Decentralization,social capital,and regional growth: The case of the Italian North-South divide

This paper aims to show how a region's constant level of social capital may have a very different impact on its economic growth depending on whether the central or the local level of government is responsible for regional policy.Our case study is the economic performance of Northern and Southern Italy in the post-World War II period, when a long phase of regional convergence came to a sudden halt in the early 1970s. We focus on the economic effects of the 1970s institutional reforms on government decentralization and wage bargaining. Our main hypothesis is that decentralization allocates the provision of public capital to institutions, the local ones, more exposed to a territory's social capital. Since social capital is lower in the Southern regions, decentralization made their developmental policies less effective from 1970 onwards, and regional inequality increased.We build an endogenous growth model augmented to include the interaction between social capital and public investment as well as the reform of the Italian labour market. We calibrate our model using data of the Italian regions for 1951–71. Our quantitative results indicate that decentralization triggered the influence of local social capital on growth and played a central role in halting the convergence path of the low-social-capital regions.     

财政分权与中国省域经济关系的空间计量检验

笔者利用2000年～2009年中国省域经济统计数据,借助地理加权回归方法,对财政分权与中国省域经济的关系进行了考察,结果表明:中国省域经济间存在显著空间相关关系。研究中,财政分权与经济之间的二次曲线关系得到了部分证实,但这一关系在不同省份、不同年份间均存在较大差异,从而导致最优财政分权度频繁变化;对于各省而言,确定合理的财政分权度范围,尚需更多未来数据支持。     

Decentralization and the shadow economy: Oates meets Allingham–Sandmo

This article studies the impact of decentralization on the shadow economy. We argue that decentralization may decrease the size of the shadow economy mainly through two transmission channels: (1) decentralization enhancing public sector efficiency (efficiency effect), and (2) decentralization reducing the distance between bureaucrats and economic agents, which increases the probability of detection of shadow economic activities (deterrence effect). Using various measures of fiscal, political and government employment decentralization in a cross-section of countries, we find the deterrence effect to be of more importance. The deterrence effect is stronger, the lower the degree of institutional quality. We find no robust evidence of the efficiency effect.     

最优财政分权度与我国经济增长的关系研究

过度集权或者过度分权都不利于经济增长,因此理论上可能存在一个最优财政分权度,并与最优经济增长水平相适应.本文对我国1985年至2000年财政分权对经济增长的影响进行了非线性关系检验,结果表明我国的最优财政分权度为66.67%.同时指出,我国的财政分权并不是面临一个是否应进一步分权或集权的问题,而是应该朝着制度完备的分权方向发展,使得财政分权通过制度的规范化、科学化、透明化、公正化而发挥其积极作用.     

Public budget composition,fiscal (de)centralization,and welfare

Abstract We study the optimal degree of fiscal decentralization in a dynamic federal economy where governments decide on budget size and its allocation between public education and infrastructure spending. We find that full centralization of tax and expenditure policies is optimal when infrastructure productivity is similar across regions. When differences are not too large, partial centralization is optimal. With strong differences, full decentralization becomes optimal. National steady‐state output tends to be highest under full decentralization. We provide a justification for the mixed evidence regarding the Oates conjecture by showing that full dominates partial decentralization, despite being inferior to complete decentralization.     

中国财政分权、金融发展、 工业化与经济增长的省际差异

本文采用1978-2006年中国28个地区的省际面板数据建立了检验财政分权、金融发展、工业化与经济增长之间长期关系的协整模型（co integration model）,并采用完全修正的最小二乘法（FMOLS）对模型进行估计。本文把地方政府官员参与政治晋升锦标赛竞争的行为影响经济绩效的假设引入对分权化改革过程的分析,对中国改革开放以来地方政府之间的竞争何以在促成经济总量高速增长的同时又导致各地区在财政分权、金融发展、工业化和经济增长方面呈现出差异的原因进行了分析,进而得出本文的分析结论并对其政策含义进行了讨论。     

中国的财政分权与经济增长——基于省级面板数据的实证

在Barro、Davoodi和Zou模型的基础上,本文构造了一个财政分权与经济增长关系的模型,并利用1980-2004年省级面板数据,采用随机效应回归方法,分阶段实证研究了我国财政分权对经济增长的影响.实证研究发现,财政分权总体上促进了我国的经济增长,而且我国财政分权的经济增长效应存在显著的跨区差异,东部地区的财政分权经济增长优势高于中西部地区.作者认为,财政分权体制下地方政府财政行为的差异与公共支出构成的差异是造成我国财政分权经济增长效应跨区差异的重要原因.     

Why countries are fiscally decentralizing

This paper models and empirically investigates underlying forces that promote governmental decentralization, or effective federalism, in the world over the last 25 years. A move to a federal system is based on the demand by hinterland regions for local autonomy, which increases with national income growth, greater relative hinterland population, and increasing national population. It is influenced as well by the degree of democratization nationally and locally. Decentralization is measured by both institutional indices indicating greater devolution of power to local governments and the share of local governments in national government consumption. Empirically, the paper finds that decentralization changes in ways predicted, in particular it increases with economic growth, country size, and population. Institutional structures based on colonial experience and initial constitutional provisions also matter.     

Does too much government spending depress the economic development of transition economies? Evidences from dynamic panel threshold analysis

This paper investigates the relationship between government size and economic growth and determines the optimal level of government spending to maximize economic growth. The paper applies a dynamic panel data analysis based upon a threshold model to test the threshold effect of government spending in 26 transition economies over the period spanning 1993–2016. According to the analysis results, government expenditures have a threshold effect on economic growth, and there is a non-linear relationship depicted as an Armey curve in these transition economies. The findings indicate that a government size above the threshold government spending level adversely affects economic growth, while a government size below the threshold level has a positive effect. Furthermore, there is a statistically significant relationship between the two variables above and below that optimal level, even if we divide the sample into developed and developing countries. Our findings suggest that governments in transition economies should consider optimal government size at around the estimated threshold level to support sustainable economic growth.     

Human Fallibility, Complementarity, and Fiscal Decentralization

This paper examines economic growth properties under alternative fiscal organizations when a bureau's decisions are fallible. A country consists of J jurisdictions, which need a public service. In a centralized government, one authority decides on services in every jurisdiction. In a decentralized government, J authorities are in charge of each public service. An authority can have high ability or low ability, and an authority with high ability draws a good project with higher probability. We first show that the decentralized government provides the same average quality of public services, with lower variance, than does the centralized government. We then apply this result to an economic growth model where the value of the Solow residual is a constant elasticity of substitution (CES) function of public services. We show that there is a critical value of the degree of complementarity below which fiscal decentralization is more desirable than fiscal centralization for an expected economic growth, and the decentralized government has a lower variance of GDP growth.     

Fiscal decentralization and economic growth in the OECD

What impact, if any, does Fiscal Decentralization (FD) have on economic growth? Further investigations of the inter-relationships between FD and economic growth are timely given that government decentralization remains at the forefront of many Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) policy agendas. This study incorporates a range of measures of FD to better account for the direct impact of different levels of subnational fiscal autonomy on economic growth. The analysis also considers the impact of previously omitted public sector decentralization variables that provide further indication of the extent to which Subnational Governments (SNG) are ‘closer to the people’ and potentially better able to account for local preferences in fiscal decision-making. Whilst little evidence of a direct relationship between FD and output growth is found, some evidence is found to suggest that federal systems tend to have lower growth rates than do unitary states, independent of their degree of decentralization, and that countries with more elected tiers of government generally have lower economic growth.     

财政分权、城乡收入差距与经济增长

利用1994年分税制后的经验数据,本文估计了一个包含增长方程、城乡收入差距方程和财政支出方程的联立方程模型,来估算财政分权对经济增长和城乡收入差距的影响。研究结果表明,财政分权使地方政府的财政支出显著增加,但财政支出的增加并不必然有利于经济增长和拉大城乡收入差距。如果在地方财政支出水平上升的同时,使科学教育和农业支出,特别是科学教育支出在总支出中的比重得以增加,将有可能在保持经济高增长的同时,使城乡收入差距得以缩小。     

财政分权的中国模式与OECD模式——分税制是财政集权吗

本文在完整的财政分权内涵上比较分析了1995—2009年中国与OECD国家的财政分权情况,结果发现,不管是收入还是支出,中国中央与地方政府的财政分权程度都远远高于发达国家,呈现出中国政治集权下的财政分权和OECD政治分权下的财政集权两种模式。中国的财政支出分权程度与经济增长和财政均等化存在显著的正向相关关系,而这在OECD国家是不显著的。在中国的财政分权结构中,结构偏向的经济性支出成为地方政府财政支出重点和经济增长的重要推动力量;扩张的预算外支出成为增加财政收入的重要途径。所谓“事权与财权匹配”问题的实质是公共职责不清晰和预算软约束的地方政府收支扩张的财政机会主义倾向。财政分权改革的后续深化方向是在明确规范化地方政府公共职责和硬化预算约束的基础上适度财政集权化。     

分权、区域竞争与倒U形分权效应曲线研究

财政分权能够促进区域经济增长吗?分权能够一视同仁地促进不同地区相同程度的经济增长吗?文章通过构建区域间追赶模型指出:(1)财政分权在带来区域竞争激励并促进增长的同时,也导致了地方政府行为的异化,从而使得分权的增长效应呈现"倒U形"曲线状.曲线背后的逻辑在于"政治锦标赛"下的竞争压力对不同发展阶段的地区并不一样,不同压力来源可能诱发出地方政府的不同努力水平.(2)利用全国县级面板数据,通过构造四类财政分权指标,证实了分权促进区域内经济增长且依据收入水平的变化呈现倒U形曲线的基本推论.     

Centralization and government competition

This paper examines the relationship between government size and fiscal centralization with specific focus on the separate influences of centralism and fragmentation on the size of public sector in the United States. The empirical findings at the national level provide support to the hypothesis that fiscal decentralization leads to a smaller government. The findings at the state and local levels, however, show no empirical relationship between government size and the degree of centralization.     

The effects of economic and political integration on fiscal decentralization: evidence from OECD countries

Abstract .  This paper examines the impact of economic and political integration on the vertical government structure. It argues that, by increasing the market size and the benefits of decentralized provision of public goods, integration triggered the recent process of decentralization in OECD countries. A panel analysis relates the degree of fiscal decentralization to economic and European integration, controlling for interregional heterogeneity, economies of scale, and institutions. The results mostly support a decentralizing effect of economic integration in general and of European integration in particular for heterogeneous EU countries, whereas participation of subnational governments in national decision-making is associated with more centralization.     

Fiscal decentralization and government size: The role of democracy

This paper examines how the level of democracy in a country affects the relationship between fiscal decentralization and government size. We argue that political regimes, proxied by their democracy levels, are important for different decentralization theories to predict the impact of fiscal decentralization on government size. We test this argument using panel data from 76 developed and developing countries during 1972–2013. We find strong and robust evidence that fiscal decentralization is negatively associated with government size and that a higher level of democracy tends to mitigate the negative impact of fiscal decentralization. Therefore, our study contributes to the literature by offering a novel insight on mixed results regarding the relationship between fiscal decentralization and government size in the literature.     

如何最优地"放权"——行政事项集权与分权的最优边界

"简政放权、放管结合"是深化行政体制改革、转变政府职能的重要内容之一."放权"政策体现了政府的权力分配模式从集权向分权的转变,其本质是一种"行政性分权".文章从提高经济运行效率即最大化中央政府效用的视角,以建模方式——建立了一个三层次政府的动态博弈模型,给出了集权与分权的边界,揭示"放权"政策的逻辑,从而试图为研究政府最优行政分权提供一种可行的思路,并尝试用这一模型为"放权"政策提供合理的解释.模型分析结果表明,(1)分权能够在不改变社会福利水平的情况下,通过减少中央政府的信息成本负担提升了经济运行的效率,这也是"放权"政策的主要目的.同时,权力的下放可能导致下级政府"寻租"的隐患,需要加大对这一行为的惩罚力度."权力清单"制度的建立,通过明确规定中间政府的权力范围,加强了对中间政府行使权力的监督,减弱了其滥用权力的动机.(2)具有以下特征的权力,分权往往比集权更优:下级政府的成本负担轻、连带惩罚力度小;权力实施时底层政府追求的目标差异程度小、彼此之间相互影响程度小.与历次国发文中下放的权力做了比对后发现,这些被下放的权力能够用上述的特征进行较好的解释.(3)各因素影响分权最优性的强弱关系是:信息成本和对中间政府滥用权力的惩罚力度这两个因素强于权力本身的若干特征,即带给下级政府的成本负担、连带惩罚程度;政策实施时底层政府追求的目标差异程度、外部性大小.     

The trade-off between risk and incentives in fiscal federalism: Evidence from China

A central argument of the second-generation fiscal federalism literature is that allocating a considerable share of tax revenue to local governments can provide fiscal incentives for local officials to promote economic growth. However, increasing incentives will increase the costs of uncertainty if local government officials are risk averse. Building on the insights of the classic principal-agent models, we predict that the optimal share of tax revenues retained by local government will decrease as the uncertainty of total tax revenues increases. Using Chinese provincial data, we find a robust negative relationship between volatility and the tax-sharing ratio at the sub-provincial level. Our results indicate that optimal decentralization in developing countries balances the trade-off between risk and incentives.     

Growth effects of public expenditure on the state and local level: evidence from a sample of rich governments

There is a vast empirical literature investigating the relationship between government size and economic growth. But the empirical evidence of growth effects of public expenditure using cross-country regressions is still inconclusive. According to a number of authors this is not surprising since the negative relationship only applies for rich countries with a large public sector. Restricting their analysis on rich countries only they can show the predicted negative impact. Naturally, a selection of a sub-sample of rich countries is always somewhat arbitrary. Another possibility is to concentrate on governments within a rich country. However, only few studies investigate the effect of state and local spending on economic growth. This study concentrates on the relationship between public expenditure and economic growth within a rich country using the full sample of state and local governments from Switzerland over the 1981–2001 period. The general finding is a fairly robust negative relationship between government size and economic growth. However, in contrast to public spending from operating budgets there is no significant impact on economic growth by expenditure from capital budgets.