Sub-nationals' risk premia in fiscal federations: Fiscal performance and institutional design

The recent debt crisis in Europe highlighted the importance of institutional design and, in particular, bail-out clauses in determining States' risk premia in fiscal or quasi-fiscal federations. This paper examines the determinants of sub-national governments' risk premia in fiscal federations using secondary market data for the USA, Canada, Australia and Germany. It finds that, as for central governments, fiscal fundamentals matter in the pricing of risk, and sub-national governments with higher public debt and larger deficits pay higher premia. However, this relationship is not uniform across federations and it differs with institutional arrangements. In particular, market pricing mechanisms are less effective in presence of explicit or implicit guarantees from the central government. We show that when sub-national governments depend on high transfers from the central government (i.e., when there is some form of implicit guarantee from the center), markets are less responsive to sub-national governments' fiscal fundamentals. Using primary market data, the paper also shows that high transfer dependency lowers the probability of sub-national governments to borrow on capital markets.     

Federal fiscal transfers in monetary unions: A NOEM approach

In the debate over EMU, a widely accepted view is that a federal fiscal mechanism is needed for the participating states to cope with asymmetric shocks. In this paper, we explore the properties of federal fiscal transfer schemes with regard to their capability to stabilize national consumption, production and employment. We consider direct transfers among private sectors and indirect transfers among national fiscal authorities. We show that federal fiscal arrangements can provide perfect insurance. Our analysis builds on the New Open Economy Macroeconomics framework which allows us to portray the transmission of shocks and the properties of transfers in detail. JEL Code E42 · E63 · F33 · F42     

Fiscal Transfers and Fiscal Sustainability

We examine whether the U.S. and German state governments pursue sustainable fiscal policies taking into account fiscal transfers. Using panel data techniques we investigate whether the debt‐to‐GDP ratio had a positive influence on the primary surplus (Bohn model). We show that including/excluding fiscal transfers changes the results. If fiscal transfers are not included in the primary surplus, the test results do not indicate that the U.S. and German state governments pursued sustainable fiscal policies. Our results also suggest that fiscal transfers were positively related to debt. These findings indicate that intergovernmental transfers have implicitly subsidized debts.     

Tax Competition and Fiscal Equalization

This paper analyzes the relation between tax competition and fiscal equalization. In particular, it asks the question whether fiscal equalization schemes can mitigate inefficient tax competition. Two transfer schemes are considered: tax revenue and tax base equalization schemes. The paper shows that equalizing transfers may internalize fiscal externalities. In particular, in a small open economy tax base equalization yields efficient tax rates. Thus, transfer mechanisms with an explicit redistributive character do not always impair efficiency.     

Wagner’s law,fiscal discipline,and intergovernmental transfer: empirical evidence at the US and German state levels

Does fiscal discipline restrain the government from increasing its budget size? To answer this question, this paper investigates whether Wagner’s law is satisfied for two types of states: US states, in which fiscal sovereignty is established, and German states, in which fiscal transfer dependence is high and budget constraints are softened. In US states, we demonstrate that Wagner’s law is validated, while some of the balanced budget requirements weaken the validity of the law. In German states, we find an “inverse” law, especially after the bailouts of Bremen and Saarland. The “inverse” law is a new channel of growth in government size and means that soft budget constraints cause significant negative correlation between government size and output. These results are robust regardless of whether intergovernmental fiscal transfers are taken into account, while they quantitatively change the validity of the law. Our findings imply that the characteristics of fiscal discipline are the prime determinants of the channel and degree of growth in government size.     

Central Transfer and Fiscal Capacity in China: Evidence from the Tax-Sharing System

In 1994, the Chinese government introduced a new fiscal system. Using the provincial panel data during the following period 1995–2010, we find robust evidence that central transfer (measured as the ratio of net central transfer to budgetary expenditure for each province) has a significant, negative effect on the fiscal capacity of a province (the sum of budgetary and extra-budgetary incomes as a percentage of GDP). Therefore, when the central government favors the poor provinces in central transfers (the common pool problem), the rich provinces expand their extra-budgetary income more to avoid predation by the central government, which helps increase the fiscal capacity and thus the market-preserving behavior of the rich provinces. Our result helps explain China’s success, which has strong policy implications for other transitional economies.     

Fiscal Policy Reforms in a Global Economy

Two countries are populated by workers and capitalists. Their governments collect taxes to finance productive expenditure and income redistribution. The share of income redistributed defines the size of the welfare state. Although both groups benefit from an abolition of the welfare state in the long run, the optimal fiscal policy in autarky can be characterized by maintaining a large welfare state since transfer cuts would induce transitional losses. Starting in such a position of policy inertia free trade and capital mobility is introduced. Fiscal policy competition leads to a reduction of tax rates and a relative increase of productive expenditure. If both countries coordinate their fiscal policy the reduction of taxes and income transfers is less pronounced. Quantitative effects of increasing globalization are assessed in a calibrated model for an average Europe G-4 country and the United States.     

Optimal taxation in the presence of bailouts

The termination of a representative financial firm due to excessive leverage may lead to substantial bankruptcy costs. A government in the tradition of Ramsey (1927) may be inclined to provide transfers to the firm so as to prevent its liquidation and the associated deadweight costs. It is shown that the optimal taxation policy to finance such transfers exhibits procyclicality and history dependence, even in a complete market. These results are in contrast with pre-existing literature on optimal fiscal policy, and are driven by the endogeneity of the transfer payments that are required to salvage the financial firm.     

公共部门养老保险隐性债务:国际比较

大多数国家针对公共部门工作人员设有单独的养老保险。这些保险未来的财政负担可能相当繁重,因为政府通常是雇用工作人员最多的部门,公共部门的养老待遇相对来讲也更加丰厚,而未来养老金待遇需要直接从国家财政(现收现付制)或积累不足的养老基金(基金积累制)中支付。一些国家有关养老金水平的论证和信息不透明,可能隐含巨额财政债务,将会转移到后代人身上。为了让各国之间就公共部门养老保险财政负担进行公平比较,本文建议根据统一标准对非积累制养老保险的债务进行测评和报告,以提高财政透明度,帮助决策。文章从经济合作与发展组织选取了一些国家,按公允价值估计2008年底的净负债值。这种财政负担也可理解为养老金隐性债务。     

Fiscal Reconstruction and Local Government Financing

This paper investigates the dynamic properties of intergovernmental financing during a fiscal reconstruction process by analyzing the dynamic game among local governments, which operates with soft budget constraints because of concessionary region-specific transfers from a central government. The existence of intergovernmental transfers induces the free-riding behavior of local governments, thereby bringing considerable deficits to the central government. Raising local and/or national taxes is desirable for fiscal reconstruction, but is unable to attain the Pareto-efficient fiscal reconstruction. Taxes on lobbying activities, combined with uniform transfers, induce earlier concession and can attain the Pareto-efficient outcome in the long run.     

Bailouts in a Federation

The recent move towards decentralization in countries such as Spain, Hungary, and South Africa and the difficulties that central governments have had in dealing with fiscal irresponsibility on the part of regional governments in countries such as Argentina, Brazil, and India has made the study of transfer systems one of the most important areas of research in federalism today. A model of a federation is developed in which regional governments act as Nash competitors with each other but are first-movers in a Stackelberg game with the central government. The central government finds that it will maximize its expected votes by increasing transfers as regions borrow. This bail out of regional governments creates a regional soft budget constraint and results in two incentive effects, a common pool effect on tax payments and an opportunity cost effect. The soft budget constraint lowers the opportunity cost of borrowing for the region, but also increases the tax-cost since a portion of the borrowing must be paid for through increased taxes. The common property problem associated with tax payments implies that the increased tax cost must be less than the decrease in the opportunity cost (leading to excessive borrowing) unless the central government increases grants to other regions when it institutes a bailout. Somewhat surprisingly, in the latter case the additional increased taxes may increase costs enough to offset the lower opportunity cost resulting from the bailout, leading to efficient borrowing decisions as in the case of a hard budget constraint. The results are also useful for understanding the empirical estimation of soft budget constraints.     

Local government responsiveness to federal transfers: theory and evidence

Federal transfers can depend on local fiscal capacity which is measured by local tax bases. The aim of this paper is to understand to what extent and how these transfers affect local tax decisions. We develop a model with two provinces producing one mobile good. The good is taxed according to the destination principle. Final consumers decide to buy the good from the province where it is cheaper. The two provinces engage in tax competition. The introduction of scale economies into the shopping technology generates nonlinear tax reaction functions which make it possible to test the effect of a transfer equalizing local tax bases on tax competition in two complementary tax regimes. Used for this purpose are cigarette and gasoline tax data from Canada. In the case of cigarette tax, it is found that nonlinearity in tax competition is almost entirely offset when equalization holds: tax competition in the two tax regimes become closer. The shopping technology for gasoline gives less scope for scale economies, so that equalization does not affect reaction functions.      

试论后积极财政政策的政策选择--兼论我国政策性银行和邮政储蓄的财政化定位

积极财政政策取得明显成效，但必须逐步退出。明智的选择是逐步弱化使之谈出，并预先研究淡出后的接续政策。在后积极财政政策选择中，政策性银行的财政化定位，是政府弥补市场金融资源配置缺口的重要途径；邮政储蓄的财政化定位，可以校正全社会资金异动，使政策性银行取得稳定的信贷资金来源。二改由财政部主管，邮政储蓄吸收的存款采取内部定价方式转给政策性银行，严格按政府政策意图贷给服务对象。政策性银行经营中的政策性亏损或预算的财政贴息项目，由财政及时弥补，达到四两拨千斤的功效。     

Searching for opportunities for Sub-Saharan Africa's renewal in the era of globalisation

Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries rely heavily on donor assistance and international borrowing. The Official Development Assistance (ODA)/GNP ratio in SSA is expected to rise well into the next century. Increases or decreases of ODA, which is known to be the main source of SSA's investment, may depend on the type of global settlement expected to emerge in the post-cold war world. SSA has therefore a stake on the type of globalisation which may frame world economic policy and financial aid to it. Neo-liberal globalisation has no enthusiasm for massive financial transfers. The incipient globalising ideas which emerged from the Rio Summit in 1992 have suggested to increase ODAs in real terms and debt relief to control crushing debt service payments. Agenda 21 has created new and additional facilities formally for increasing donor assistance in the form of financial and investment transfers. The question is whether this new mechanism will make any difference to stem the SSA decline and can “incentivise” the region's renewal or renaissance. This article will focus on how globalisation may be related to increase or decrease of financial transfer to SSA.     

A Tax on Tax Revenue: The Incentive Effects of Equalizing Transfers: Evidence from Germany

Several recent studies suggest that equalizing transfers in a federal system may distort the tax policy decisions of states. We study this issue for the German federal fiscal system. In a simple theoretical model, we first identify a substitution effect and an income effect of equalizing transfers. Our main hypothesis is that both effects should tend to reduce tax revenue of German states. We perform various empirical tests which confirm this hypothesis.     

Fiscal Policy,Business Cycles and Economic Stabilisation: Evidence from Industrialised and Developing Countries*

This paper empirically investigates the responsiveness of fiscal policy to business cycles and the effectiveness of fiscal policy in reducing economic fluctuations. From regressions on the responsiveness of fiscal policy to business cycles, we find that the government's current expenditures and subsidies & transfers move counter‐cyclically, whereas taxes and capital expenditures move pro‐cyclically. Using economic fluctuations in neighbouring countries as an instrumental variable, we show that ordinary least squares (OLS) estimates understate the responsiveness of fiscal policy to economic fluctuations. We also find that fiscal policy responds asymmetrically over economic fluctuations. In investigating the effectiveness of fiscal policy in reducing economic fluctuations, we mitigate omitted variable bias by adding four important factors ‐ military expenditures, oil production, economic fluctuations in neighbouring countries and fiscal policy responsiveness to business cycles. The results of effectiveness regressions are consistent with the responsiveness regressions, highlighting the importance of current expenditures, especially subsidies and transfers, in responding to business cycles and stabilising the economy.     

The Impact of Oportunidades on Consumption,Savings and Transfers*

In this paper, we estimate the effect of the Mexican conditional cash transfer programme, Oportunidades, on transfers, savings and consumption for treated households. We find positive effects on consumption of non‐durable and durable goods, an increase in savings coupled with a drop in the number and values of loans, and a reduction of in‐kind transfers received by households in treatment areas. These results are consistent with the existing evidence that conditional cash transfer programmes have beneficial effects in both the short and medium term, but that they partly crowd out private transfers.     

Poverty traps and intergenerational transfers

In this paper, by adopting an OLG neoclassical growth model, we show that intergenerational transfers may trigger the take off of an economy entrapped into poverty in a twofold way: (1) by eliminating the zero equilibrium, which, under technology with low factor substitutability, is always a “catching” point, so that the economy might start converging to a positive equilibrium. In this case, the appropriate instrument turns out to be a transfer from the old to the young, while there is no room for policies redistributing in the opposite direction (i.e., a pay-as-you-go pension scheme); (2) when the rich equilibrium is unstable—which can be the case under high intertemporal elasticity of substitution of individuals—the introduction of transfers may stabilize such an equilibrium, so that the economy starts converging to it. In the latter case, both policy programs such as pay-as-you-go pension schemes or subsidies to the young may help escaping from poverty. However, we point out that in either circumstance, the “size” of transfers should be sufficiently large (and, as for pensions, not even too large), in order to avoid ineffective and useless burden on the taxpayers without triggering the take off.      

Tax Evasion and Auditing in a Federal Economy

This paper analyzes the relation between tax auditing and fiscal equalization in the context of fiscal competition. We incorporate a model of tax evasion by firms into a standard tax competition framework where regional governments use their audit rates as a strategic instrument to engage in fiscal competition. We compare the region’s choice of audit policies for three different cases: A scenario of unconfined competition without interregional transfers, a scenario with a gross revenue equalization (GRS) scheme and finally, a scenario with net revenue sharing (NRS), where not only the revenues from taxation but also the regions auditing costs are shared. Without regional transfers, fiscal competition leads to audit rates which are inefficiently low for revenue-maximizing governments. While in general GRS aggravates the inefficiency, NRS makes the decentralized choice of auditing policies more efficient.JEL Code: H26, H71, H77     

Does competition for capital discipline governments? The role of fiscal equalization

This paper examines how a fiscal equalization system affects the disciplining effect of competition for capital among heterogeneous regions in a decentralized economy. I build a model in which regions that are heterogeneous in initial endowments try to attract capital by competing public input that enhances the productivity of capital; meanwhile, a fiscal equalization system is imposed by the central government to reduce regional disparities in fiscal capacity. The key prediction, borne out in data from the German equalization system, is that while competition for capital strengthens discipline in the well-endowed regions, it weakens discipline in the poorly endowed regions. However, a conventional equalization transfer scheme, common to many countries, can be effective in correcting the distortion driven by the heterogeneity of initial endowments across competing regions.