. Finally, the chapter does not find significant evidence for the urban-rural gap for poverty in Vietnam. On balance, from a policy maker's perspective, while growth-enhancing effects are encouraging, the potential distributional effects of fiscal decentralization warrant careful considerations of the reform agenda so that the poor and the disadvantaged can share the gains in potential benefits.
This paper studies the education policy choices in a decentralized economy with two levels of governments and regional income disparity.We employ a dynamic game model incorporating overlapping generations to analyze the optimal education spending of the central and local governments,and the subsequent effects of such financing arrangements on the dynamics of regional income distribution.We show that,whether the central government should provide public education and what level should be provided would depend on the extent of regional disparity.Only when the disparity is large could the provision of public education by the central government improve social welfare and reduce regional disparity over time.The optimal education expenditure of central government,however,does not monotonically increase with the extent of regional disparity.Finally,policy implications for China are discussed.
The relationship between fiscal decentralization and economic growth is an important research field of financial subjects. Most domestic empirical researches on the relationship between fiscal decentralization and economic growth focus on the decentralization of the cen tral and provincial governments, while less empirical analysis has been done on the relationship at lower-provincial level.Based on the panel data of the counties and cities of Fujian province during the period of 2003-2010,this paper conducts an empirical analysis of the relationship between the local economic growth and the four fiscal decentralization indicators, i.e. the tax revenue decentralization, the fiscal revenue decentralization, the fiscal expenditures decentralization and the degree of fiscal self-financing at lower-provincial level. The results show that the tax revenue decentralization, the fiscal revenue decentralization and the improvement of the fiscal self-sufficiency rate at lower-provincial level can play a significant role in promoting the local economic growth; while the fiscal expenditure decentralization has no significant effect on local economic growth. Based on these empirical results, this paper offers such suggestions as promoting tax revenue decentralization, having a multi-dimensional understanding of the fiscal decentralization, and making an in-depth study of the system and humanity factors underlying the fiscal decentralization.