What level of decentralization is better in an environmental context? An application to water policies

This paper analyses the optimal division of environmental policymaking functions among the different levels of government. Using fiscal federalism theory, we identify the most appropriate level of decentralization in each case. The paper focuses on water resources policies, with an application to Spanish regions during the 1996–2001 period. A simulation allows the implementation of more efficient policies in the context of water resources. The results of the empirical exercise show that a decentralized scenario is preferred under strong differences among preferences.      

Fiscal federalism in Russia: a critique of the OECD proposals

The OECD proposes to kill two birds with one stone in Russiaby simultaneously improving fiscal federalism, and using thefinancial reform process to press for full market liberalisation.This paper scrutinises the initiative and finds it wanting becausethe consensus reforms advocated conflate the re-centralisationof fiscal authority with optimal ownership, property rightsand effective market building, perpetuating the illusion thatthere are no bad market systems. The G-7 and Putin must do better.Yeltsin's mis-privatisation and mis-liberalisation, which spawnedrent seeking, asset stripping, asset seizing and a disregardfor profit maximising from current operations, have proved tobe path dependent and need to be rectified. Putin's increasinglyvisible efforts to rein private property rights must also betaken into account in designing on optimal fiscal federalistregime.     

地方政府支出与农村居民消费需求变动——以我国省级面板数据为例

本文在理论诠释地方政府支出对农村居民消费需求的传导机制下,通过建立地方政府支出与农村居民消费支出之间的个体固定效应变截距模型,运用我国31个省(市、自治区)1998～2007年的经验数据进行实证检验.结果表明:地方政府财政支农支出对农村居民消费具有显著的挤入效应,而转移性支出与农村居民消费的相关程度并不明显.     

Compensation for environmental services and intergovernmental fiscal transfers: The case of India

This paper studies mechanisms to compensate local government for the public provision of environmental services using the theory of optimal fiscal transfers in India. Especially, we analyzed the role of intergovernmental fiscal transfers in achieving the environmental goal. Simply assigning the functions at appropriate levels does not ensure optimal provision of environmental services. Optimality in resource allocation could be achieved by combining the assignment system with an appropriate compensation mechanism. Intergovernmental fiscal transfers would be a suitable mechanism for compensating the local governments and help in internalizing the spillover effects of providing environmental public goods. Illustrations are also provided for India.     

财政支出结构与城乡收入差距——基于东、中、西部地区省级面板数据的经验分析

本文基于中国三大地区的省级面板数据,构建计量模型,实证考察财政支出结构对城乡收入差距的影响。实证结果表明,政府财政支出结构对城乡收入差距有显著影响,不同财政支出项目的影响方向不同,且财政支出结构对城乡收入差距的影响在中国三大地区存在差异性。因此,研究财政支出结构对城乡收入差距的影响,不能仅就全国范围考察,还需分区域进行。本文最后根据实证结果提出了一些缩小城乡收入差距的政策建议。     

The labour market and the distribution of earnings: an empirical analysis for Italy

Using four waves of data from the Participation Labour Unemployment Survey, a database of information on the Italian labour market supply, we address the question of earnings dispersion by applying a ‘nested’ decomposition procedure of the Theil inequality measure, which combines into a unified framework the standard decompositions by population subgroups and income sources. The empirical evidence obtained points to the key role played by the self-employees in shaping labour income inequality, especially at the upper extreme of the earnings distribution, and the emergence of non-standard forms of employment as an important feature of the contemporary workplace.     

The distribution of money and prices in an equilibrium with lotteries

Summary. We construct a tractable fundamental model of money with equilibrium heterogeneity in money balances and prices. We do so by considering randomized monetary trades in a standard search-theoretic model of money where agents can hold multiple units of indivisible tokens and can offer lotteries on monetary transfers. By studying a simple trading pattern, we can analytically characterize the monetary distribution. Interestingly, such distributions match those observed in numerically simulated economies with fully divisible money and price heterogeneity.Received: 16 April 2003, Revised: 11 February 2004JEL Classification Numbers: D30, D83, E40.A. Berentsen, G. Camera, C. Waller: The paper has benefitted from insightful comments of two anonymous referees, whom we thank. We also thank participants at the conference Recent Developments in Money and Finance, held at Purdue University in May 2003, and the EPRI/University of Western Ontario Money Conference held in October 2003. Correrspondence to: G. Camera     

Electoral Balancing in Federal and Sub-national Elections: The Case of Canada

The major premise of this study is that in federal countries voters can balance and moderate national policy by dividing electoral support between different parties in federal and sub-national elections. We compare the non-concurrent federal and provincial elections in Canada to assess the balancing properties of sub-national elections. The balancing hypothesis implies that the federal incumbent party may suffer additional electoral losses in provincial elections. We use several statistical tests - ordinary OLS, fixed effect and unbalanced random effect cross-section time series - to analyze Canadian electoral data for the period of 1949-1997. All tests sustain that the incumbent party at the federal level loses votes in provincial elections.     

Pawns Take Queen: The Destabilizing Effects of Regional Parties in Europe

Regional parties encourage government instability in Europe because they make extreme demands on governments for regional autonomy. These demands are different from the demands other parties make and are also more difficult to accommodate, because they require national governments to relinquish decision-making authority over certain issues, whereas the demands of other parties only require government to adjust their policies in some direction. Regional parties are also unlikely to compromise their demands because they do not have the tools available to them that other types of parties have. I support this argument through a statistical analysis of twenty-four democracies in Europe, showing that the presence of regional parties in government increases government instability and that the saliency of autonomy issues affects stability only if it is mediated through regional parties. JEL classification: A, C Regions are defined as the political regions of a country – that is, the level of government directly below the national level of government in a country.     

The incidence of import liberalization with and without a value added tax: an application to bangladesh

This paper examines the impact of import tariffs and tariff-replacing indirect taxes on the welfare of households grouped by the size distribution of income. A computable general equilibrium model for Bangladesh is simulated to examine the removal of quantitative restrictions and tariffs as well as the replacement of trade taxes with a value added tax (VAT). Import liberalization alone expands the manufacturing sector and increases the welfare of lower income households. If a uniform VAT is placed on both imports and all non-agricultural production in order to replace the lost tariff revenue for the government, some of the gains from import liberalization are diminished. If exports are exempted from the VAT, the gains are sustained to a greater degree. With a combination of tariff liberalization, quota markups, and the VAT, the economy goes through a contraction and the welfare of all households is reduced.     

Stepping on a rake: The role of fiscal policy in the inflation of the 1970s

The inflation of the 1970s in the US is often discussed as if the only type of policy action that could have prevented the inflation were monetary policy actions and the only type of policy errors that might have induced the inflation were monetary policy errors. Yet fiscal policy underwent dramatic shifts in the 1970s and economic theory makes clear that in an environment of uncertainty about future fiscal policy, monetary policy instruments may lose potency or have perverse effects. This paper documents the vagaries of fiscal policy in this period and argues that people at the time must have been uncertain about fiscal policy's future course. It also lays out a theoretical framework for understanding the effects of fiscal uncertainties on monetary policy and shows that fiscal variables have predictive value in dynamic models, even if traditional monetary policy indicators are included in the system.     

The impact of income distribution on structural transformation: The role of extensive margin

I study the impact of income distribution on structural transformation. Empirical results suggest that income inequality induces lower share of employment in services sector, and this negative effect gets stronger as income level rises. To explain these facts, I present a multi-sector model with non-homothetic preference and heterogenous agents in terms of different income levels. In equilibrium, the individuals will not consume all the goods available in the market. While the income elasticity falls as income increases at the individual level, it may not at the aggregate level. The extensive margin of consumers is important to understand this result. Within this framework, I show that income inequality may have negative effects on an industry with income elasticity larger than 1. More importantly, this effect is getting stronger as income levels increase.     

The Siting of Hazardous Waste Facilities in Federal Systems: The Political Economy of NIMBY

This paper offers a new political economy explanation for thepervasive problem of siting hazardous waste treatment facilitiesin federal system. We first show that a decentralized systemyields the first-best waste treatment capacity level and that acentralized structure gives rise to free-riding behavior amonglocal jurisdictions. In our model, each community seeks toinfluence the central government through political contributions.This leads to suboptimal levels of treatment capacity. Thecapacity is increasing in the compensation level if the marginalbenefit of treatment capacity is sufficiently large, and in thegovernment's weight on aggregate social welfare relative tolobbying activities. The centralized system can replicate thedecentralized system with a sufficiently high compensation level.Since compensation has proved difficult, a centralized systemfaces greater obstacles than a decentralized system.     

The value of an informed bidder in common value auctions

I compare two information structures in a common value first-price auction with two bidders: In one, each of the two bidders knows only his own signal about the value of the object, and in the other, one of the bidders learns his opponent's signal as well. Gaining the additional information in the second information structure makes the informed bidder worse off if the value is submodular in the bidders' signals and better off if it is supermodular. If the value is supermodular, then the seller's revenue tends to be lower with the informed bidder than without.     

Effects of income distribution in an inverse demand system: evidence from Chinese household survey data

This study provides an empirical analysis of the impact of changes in income distribution on food demand in China using data from China Health and Nutrition Survey. A new parametric form of an inverse demand system is introduced and estimated taking into account reported zero consumption. This new form is a natural extension of recent works that accommodate the incorporation of income distribution into the system and imposition of global regularity conditions in estimation. Our results generally indicate that the distribution of households across income groups is important in determining food demand in China and that a movement towards a more equal income distribution in China will stimulate the demand for vegetable, fruit, fish and eggs.     

The Power of Parties: Evidence from Close Municipal Elections in Norway

We show that small shifts in representation can affect policy in proportional election systems. Using data from Norway, we find that a larger left‐wing party leads to more property taxation, higher childcare spending, and lower elderly care spending, while local public goods appear to be a non‐partisan issue. These effects are partly due to shifts in bloc majorities, and partly due to changes in the left–right position of the council, keeping the majority constant. The estimates on spending allocations are rather imprecise, but they are consistent with evidence on politicians' fiscal preferences and patterns in media attention.     

Welfare distribution of collective in-kind transfers in education: an application to the extended schools programme

In this study, we employ the distributional characteristics approach to analyse the welfare distribution of the Extended Schools Programme, a social programme that fights inequality in Northern Ireland’s public schools. Our main result is that increasing funding to schools as their size increases penalizes the most deprived students. This is because the school size, although related to the educational supply, does not reflect the distribution of deprivation within schools. Thus, although in the Northern Irish context the largest welfare gains are possible if funds are redistributed among middle-size schools, our general result indicates an excessive support of small-size schools at the expenses of large-size schools.     

Demand distribution dynamics in creative industries: The market for books in Italy

We studied the distribution dynamics of the demand for books in Italy. We found that for each of the three broad sub-markets into which the book publishing industry can be classified – Italian novels, foreign novels and non-fiction – sales over a three-year sample can be adequately fitted by a power law distribution. Our results can be plausibly interpreted in terms of a model of interactions among buyers exchanging information on the books they buy.     

Sharing resources: The global distribution of the Ecological Footprint

This paper examines how the human demand on bioproductive lands, as measured by the Ecological Footprint, is distributed across the globe using methods commonly used to measure the distribution of income. Measuring the distribution of natural resource use will be necessary to achieve an economy that is sustainable, just and efficient. Currently, different nations place different demands on the environment, i.e. the Ecological Footprint is not evenly distributed across the globe. Calculation of the Gini coefficient for total Ecological Footprint and its components explains the sources of inequality in overall resource use. Calculation of the Atkinson index shows how inequality in the Ecological Footprint is related to the inequality of income, and environmental intensity.