Tax increment financing (TIF) is the most widely used local government program for financing economic development in the United States, but the proliferation of TIF is puzzling. TIF was originally created to support urban renewal programs and was narrowly focused on addressing urban blight, yet now it is used in areas that are plainly unblighted. TIF brings in no outside money and provides no new revenue-raising authority. There is little clear evidence that TIF has done much to help the municipalities that use it, and it is also a source of intergovernmental tension and a site of conflict over the scope of public aid to the private sector. Yet, the expansion of TIF makes sense in light of the basic structure of American local government law. Studying TIF can illuminate central features of our local government system. TIF succeeds -- in the sense of its widespread adoption and use -- because it, like local government more generally, is highly decentralized; reflects and reinforces the fiscalization of development policy; plays off the fragmentation of local governments and the resulting interlocal struggle for investment; and fits well with the entrepreneurial spirit characteristic of contemporary local economic development policy. A better understanding of TIF contributes to a better understanding of the political economy of American local government.
Struggles over what a region receives, or should receive, from the budget of the central government are common to many countries. Discussions often focus on the measures of ‘net fiscal flows’ or ‘fiscal balances’ provided by the government or other actors. This unique book shows just how these flows are computed then interpreted and clarifies the often misunderstood economic and political motives that explain why some regions receive more monies than others.
The essay provides support to the hypothesis that financing of provincial public spending through national transferences leads to overspending. We rest on persuasive economic and politicoinstitutional arguments. Fiscal illusion and the Leviathan model help to explain the overspending. And cartelization of tax collection helps to explain why governors are so reluctant to decentralize this task. We conclude that a fiscal organization closer to that of a confederation would be desirable. Two ways of organizing fiscal relations between the Nation and the provinces are considered. One way consists of paying for national spending by means of periodic provincial transferences; control of public spending by tax-payers would be the greatest possible in this scenario, though leaving national financing in provincial hands could be a risky affair. Another way consists of allowing the Nation some taxing power and incorporating constitutional restrictions as regards the kinds of public goods the national government is permitted to provide.
Recent research has shown how federalism affects health care finance, health care reform, and health policy innovation. The purpose of this article is to extend this research program to study the linkages between federalism and technological change. It does so using comparative case studies spanning five countries to examine innovation and diffusion of two blood technologies-enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA blood tests) and heat treatment-in response to the threat to the blood supply posed by HIV during the 1980s. Prior research has produced three contradictory models of the federalism-innovation relationship. This article attempts to resolve these contradictions, posits new hypotheses, and highlights sources of omitted variable bias that have important implications for understanding technological change. The case studies show that overall decentralization, rather than federalism alone, aids technological progress by allowing its supporters to "venue shop" around political resistance. Decentralization also makes the state less vulnerable to capture by status-quo interest groups. Moreover, political decentralization may have a positive effect on technological diffusion, but a far weaker effect on innovation. Thus, prior research that conflates these two effects should be revisited.
Decentralization theory states that the higher degree of centralization will increase local economic growth, because local government will create public sector efficiently, so it will increase more local economic growth than central government. The implementation of Decentralization Law No. 23 & 33, 2004, and the balance of finance between the central and local government as the manifestation of the theory is expected to increase affectivity and efficiency of local government performance through the delegation process from the central government to the local government. This research was conducted to evaluate 5 years of fiscal decentralization of 29 districts and 9 cities in East Java with fixed effect model (fern) analysis. The result of this research are: (a) decentralization of expenditure has significant positive impact on economic growth, (b) decentralization of expenditure has significant positive impact on inefficiency of public expenditure, and (c) inefficiency of public expenditure has significant negative impact on economic growth. Keywords: decentralization of expenditure, inefficiency of public expenditure, economic growth
The European Union (EU) is built on the federalist principle of subsidiarity, which we consider in the policy field of financial reporting. We attempt to answer the question, whether the current accounting regulation in Europe is sensibly balanced between centralized and decentralized decision making. Drawing on comparative accounting research to identify criteria for “local preferences,” we conclude that local solutions currently remain preferable for small and medium-sized companies. For them, a centralized solution would result in additional costs for at least some member states and their residents. Large international firms, in contrast, face an increasingly integrated capital market and rather need a central solution as currently implemented by the EU. However, recent developments in corporate finance may align local preferences on accountancy in the future.
Intergovernmental fiscal transfers are critical elements of public finance in decentralized countries. In the context of Indonesia’s decentralization reforms, their design and implementation have significant impacts on the potential revenue and fiscal capacity of basic public service provision. The case of Indonesia’s 2001 Big Bang decentralization illustrates the challenges associated with implementing significant reforms in the intergovernmental fiscal system. The practice of decentralization policy in Indonesia since the time has not generally improved local development performance yet. This study evaluates fiscal decentralization, focusing on fiscal capacity as the impacts of the intergovernmental fiscal equalization transfers, in the case of Gunung Kidul, Yogyakarta. The study shows a low percentage of its own revenue compared to its total budget. It indicates the failure of fiscal decentralization policy in improving local government fiscal capacity.
- This paper reviews main motivations behind the constitution of local councils partnerships as they serve to devise decentralization pitfalls in order to the optimal dimension of government. To this aim, the paper focuses on one of such partnership, namely Unione di Comune (UdC). Some stylized facts are derived with regard to dimension, functions and finalities of Italian UdC and structural characteristics of associated councils. The financing issue has been analyzed under the heading of both ensuring adequate funding to promote partnerships and avoiding pressure on the national government's budget and public finance in general. Theoretical considerations and empirical experience from abroad, such as inter communality in France, show that the assignment of an autonomous tax proves to be more efficient compared to una tantum or annual transfer or tax sharing. Finally, the paper offers an insight into the way UdC provides administrative functions and public services by mean of the Marche Region case study.
*Abhay Pethe is Professor at the Department of Economics, University of Mumbai. B. M. Misra is Adviser and Rakhe.P.B. is Research Officer, Department of Economic Analysis and Policy, Reserve Bank of India. The views expressed in this study are the authors ’ own and do not necessarily reflect views of the organizations to
This report is about the fiscal performance of rural local governments in the state of West Bengal. Specifically, our goal is to develop a comprehensive fiscal information system for all rural local governments, and to use these data to valuate the intergovernmental finance structure in the state. The work is of significant policy importance, given the need to implement programs to respond to the constitutional amendments mandating fiscal decentralization, and to support central and state government initiatives to use the Panchayat Raj Institutions (PRIs) as an important part of its poverty alleviation strategy. A more immediate need in West Bengal (and other states as well) is to support the work of the State Finance Commissions to better integrate rural local governments into the intergovernmental fiscal framework. To date, there has not been a comprehensive review of rural local government finance in West Bengal.
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.
In this essay a conceptual and theoretical scheme for decentralized integrated health care systems of the northern European kind is developed. With small changes it is also applicable to other countries, e.g. Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Three ideas tie together the scheme: modified fiscal federalism, principalagent thinking and the analysis of discrete structural alternatives from new institutional economics. As a special case it encompasses the ideas of planned markets and public competition developed by von Otter and Saltman. The scheme can be used to analyse driving forces behind reforms and prediction of effects. To illustrate the thinking the recent Norwegian reform is put into context, not only geographically but also theoretically. The geographical context is that of Scandinavia and there is a summary of reforms in the Scandinavian countries over the past 20-30 years. The essay thus serves the double purpose of presenting and evaluating the Norwegian reform in a Scandinavian context and to take part in the neglected discipline of developing a theory of health care reform. The Norwegian January 2002 reform is described in some detail. It is a reversal of the Scandinavian model of decentralization and a move towards more centralism. The hospital system was transferred to the state that established five regions with independent (non-political) boards and each region has a number of daughters (hospitals) that have great autonomy with their own boards and are outside the legal restrictions of the public sector. Basically the idea is to mimic the corporate structure of large private companies. The reform is evaluated based on principal-agent thinking and the analysis of discrete structural alternatives. Overall there is no a priori reason to expect large improvements in efficiency – but on the other hand neither should one expect things to get worse. Many effects depend, however, crucially, on (a) the financing system that will be put in place late 2002 or early 2003, and (b) whether or not the political and management culture change as a result of the reform. In the concluding sections possible implications for Denmark and Sweden are discussed.
Traditionally, the geography of money has been a topic of only marginal or peripheral interest to economists. To be sure, economists have long studied banking, the operation of national financial and monetary systems, international capital movements and the like; but in typical economics fashion, the spatial frames and contexts within which banking, financial systems and capital markets operate have not of themselves been of interest and have typically been considered as exogenous and pre-given. Even geographers tended largely to ignore the spatialities of finance. Admittedly, in the 1970s and 1980s, there were some studies of regional banking structures, urban mortgage markets, regional credit availability and regional interest rate differentials; but the studies that appeared hardly added up to a substantial or coherent body of theoretical or empirical research. During the 1990s, however, the relationship between money and space began to attract increasing attention, with a succession of books and papers by economists and geographers (for example, Cohen, 1998; Corbridge et al., 1994; Dow, 1990; Eichengreen and Flandreau, 1996; Laulajainen, 1998; Leyshon and Thrift, 1997; Martin, 1999; O'Brien, 1990, 1992; Porteous, 1995). Ironically, this flurry of publication occurred at the very time that developments in the world of finance were leading some of the new commentators to argue that if geography had once been of relevance for understanding money, it was rapidly becoming irrelevant. O'Brien (1990, 1992) in particular claimed that various processes, especially technological advances in information and communication technologies (ICT), the wave of financial deregulation that had begun in the 1980s in the USA and UK and a new trend of financial innovation, were together facilitating—indeed promoting—accelerating financial integration at a global scale, rendering geography and location of rapidly declining significance for financial firms, financial flows and access to financial products and services. The globalization of money, it was contended, was annihilating space. Not only was financial globalization undermining national economic sovereignty (Cohen, 1998), by going global banks were free to locate wherever they chose, and money having become electronic, and hence hyper-fungible and hyper-mobile, could now move anywhere almost instantaneously. In this brave new world of global finance, money had escaped space. Geographers on the whole have been much more cautious in pronouncing what O'Brien called the ‘end of geography’ with respect to finance. While they acknowledge that distance may have become irrelevant in financial transactions and operations, they have argued that location and place remain of crucial importance (see Leyshon, 1995, 1997, 1998; Martin, 1994, 1999). The spatial concentration of banks, investment houses and other financial institutions in the major national (and global) financial centres has not dramatically lessened: indeed in many respects it has increased, as has the financial specializations of those centres and the competition between them. The outsourcing and offshoring of certain financial functions and services (such as call centres), themselves developments facilitated by ICT and related ‘globalization’ processes, have been highly geographical in their locational dynamics and impacts. Global and national financial centres may be linked together in worldwide networks of financial flows and transactions that ignore national borders, but in so doing they also function as the portals through which monetary fluctuations, perturbations and shocks originating elsewhere are transmitted down through their domestic financial systems and economies, with highly geographically differentiated effects on the economies of different regions and cities (Tobin, 1984). In the other direction, local and regional economic imbalances within nations can trigger off inflationary pressures and house price bubbles that then not only disturb national domestic monetary conditions and management, but through the global interconnections that link financial institutions in world markets can even trigger off global monetary instabilities. And while the banking and financial systems of individual countries have become increasingly and inextricably interconnected, most retain a local or regional dimension in their organization and operation. How these local circuits of money relate to and are entwined with global circuits has major implications for the propagation and impact of financial shocks and perturbations. In short, contrary to what some argued, money remains highly geographical, even in today's globalized world. This special issue of the Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society brings together a number of papers on this issue, ranging from the geographical organization of financial centres in pre-industrial Europe to the geographical dimensions of today's global ‘credit crunch’. The four papers in this issue that deal with the geographies of finance each offer a different perspective on the spatiality of financial markets and financial transactions. By taking an historical perspective and by using mid-18th century data that precede the Industrial Revolution, Flandreau et al. (2009) explore the spatial linkages of financial transactions across Europe, circa 1750. The central unit of observation is the city, so that in effect the paper is really about the monetary geography of European cities and in particular about the extent to which ‘local’ or own-city currencies circulated ‘abroad’, that is in other cities. The mapping of the monetary geography of Europe in the paper of Flandreau et al. is inspired by three interdisciplinary approaches. The first concerns the role of states. History shows that before the ascent of the nation state, there was an intricate and almost seamless web of financial relations across Europe. With the rise of nation states, however, the monetary and financial space of Europe was progressively nationalized and compartmentalized into sovereign territories. The second approach upon which the paper builds is economic geography. The description of intra-city linkages across the Europe of the mid-18th century clearly point to the relevance of agglomeration forces. The main financial centre at that time was the city of Amsterdam, though other financial hubs or agglomerations in the European network of currency transactions are also clearly discernible. In southern Europe, the city of Genoa was for instance very important and likewise the city of Hamburg in Northern Europe. But in the hierarchy of financial centres, Amsterdam dominated, with London and Paris also being very important. A third and final approach that can be used to understand the network of financial connection across European cities is (of course) economic history. Here, the authors argue that their main result can be interpreted through the lens of modern or new institutional economic history. Whatever the analytical approach used, however, the main finding of the paper is that in pre-modern Europe, that is prior to the Industrial Revolution, there was already a dense and quite distinct spatial urban network of financial connections in Europe. Local currencies or bills of exchange circulated widely outside their own locality or city. At the same time, not all cities or bills of exchange were equally widespread: the monetary geography of Europe in those days was one in which a few cities dominated, much like in the modern monetary geography of Europe. In the literature on ‘money and space’, the geographical role or relevance of financial intermediation and banks in particular is emphasized. The claim by O'Brien (1992) that geography has become irrelevant in the modern financial system applies most to public capital markets. When it comes to the supply of and demand for bank loans, however, even casual observation suggests that proximity still matters. At the same time, in many countries the banking sector has seen structural change at an unprecedented scale in the last few decades. Banking has gone ‘global’ and this has been accompanied by a very substantial (spatial) concentration of banking. This leads to important questions about the interrelationship between global banking and local credit markets. This interrelationship is at the heart of the paper by Alessandrini et al. (2009). Using O'Brien (1992) as a point of departure, Alessandrini et al. seek to establish if and how distance still matters in the case of the Italian credit and banking market. Distance is a multi-faceted concept and the authors come up with two ways to define distance, namely ‘operational’ and ‘functional distance’, that are subsequently used in their empirical analysis. Three findings stand out. First, geography (still) matters when it comes to the Italian credit market and the way in which firms and banks interact (locally). Second, the impact of distance on the interrelationship between global banking and local credit markets is not unambiguous. This then leads to the third finding or probably more accurately an agenda for future research: geography matters when it comes to local banking structures, and banks’ own territorial strategies, as well as the relevance of the banks’ headquarters for regional development. In these first two papers on the geographies of finance, financial centres play a key role. In his paper, Wójcik (2009) takes the location of financial centres as given and tries to find out whether (non-financial) firms that are located in financial centres are more likely to go public than similar firms that are located in the financial periphery. Going public means taking the firm to the stock market via a so-called ‘initial public offering’ (IPO). Using firm-specific data for 32 countries, Wójcik shows that there is indeed a strong positive correlation between the location of firms and their IPO activity. Firms that are located in financial centres are more likely to go public. Given the high degree of (international) capital mobility and the current technological possibilities for both investors and firms to inform themselves about each other and the functioning of the stock market, one may wonder why in this case geography still matters. The author points out, for instance, that closeness to financial intermediaries may make it easier for firms to go public and also that the specialized labour that is needed for an IPO process is more readily available in financial centres. In this way, it appears that the geography of financial centres influences the capitalization process (via IPOs) of businesses. All three papers introduced so far suggest, somewhat contrary to what O'Brien (1992) claimed, that even with unhampered capital mobility geography is still relevant for many financial transactions. Even with capital free to move within or between countries, the bulk of financial transactions is or remains spatially bounded and has a distinct geographical footprint. From an international macro-economic perspective, the idea that free international capital mobility does not seem to go along with a de-nationalization of capital flows is known as the Feldstein–Horioka paradox. More specifically, the paradox here is that with free capital mobility, one would expect that national savings and national investment are no longer positively correlated. Without capital mobility, national investment is inevitably constrained by the amount of national savings. But with capital mobility, this is in principle no longer the case. However, following the seminal study by Feldstein and Horioka (1980), scores of researchers have found that for almost every country national savings and national investment are still strongly correlated. The paper by Kool and Keijzer (2009) throws new light on this issue. Using new (panel) estimations and estimation techniques for a sample of 23 countries for the period 1973–2003, they find that the Feldstein-Horioka (FH) coefficient that measures the relationship between savings and investment has in fact dropped significantly in recent years. Indeed, around the year 2000, the coefficient is no longer significantly different from zero. This suggests that economic and financial integration has increased markedly in recent years. As to the reasons behind the de-coupling between national savings and investment, the authors single out increased trade openness and especially a fall in the so-called ‘home equity bias’. The latter refers to the stylized fact that investors typically have a tendency to underinvest in foreign equity. According to Kool and Keijzer, with this bias getting weaker, the correlation between national savings and investment also has weakened. Since it is only fairly recently that the FH coefficient has fallen so strongly, it remains to be seen if this is merely a temporary phenomenon or if national savings and investment have really started to move independently of one another. The current financial crisis is a first real test in this respect. The spatial dimensions of finance have been highlighted by the current financial crisis—where a shock ostensibly emanating from the US housing market was rapidly transmitted into a global recession. In their paper, O'Brien and Keith (2009) argue that the crisis has been facilitated by the ‘end of geography’ with ICT and lightly regulated finance enabling ultra-rapid and highly complex flows of financial capital across borders. However, when reviewing the future of finance, O'Brien and Keith suggest that it is likely that the drive towards the ‘end of geography’ will be slowed by the crisis; as the level of financial regulation is likely to increase, developments in ICT may help improve the management of information, a feature that has been manifestly lacking in modern global financial markets. In any case, as discussed above, the ‘end of geography’ thesis should not be exaggerated: deregulation and ICT may promote and facilitate the movement of money and capital across space, but they do not necessarily result in a ‘geography-free’ world of finance. Furthermore, it can be argued that globalized financial markets have intensified geography by sustaining and, in some cases, intensifying spatial differences in economic prosperity and social welfare. Global capital markets have enabled countries such as the USA and the UK to run persistent balance of payments deficits by facilitating circulation of finance from those countries that have maintained persistent balance of payments surpluses. And within both the USA and UK, the recession that the credit crunch sparked off has been anything but spatially even in its impacts. The notion of the ‘end of geography’ is subject to a powerful critique by Dymski. Tellingly, Dymski (2009) argues that O'Brien's argument is a repackaging of efficient markets theory—a theory that has been left in tatters by the recent behaviour of financial markets. Dymski constructs an alternative counter-narrative where government policy is fundamental to the construction of financial markets—not only through the regulatory framework but also through the macroeconomic and industrial policies which shape the opportunities for doing business and generating profits. Furthermore, Dymski argues that global finance has not led to the emergence of a ‘global banking customer’ but has instead created a spectrum of different financial customers, which has contributed to the global divisions in income and wealth. Customers from poorer parts of the spectrum are charged higher interest rates, are more likely to suffer from foreclosure and are the first to be deprived of liquidity when crisis strikes. But, of course, the most impoverished, such as many of those in Africa, are completely disconnected from the financial system. According to French et al. (2009), the credit crunch is a ‘very geographical crisis’. They argue that the crisis has arisen from an active use of space at a range of scales and along networks of varying length which connect individuals and institutions to the financial system. Thus, the crisis has been characterized by different geographies of financial flows, wealth effects and impacts. It should also be emphasized that the financial crises has led to an economic crisis—and the geographies of the two crises are likely to be different and will be determined by the mechanisms through which the former is transmitted to the latter—as the decline in world income and trade and the inability of producers and consumers to borrow to invest and consume will have different spatial impacts and amplitudes. The paper by Bieri (2009) also counters the O'Brien position, on the grounds that the globalization of financial markets has led to a change in geography rather than its demise. Bieri contrasts the ‘old’ geography characterized by competing nation states with the ‘new’ geography comprising globally dispersed creditors and debtors with both strong local and global connections and drivers. Furthermore, such bi-polar processes will continue in the future and global financial markets will become more ‘curved and spiky, not flat’. This will create challenges for regulation and global financial architecture: the Bretton Woods system, which was established after the Second World War in the era of dominant nation states, largely remains in place today. Thus, there is a need to re-evaluate the global financial architecture and balance the need for decentralized local regulation and centralized interventions and coordination. The issue of the relationship between financial liberalization and poverty is analysed by Arestis and Caner (2009). The conventional focus is on the link between financial liberalization and growth and how the latter may influence poverty through ‘trickle down’ effects. Arestis and Caner analyse three further channels: the crises channel, the access to credit and financial services channel and the income share of labour channel. They show that although the relationships between financial liberalization and poverty are complex, the former often causes increases in the latter. Although the paper of O'Brien and Keith provides an updated view of the ‘end of geography’ thesis, the majority of papers in this issue suggest that to characterize the contemporary global financial landscape in such terms is to capture at best only certain facets of today's monetary reality. There is in fact considerable evidence that ‘money and space’ are still closely intertwined—geography has evolved and changed but its ‘end’ is not in sight. This will become even more apparent as the fallout and complex repercussions of the current financial crisis continue to feed through to the real economy throughout the globe: including house repossessions across numerous cities in the USA and UK; major plant closures, job losses and unemployment in many local communities; future major cutbacks in public sector spending programmes, to help reduce the government debt incurred by bailing out failed banks and mortgage lenders; the collapse of the Iceland economy and the need for IMF support; and the contraction of world trade, which is affecting the German and Japanese economies to such an extent that these two countries are forecast to have much deeper recessions than those countries from where the crisis emanated in the first place (IMF, 2009, 10). What recent events demonstrate so clearly is that finance may have gone global but its complex circuits are profoundly spatial in their operation and impact.
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
Abstract The analysis of urban governance in terms of networks, as developed in the UK by scholars including Rhodes and Stoker, can be applied to a context such as Mexico if due weight is given to macro‐level processes. In this article, careful attention is paid to the institutional legacies of Mexico's past authoritarian regime and how they are challenged by a new discourse of neoliberalization, decentralization and democratization. Corporatism, social segmentation and organizational fragmentation in the past have resulted in the continuing importance of hierarchical modes of governance alongside networks. Case studies of the public–private partnerships involved in the regeneration of the historic centres of Querétaro and San Luis Potosí show that new forms of governance entail a mix of continuity and change. Regeneration partnerships were initiated and largely funded by the local state, with the state retaining considerable power. Most of the non‐state participants were drawn from the old aristocracy and business and professional organizations, whilst the increasingly autonomous groups of street traders and ‘ordinary’ citizens concerned with the life in the city centre were excluded. Nevertheless, new discourses challenge the institutional legacies of the past, encouraging institutional change. Résumé L'analyse de la gouvernance urbaine en termes de réseaux, telle que des chercheurs comme Rhodes et Stoker la présentent au Royaume‐Uni, est applicable au contexte mexicain si on pondère correctement les macro‐processus. Une attention particulière est accordée ici aux héritages institutionnels du régime autoritaire qu'a connu le Mexique, et à la façon dont ils sont remis en cause par un discours nouveau de néolibéralisation, décentralisation et démocratisation. Dans le passé, corporatisme, segmentation sociale et fragmentation des organisations ont donné une importance constante aux modes de gouvernance hiérarchisés en parallèle aux réseaux. D'après des études de cas de partenariats public‐privé portant sur des projets de régénération des centres historiques de Querétaro et de San Luis Potosí, de nouvelles formes de gouvernance génèrent un mélange de continuité et de changement. Les partenariats liés à la régénération de quartiers ont été lancés et en grande partie financés par l'État local, l'État gardant une emprise considérable. Hormis l'État, les participants étaient issus, par la plupart, de la vieille aristocratie, ainsi que des milieux commerciaux et professionnels, alors qu'étaient exclus les groupes de plus en plus autonomes des marchands ambulants et des citoyens ‘ordinaires’ concernés par la vie dans le centre‐ville. Néanmoins les nouveaux discours, qui remettent en question les héritages institutionnels du passé, encouragent à une évolution des institutions.
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.
In most local developing settings, the political leader and the municipal manager are embodied in the same figure, the directly elected mayor. This research explores the impact of mayoral quality on local public finances in a developing country. Mayoral quality is operationalized as educational background and job‐related expertise to analyze its impact on two local financial indicators: property tax collection and social spending per capita. The mayoral quality thesis is tested across 40 Colombian municipalities over five years (2000–2004). After considering other political, economic, and external influences, the findings reveal that mayoral quality is associated with greater property tax collection and more social spending per capita. This positive influence, however, decreases under external constraints—such as presence of illegal armed groups. This study demonstrates how much influence the mayor can have when circumstances permit. The findings point to the significance of electing qualified mayors, as decentralization may not directly improve subnational finance. Instead, through decentralization, qualified mayors contribute to improved local public finance.
Decentralization and autonomy can potentially increase public sector efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability, as well as fulfill a conflict‐mitigating role. There is no guarantee, however, that decentralization, once implemented, would automatically produce the expected benefits. Using the case of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) in the Philippines, this article explores the importance of organizational capacity and the cultural, political, and social conditions in the region to explain the performance of the autonomous government. The article concludes that for autonomy to work, the administrative and institutional capacity of the regional government should be revitalized and the current politico‐administrative structure redesigned to accommodate local customs and practices and facilitate a consultative and collegial local governance arrangement.
One way to assess the capability of an autonomous region in implementing its autonomy is by measuring the performance of the region in managing decentralized fiscal and the degree of inde-pendency toward the central government. There are six main variables which considered being the performance indicators of the capability: fiscal need, fiscal capacity, fiscal effort, degree of fiscal decentralization, and elasticity coefficient of PAD (regional revenue) compared to PDRB. By ana-lyzing panel data from 1999 to 2004 of Malang City, this simple empirical research shows that ef-ficiency in public finance is relatively high, while trend of PAD toward PDRB is inelastic. This means that in the long run Malang City will have some degree of a positive trend of PAD and PDRB growth if the government could maintain the independency policy in terms of preference to local investment incentives. Keywords: regional autonomy, regional finance, regional revenue, fiscal decentralization and independency policy __________________________________________________________________________________________
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