Blockchain Papers

Weili Ding, Ming Lu

No abstract is available for this record.

Giovanni Facchini, Cecilia Testa

No abstract is available for this record.

Zhu Xiao-ning

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.

Nobuki Mochida

Japanese local bond system faced major challenge since the World War‡U. This paper shows accurately and widely as much as possible what the issue is, and investigates pros and cons to this from the viewpoint of finance. We argue that the change in last few years was fundamental rather than stopgap and it is the turning point since the US occupation period reform just after the Second World War. The driving forces for these reforms include three factors: decentralization, deregulation in financial sector and the deterioration of the financial conditions of the small local governments. We argue that the reform is basically advanced toward a preferable direction. However, it will take time for the local government and the institutional investor to become accustomed to new system as the player. Especially, small-scale municipalities with scarce fiscal resources would become disadvantageous as decentralization progresses.

Christoph Wollersheim

Since the ending of the cold war, many former military airbases have been converted for civilian use. This has caused the German airport network to become very dense. Nowadays airport catchment areas are overlapping and many airport-operators depend on state aid. Some lobbyists blame the decentralized provision of infrastructure for over-capacities and loss-making airport-operators. However, this paper shows that a shift of competences from the local to the federal level would breach the principles of public finance. Most essential is an imperative combination of provision and financing competences in order to avoid misleading incentives for local decision makers.

Frederico G. Jayme, Marco Crocco

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.

Patricia Clarke Annez, George E. Peterson

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).

Junjie Huang

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.

Massimo Giannini

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.

Eric A. Hanushek, Kuzey Yılmaz

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.

조기현

No abstract is available for this record.

Xiangdong Zhang

The local governments stand in a kind of special independence position because of the decentralization of the public finance power and the vertical personnel system,and transmute into an activity corpus of having the special benefits claim.Only by recovering the publicity,the construction or purchase of service type of the local governments can be carried out probably.

최병호

No abstract is available for this record.

Alia Ahmad, M Bose, Therése Persson

Bangladesh has made significant progress in health indicators in recent years in spite of her low level of income. This is mainly due to the commitment of the state supported by donors in providing preventive care with respect to child health and family planning. However, there are serious problems related to both access and quality of curative care that hurt the poor most. Infrastructures for service delivery exist at local level in rural areas but they function inefficiently. This paper deals with the systemic weaknesses of decentralized service provision of primary healthcare in Bangladesh and focuses on accountability links between different actors and functions of delegation, finance, performance, information and enforcement. The study is based on facility- and household-based data collected during 2005 in Khulna Division. The main findings of the study are: the health system in rural areas represents deconcentration rather than decentralization of central government functions where inter-sectoral discipline works poorly; local health providers are not accountable to local government, and poor citizens/clients are neither aware of their rights nor are capable of expressing their needs as effective channels do not exist.

Hrvoje Šimović

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.

Wallace E. Oates

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.

Hikaru Ogawa, David E. Wildasin

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.

Md. Awal Hossain Mollah

Administrative Decentralization seeks to redistribute authority, responsibility and financial resources for providing public services among different levels of government. Administrative Decentralization is the transfer of responsibility for the planning, financing and managing of certain public functions from the central government and its agencies to field units of government agencies. This paper will search for a common theoretical framework of decentralization, then analyzes and assesses the initiatives for decentralization of administration that have been constructed after the emergence of Bangladesh. The major issues and problems of implementation of the decentralization policies in Bangladesh are also discussed suggesting policy measures. This paper is analytical in nature.

Philip van Ryneveld

No abstract is available for this record.

Shuilin Wang, Xiaojun Zhao, Heng‐Fu Zou

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.

Fermín Cabasés, Pedro Pascual, Jaime Vallés Giménez

No abstract is available for this record.

Lars–Erik Borge

Compared with most countries the Norwegian system of financing local governments is highly centralized. Grants make up a substantial part of revenues and local taxes are highly regulated by the center. The development of the system was motivated by a desire to equalize service provision throughout the country. The purpose of this paper is to analyze possible consequences of more decentralized financing with local tax discretion. Contrary to the conventional wisdom the analysis indicates that decentralized financing is likely to give more equal provision of local public services. In addition, substantial efficiency gains can be obtained.

김정완

The responsibility of the central government for local finance increases as the financial condition of the local governments gets worse. The central government is required to improve the local finance rearrangements by focusing on satisfying the financial demand of local governments and realizing the financial equity among local governments. First of all, the current financial situation of the local governments should be reviewed in details for the central government to carry out such duties. The financial decentralization and the local finance renovation performed by central government are not positively evaluated despite its intended policy goal. In fact the central government didn’t consider seriously the opinions of local governments by adhering to its surface cause. Therefore the evaluation and improvement of the local finance rearrangement should be continuously done. The objective and role of the local finance rearrangement are subjected to be obviously presented, and then relevant distribution criteria should be prescribed. It should be kept in mind that the local finance rearrangement is the last resort for successful local government in fact that the responsibility of the central government increases as the economy and society develop.

Elliott Parker, Judith Thornton

In this paper we review the fiscal evolution of China and Russia, asking how the process of creating a separate, tax-financed public sector in the two countries differed. We observe that the size of China's budget sector was consistently smaller than in Russia and that budget decentralization was consistently greater. We see both pros and cons in China's decentralization. Local governments that were allowed to keep marginal increases in local tax revenue had incentives to pursue growth-supporting policies, including support for foreign investment and export-oriented production. However, in the absence of financial markets, there were barriers to investment outside the local region, resulting in inefficient use of capital and protectionism. Fiscal deficits and rapid expansion of credit have threatened stability in both countries, but China has proved more successful than Russia in managing macroeconomic policies. Finally, we argue that Russia's status as a petro-state makes management of the public sector particularly difficult. In Russia, recentralization has been associated with expansion of state ownership of enterprises and production by territorial governments, state ministries, state banks, and the natural monopolies.