Vertical fiscal imbalances and the accumulation of government debt : [Version Juli 2014]

  • The implications of delegating fiscal decision making power to sub-national governments has become an area of significant interest over the past two decades, in the expectation that these reforms will lead to better and more efficient provision of public goods and services. The move towards decentralization has, however, not been homogeneously implemented on the revenue and expenditure side: decentralization has materialized more substantially on the latter than on the former, creating "vertical fiscal imbalances". These imbalances measure the extent to which sub-national governments’ expenditures are financed through their own revenues. This mismatch between own revenues and expenditures may have negative consequences for public finances performance, for example by softening the budget constraint of sub-national governments. Using a large sample of countries covering a long time period from the IMF’s Government Finance Statistics Yearbook, this paper is the first to examine the effects of vertical fiscal imbalances on fiscal performance through the accumulation of government debt. Our findings suggest that vertical fiscal imbalances are indeed relevant in explaining government debt accumulation, and call for a degree of caution when promoting fiscal decentralization.

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Metadaten
Author:Iñaki Aldasoro, Mike Seiferling
URN:urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-344544
URL:http://ssrn.com/abstract=2464920
Parent Title (German):SAFE working paper series ; No. 61
Series (Serial Number):SAFE working paper (61)
Publisher:SAFE
Place of publication:Frankfurt am Main
Document Type:Working Paper
Language:English
Year of Completion:2014
Year of first Publication:2014
Publishing Institution:Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg
Release Date:2014/07/14
Tag:GFSY; fiscal decentralization; panel data; public debt; vertical fiscal imbalances
Issue:Version Juli 2014
Page Number:38
Note:
First draft: September 2013. This draft: July 2014
HeBIS-PPN:348929048
Institutes:Wirtschaftswissenschaften / Wirtschaftswissenschaften
Wissenschaftliche Zentren und koordinierte Programme / House of Finance (HoF)
Wissenschaftliche Zentren und koordinierte Programme / Center for Financial Studies (CFS)
Wissenschaftliche Zentren und koordinierte Programme / Sustainable Architecture for Finance in Europe (SAFE)
Dewey Decimal Classification:3 Sozialwissenschaften / 33 Wirtschaft / 330 Wirtschaft
JEL-Classification:C Mathematical and Quantitative Methods / C3 Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models / C33 Models with Panel Data
Sammlungen:Universitätspublikationen
Licence (German):License LogoDeutsches Urheberrecht