This dissertation examines Peruvian ministries' implementation of administrative decentralization, 2003-2006, and identifies factors shaping their decentralization policymaking. In administrative decentralization, implementation involves translating broad guidelines into sectoral transfer policies. Sectoral policymakers who execute decentralization mandates are, therefore, responsible for relinquishing authority and resources to subnational governments. Despite this challenging situation, little is known said about factors-- or otherwise--shaping the implementation of administrative decentralization. The initiation of state decentralization programs throughout Latin America has been examined and largely attributed to national political factors, rather than technical considerations. However, transferring power is not an assured outcome of national politicians' decisions to decentralize. This study explores a process that continued to be shaped by ministries after national political actors ceased to be involved; after a rapid start of top-down reforms, administrative decentralization virtually stalled under their control. Peruvian policy sectors are very heterogeneous, suggesting a need for distinct approaches to reform. Nevertheless, ministries' collective failure to implement rapidly has been attributed to generalized resistance to relinquish authority. This view is consistent with a bureaucratic politics-type understanding of public policymaking. However, my comparative analysis of decentralization policies reveals that self-interested resistance is significant but does not coherently explain policymaking or variation between policies. Furthermore, while resistance is ubiquitous, there are different types of resistance to reform, coming from autonomous offices, top policymakers, or the Presidency. In contrast, institutionalist lenses identify rules and processes that significantly condition possibilities for administrative decentralization. Policymakers face distinct challenges and opportunities in each sector; some ministries had deconcentration programs underway when national reforms started. While institutionalist lenses elucidate distinct conditions for reform, focusing on "audacious reformers" highlights the role of individual agency. The exceptional case of Health features a complex organization led by a reform-minded minister to the forefront of reforms. All three approaches to analyzing the implementation of administrative decentralization are complementary in providing coherent accounts of sectoral policymaking. Different combinations of institutional conditions, sectoral characteristics and individual motivations are ultimately responsible for variation among approaches to reform. Administrative decentralization emerges, not as one process, but as a constellation of particular paths of reform.
This book analyzes political decentralization and fiscal federalism in Canada and Germany, both traditional federal countries, and in Spain, a unitarian country engaged in the last two decades in a process of decentralization. Three key issues required for a well designed financing system are analyzed in depth, namely: tax assignment, equalization grants – i.e. redistribution of money from the wealthy regions or the national government to poorer regions, and the role of local governments in the administration of taxes.
The last decade has witnessed a world trend of fiscal decentralization in the developing countries as an escape from inadequate growth and inefficient governance. With respect to China, fiscal decentralization has been a fundamental aspect of its transition to a market economy; and the country has made substantial efforts to break down its highly centralized fiscal management system. China’s fiscal system currently has five levels – central, provincial, prefecture, county, and township. Sub-national governments have been assigned primary responsibility for public services provision and financing. China’s highly decentralized system could be a boon to managing service delivery, but the country’s crave for rapid economic growth in the last two decades has kept the reform of the public services on the fringes of political agenda. Under the current arrangements, public services are extensively decentralized with sub-national governments taking a much larger portion of expenditure responsibilities that are out of line with international practice. The over-devolution of spending responsibilities has resulted in insufficient financing and provision for core public services, and particularly a default in the delivery of vital services in many rural and poor localities. Further, in the absence of mechanisms to ensure national minimum service standards, the decentralized public services delivery system is faced with growing inequality across the country due to the widening regional disparity in economic development over the past decade. This paper reviews fiscal decentralization policies in China, identifies prominent issues in the current pubic service delivery system, and examines the deficiencies in the existing intergovernmental fiscal system that have contributed to insufficiency and inequality in public services provision. It advises plausible reform options to further national objectives.
Abstract We present a spatial model of a city with two unequally productive jurisdictions. City residents bear a commuting cost to work in either of the two jurisdictions. Each jurisdiction must finance a public budget with a wage and a head tax. We compare the first best optimum to tax decentralization. From the total welfare viewpoint, tax competition is always inefficient. However, majoritarian local governments may prefer the inefficient tax decentralization to the first best.
Purpose The purpose of this research is to show how the Slovenian government has recognised the need for local government fiscal autonomy and to enhance this has instigated the introduction of an ad valorem property tax. Since independence in 1991 Slovenia has embarked on a path of administrative and fiscal decentralization. Local government has been subject to significant reform in terms of the creation of additional municipalities and the allocation of devolved expenditure responsibilities. Design/methodology/approach The paper provides an in‐depth analysis of central and local government statistics to demonstrate the potential role of the property tax in any future decentralisation of responsibilities and funding to the local level. Findings This study finds that in terms of both municipal revenue and expenditure there remains a high degree of centralised control by the state. On the positive side with the introduction of the new property tax there is an expectation for greater local fiscal autonomy, however, on the negative side progess towards the introduction of the new tax has been extremely slow. The study concludes that while the proposals are likely to provide for a more stable and uniform local tax, there appears to be lethargy in implementing the property tax. Originality/value It is argued in this paper that accession to the EU has created pressures for Slovenia to adopt a financing model which gives greater fiscal autonomy to local government. Currently, the high level of centralization is seen as a barrier to greater devolution of powers which in turn has a negative effect on the introduction of the new property tax.
The institutional environment of elementary education funding in Brazil suffered several modifications in the last decades, mainly during the 1990's. In order to join the prioritization of elementary education to the decentralization of educational public policies – leading it to local level – the federal government promoted a deep reform in the legal framework, even through constitutional amendments that became important rules for education funding. One of the major changes was the creation of the 'Elementary Education Development and Maintenance and Teachers Valorization Fund' (Fundo de Manutenção e Desenvolvimento do Ensino Fundamental e Valorização do Magistério – FUNDEF) destined to the financing of elementary education in Brazil. Despite these reforms, the situation of elementary education in Brazil is still extremely precarious: neither does it fulfills the needs of its people, nor is compatible with Brazilian State economical capacities. From the analytical standpoint, with basis on the 'New Institutional Economy' theoretical reference, the creation of earmarked revenues for education policies is considered the main financing rule for elementary education, and served to reduce several transaction costs. These costs are associated to the discontinuity of actions and to the opportunistic behavior of the players involved in the public policies’ scenario. Among these players are representatives of the executive, legislative and public powers, state bureaucracy and civil society. This thesis seeks to evaluate if this set of education financing strategies - created by earmarked revenues mainly for elementary education - is sufficient condition to achieve the efficiency required to carry out those education policies, or if other effects, linked to the strategy or not, contribute to the maintenance of inefficiencies. This thesis uses as theoretical reference the 'New Institutional Economy', which is mainly based in the works by North (1988 and 1990), Williamson (1985) and Miller (1992). This reference focuses on the central role of institutions in the evaluation of social-economical problems. Thus, the first session of the thesis aims at describing the core elements of this theory, such as the concepts of formal and informal rules, transaction costs and governance structures. Based on this initial structure, the theoretical model used in the thesis is built and can be considered as an adaptation of the New Institution Economy approach for organizations in the public sector. This model takes into consideration important elements and characteristics of institutions, players and governance structures that should be accounted for when analyzing public organizations. Under the light of this theoretical model, the institutional array developed for elementary education financing in Brazilian cities is analyzed into further detail; comprehending the institutional scenario, that is, the rules of the game, and the behavior of the players face to these rules. In order to empirically test the theoretical assumptions of this thesis, a case study is carried out in the city of São Paulo. The present thesis aims at contributing to the discussions on the necessary changes on education policies, with special emphasis in the institutional adequacy between the formal rules established to the policies and the characteristics, values and skills of the players involved in the implementation of these rules. The very institutional theory anticipates that the disregard of these factors implies the possibility of occurring transaction costs associated to public manager control costs and to the opportunistic behavior of the players involved in the public policies’ scenario. Therefore, even in the existence of earmarked revenues, the efficient conduction of public education policies will not be guarantied.
The decentralization of finance and politics enables local governments to deal with native affairs such as development mode and other public affairs.In the meantime,the evaluation on local governments' performance emphasizes on economic development,GDP growth,and employment rate.This system brings about a fierce irrational competition among local governments.This paper deals with the problem of how to bring the irrational competition back to a healthy one,and the effective way,the use of encouragement and restriction properly,is suggested.
The relationship between regional imbalances and strengthening of the financial system is not simple though it may seem so at first sight, given that developing countries have less developed financial systems. In a national financial system as in Brazil this aspect deserves special treatment, particularly if we recognize that regional development policy cannot be studied without considering macroeconomic policy, fiscal mechanisms of public financing, the nature of fiscal federalism and the Fiscal Responsibility Law. 2 In this sense, the decentralization, the fiscal federalism as well as the autonomy of sub-national governments are crucial for articulating regional development policy in Brazil. In fact, the share of tax revenues and the autonomy of federative units are critical success factors for financing regional development. Therefore, the Constitutional Funds for regional development, created through the Constitution of 1988 in Brazil, as well as others regional development funds have an important role. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
This book, Financing cities, emphasized case studies on different topics to look at the interactions of a range of variables and factors and to see how they fit together. Rather than require each case to follow the same format, the authors have structured their papers around the issues that matter most from their perspective in addressing the topic in hand. The first part of this book presents case studies describing the framework established at the national level to promote urban infrastructure finance while ensuring fiscal discipline and reviewing recent experience as well as future challenges. The subjects covered include the impact of political and fiscal decentralization, limitations on borrowing, managing moral hazard, the role of the financial sector, the achieving of the right balance between stringent controls and encouragement of local governments taking responsibility for fiscal discipline coupled with market discipline. The cases featured include three of the world's largest decentralized nations; together the five countries featured in the conference account for nearly a third of the world's urban population. Part I includes case studies for each of the five countries featured in the conference: Brazil (Chapter 1), China (Chapter 2), India (Chapter 3), Poland (Chapter 4) and South Africa (Chapter 5). Part II then shifts from the frameworks for fiscal discipline to urban infrastructure investments and the strategies used to mobilize investment funding. Chapters 6 and 7 examine the financing strategies for urban infrastructure in Shanghai and Brazil respectively. The next two chapters focus on specialized intermediaries offering urban infrastructure finance in cities. One is a fully private venture in South Africa (Chapter 9) while the other, in Tamil Nadu, India (Chapter 8), is a spin-off of a government fund with minority private ownership. The final two chapters examine experiences with two other mechanisms for mobilizing funding for infrastructure investments from the private sector, land leasing and sales (Chapter 10) and private participation in infrastructure operations (Chapter 11).
China's public finance has made great achievements;however,in order to build a harmonious society and socialist market economic system,it needs further improvement.This paper studies the building of pubhc finance from nine aspects including government functions,non-profitness,integration of government revenues and expenditures,public finance by law,fiscal democratization,fiscal decentralization,public services equalization,sustainable development and fiscal internationalization.Some suggestions are made for the building of public finance.
With regard to the practice of fiscal decentralization,China's fiscal system reform has undergone three main stages since the founding of the PRC.How to make a reasonable division of rights between the central government and local governments at various levels has always been a matter of great importance as well as great difficulty in the process of fiscal system reform in China.To verify the effects of the reform,we should make concrete analyses of the actuality of China's fiscal decentralization.In particular,descriptive statistical analyses should be conducted to reveal a comprehensive and detailed picture of the reality of fiscal decentralization from the tax reform in 1994 up to the present.After the reform,there has been an obvious change of balance between taxation and public finance,as is shown by these facts:tax right is too concentrated in the hands of the central government whereas the increase of local fiscal expenditure is too fast and its self-sufficiency is far lower than that of the central government;more resources are flowing from in-budget to off budget;fiscal discrepancy among provinces is extended;and the course of fiscal decentralization reform is still at avery rudimentary stage.
This paper develops a two‐period overlapping generations model with heterogeneous agents aiming at analysing how decentralization in the provision of public education affects growth and personal inequality via human capital investment. Education is financed by a tax levied by either national or local authorities. The tax rate is chosen according to a median voter mechanism. During their working period of life, individuals look after their offspring by providing them with a high level of school education stemming from taxation. In addition parent's contributions to the social security system provide them with retirement income. Heterogeneity accounts for the differences in the optimal taxation mechanism, linking the income distribution to the tax rate, and hence to human capital accumulation, growth and income inequality. In this way we relate differences among agents to the tax rate. We show that decentralization induces growth rate disparities among local communities but it can be ruled out by a proper fiscal substitution between social security and locally provided education. Unlike in the literature, this type of fiscal design allows local economies to grow faster and more equally than the national design.
An important element in considering school finance policies is that households are not passive. Instead they respond to policies with a combination of modified residential choice and political choice of tax levels. The highly stylized decision models of most existing analyses, however, lead to concerns about the policy evaluations. In our general equilibrium model of residential location and community choice, households base optimizing decisions on commuting costs, school quality, and land rents. With both centralized and decentralized employment, the resulting equilibrium has heterogeneous communities in terms of income and tastes for schools. This model is used to analyze a series of conventional policy experiments, including school district consolidation, district power utilization, and different equalization devices. The important conclusion is that welfare falls for all families with the restrictions in choice that are implied by these approaches.
In this paper the main determinants of health care expenditure per capita in Spanish autonomous communities are analyzed. The coexistence of several models concerning the degree of spending power decentralization and financing systems converts Spain in a singular case, allowing to extract interesting conclusions for other countries in ways of decentralizing their health care system. Besides, our results allow to evaluate the incidence of some factors of over-cost underlined by the autonomous communities with a view to future changes in the autonomous communities financing model.
Development of the European integration through the European Union (EU) considers not only strengthening integration from the economic aspect (internal market). It also considers the political aspect of the integration i.e. strengthening political integration of member states and their citizens. Political segment of integration considers strengthening of the internal policies of the EU in which fiscal system, i.e. public finances have extremely important role. The EU fiscal system presents reflection of the extremely strong and often confronted interests between the economic and the political integration. These issues are closely related to the second component of the European politic and economic integration, that are the fiscal relations between the EU “central” level and the national “lower” levels which bring the all important decisions in the EU. According to the theory of public finance (fiscal federalism) and the criteria of economic efficiency, fiscal functions (allocation, redistribution, stabilization) and activities are assigned to the different levels of government, as well as certain resources for their financing. On the basis of fiscal functions carried out by national levels in the EU, and the manner of their financing, the EU is a prominently fiscally decentralized complex community. The traditional approach to the fiscal federalism that fiscal authorities are transferred from central to lover levels means that this is a process of decentralization, while in the case of the EU this means centralization of fiscal authorities from the level on national states to the EU as a supra-national level. The main goal of this paper is to analyze fiscal relations in the EU according to basic fiscal functions: allocation, redistribution and stabilization. Methodology would include analysis and comparison of positive EU aspect with normative aspect of public finances in multi-level community. Induction of gained results will confirm thesis that, because of political restraints, development of common (central) system of the EU public finances is based on alternative approaches of harmonization and cooperation.
The traditional theory of public finance has made a strong case for a major role for fiscal decentralization. This case is based on an improved allocation of resources in the public sector. And it has four basic elements. First, regional or local governments are in a position to adapt outputs of public services to the preferences and particular circumstances of their constituencies, as compared to a central solution which presumes that one size fits all. Second, in a setting of mobile households, individuals can seek out jurisdictions that provide outputs well suited to their tastes, thereby increasing the potential gains from the decentralized provision of public services (Tiebout 1956). Third, in contrast to the monopolist position of the central government, decentralized levels of government face competition from their neighbors; such competition constrains budgetary growth and provides pressures for the efficient provision of public services. And fourth, decentralization may encourage experimentation and innovation as individual jurisdictions are free to adopt new approaches to public policy; in this way, decentralization can provide a valuable Alaboratory for fiscal experiments. However, this basic economic rationale for decentralization of the public sector is not quite so simple and compelling as it appears. Some of the more recent literature provides, first, a thoughtful and provocative critique of the traditional view of fiscal decentralization, and, second, some new approaches that reveal its dark side, especially in practice. There is emerging, in short, a broader perspective on fiscal decentralization that raises some serious questions about its capacity to provide an unambiguously positive contribution to an improved performance of the public sector. My purpose in this paper is twofold. First, I want to review the basic theory of fiscal decentralization. There are some loose ends to the traditional argument that open up some intriguing issues. Second, I want to turn to some of new literature on fiscal discipline in multilevel government. This literature has focused attention on some basic and destructive forces that can undermine the economic performance of a relatively decentralized public sector. I find it helpful to begin by revisiting a Decentralization Theorem that I formulated long ago. As a point of departure, I want to explain briefly why I introduced the proposition and the rationale for its particular form and proof.
In this paper, we analyze a class of models in which there are interjurisdictional spillovers among heterogeneous jurisdictions, as illustrated for instance by CO2 emissions that affect the global environment. Each jurisdiction's emissions depend upon the local stock of private capital. Capital is interjurisdictionally - mobile and may be taxed to help finance local public expenditures. We show that decentralized policymaking leads to efficient resource allocations in important cases, even in the complete absence of corrective interventions by higher - level governments or coordination of policy through Coasian bargaining. In particular, even when the preferences and production technologies differ among the agents, the decentralized system can still result in globally efficient allocation.
The current system of fiscal decentralization in China has a number of serious problems. Whereas it has clearly assigned revenues between the central government and provincial governments, the current system does not provide clear expenditure assignments for almost all levels of governments. In practice, the widely unfunded responsibilities have been taken up by local governments, in particular, by the governments at and under county level. Since 1994, the responsibilities for these local governments have continued to expand. On the other hand, the “tax sharing reform” of 1994 led to a very limited tax bases for local governments. In fact, a significant amount of local governments in China face serious fiscal crisis. First, the vertical and horizontal fiscal gaps are significant in China. The revenue assignments are highly centralized, however the expenditures are highly decentralized. In 2003, major taxes and 54.6% of total tax revenues belonged to the central government, but local government expenditures accounted for 69.9% of total government expenditures. Furthermore, total provincial own revenues only financed 57% of provincial expenditure.