Introduction: Fiscal Aspects of Evolving Federations

There has been a resurgence of interest, in many parts of the world, in problems of multilevel government finance. Recent and ongoing political and economic developments raise questions about the role of the nation, subnational governments, and supranational public authorities in the provision and financing of public-sector programs. This paper presents an overview of these developments that may assist in understanding some of the motivation behind the articles presented in this special issue and in appreciating some of their potential applications. The articles are briefly summarized, and some issues that remain on the agenda for future research are identified.     

Fiscal severity and the choice of budget gap closing strategies

The great recession of 2008 forced US local governments to pursue a series of measures to maintain a balanced budget. The authors investigated local governments’ response to the great recession with a focus on Florida, where a crash in the housing market led to a severe erosion of the property tax base. Following the classic cutback management theory, the authors examine how the severity of fiscal stress affected the choice of budget-balancing strategies by Florida’s local governments. The severity of fiscal stress was found to affect not only the number of budget gap closing strategies but also the pattern of adoption of these strategies consistent with the administrative response model.     

我国地方财政支出对区域差距的影响

地方财政支出是政府统筹区域经济协调发展的重要手段。根据近十年来我国区域经济增长的敛散性以及我国地方财政支出对区域经济差距影响的实证检验,结果表明:经济增长的收敛模式在全国范围内没有绝对收敛,也没有条件收敛,三大地区中只有东部地区存在“俱乐部收敛”现象;地方财政支出总体上没有达到缩小地区经济差距的效果,突出表现在中部地区;地方科教文卫支出和社会保障支出比重的提升有利于缩小区域经济差距,而地方行政管理费用的扩张则扩大了区域经济差距。     

Electronic Commerce and the State Retail Sales Tax: A Challenge to American Federalism

Electronic commerce, by magnifying problems with the existing sales tax, has precipitated reexamination of basic precepts of fiscal federalism in the United States, not just taxation of remote sellers. This paper examines: key features of electronic commerce; the Internet Tax Freedom Act and the Commission it mandates; tax assignments in the United States; problems in assigning sales taxes to subnational governments; constitutional impediments to requiring remote vendors to collect sales and use taxes; tentative findings of the National Tax Association's project on taxation of electronic commerce; and implications of the current debate over taxation of electronic commerce for intergovernmental fiscal relations in the United States.     

A Note on Intertemporal Fiscal Competition and Redistribution

This paper studies fiscal competition among jurisdictions in a dynamic framework, where the degree of mobility of private capital across jurisdictions boundaries is perfect. The optimal tax on mobile capital is a source tax that taxes away factor rents. Further we show that taxation of mobile capital can redistribute income in favor of the immobile factor labor. This is because the factor rents generated by public inputs and appropriated by mobile capital exceed the efficient level of public expenditure for investments. JEL Code: H21, H23, H42, H71     

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.     

Education, Mobility of Labour and Tax Competition

We show that wage-taxfinanced subsidies encourage investment in risky education andoffer welfare gains. Tax competition and labour mobility maylead to substantial erosion of regional taxation. On the otherhand, mobility insures against region-specific shocks encouraginginvestment in education. Thus, welfare effects on the educatedand the owners of the fixed factor may go in either direction.Tax competition is especially fierce if the governments careabout the owners of the fixed factor. Elimination of their interestsfrom the governments' objective functions results in a Pareto-improvementin a federation with tax competition.     

地方财政风险监控体系的建立及实证分析

地方财政风险监控体系的研究已经成为一个世界性的课题.本文在总结国内外地方财政风险管理的基础上,提出了地方财政风险监控的债务指标和综合指标的两层指标体系,建立了地方政府债务风险值L和地方财政风险综合值F两套监控标准.并通过对重庆市40个区县数据的计算结果,验证了L和F相关性,给出了相应的对策建议.     

Local Public Funding of Higher Education When Skilled Labor is Imperfectly Mobile

If higher education is publicly funded by local (sub-federal) jurisdictions, while skilled labor is heterogeneous in responding to wage differentials between jurisdictions, the spillovers that result give rise to a disparity between the centralized output-maximizing allocation of resources to higher education and decentralized equilibria. Generally, decentralization leads to under-provision, which can be offset by inter-jurisdictional subsidies based on gross migration flows. But the extent of the discrepancy depends on the local balance of political forces. Indeed, when the welfare of native-born emigrants is highly valued while new immigrants carry little political weight, over-provision in equilibrium is possible.     

中国式财政分权影响资本配置效率研究

高度集中的政治管理体制下的财政分权使得中国财政分权对地方政府行为所产生的激励与西方国家不同。使用2002～2009年数据,对中国财政分权与资本配置效率进行理论研究与实证分析,结果表明:财政分权程度的提高对资本配置效率产生了阻碍作用,中国式分权所引致的地方政府规模扩张等行为扭曲是导致财政分权与资本配置效率负相关的主要原因。为此,应改革政绩考核指标、完善税收体系、调整财权分配制度。     

地方财政支出对中国省际人口迁移影响的实证研究

以第四次人口普查和2005年1%人口抽样调查中我国省际人口迁移的数据为样本,采用个体固定效应模型,对地方财政支出对人口迁移的影响进行检验。结果表明,地方财政支出差异对我国省际人口迁移的作用是显著的,当迁入地的财政支出增加时迁入人数也会增加,中部省份的财政支出对人口迁入的作用要大于东、西部地区;另外,相对于地方政府基本建设支出,文教、卫生和社会保障支出差异对人口迁移的影响更大。     

A Model of the Confidence Channel of Fiscal Policy

This article presents a simple macroeconomic model where government spending affects aggregate demand directly and indirectly, through an expectational channel. Prices are fully flexible and the model is static, so intertemporal issues play no role. There are three important elements in the model: (i) fixed adjustment costs for investment, which create an inaction zone; (ii) noisy idiosyncratic information about the aggregate economy; and (iii) imperfect substitution among private goods and goods provided by the government. An increase in government spending raises demand for private goods and may prevent a coordination failure. The optimal level of government expenditure is high when the desired level of investment is low, which we interpret as a time of low economic activity.     

Intergovernmental Fiscal Arrangements and Provincial Consumption Risk Sharing in China

This paper utilizes a panel data set on two major fiscal reforms in China—the fiscal contract system (FCS) in 1980-93 and the tax-sharing system (TSS) after 1994—to examine how the various aspects of intergovernmental fiscal arrangement affect the ability of the fiscal system to facilitate risk sharing. The high revenue decentralization and the proliferation of extrabudgetary revenue items in the FCS generally weakened the central government's ability to support interprovincial risk sharing. This situation was reversed in the TSS period. In addition, the effect of central-to-local transfer (transfer-in) and local-to-central transfer (transfer-out) on risk sharing was asymmetric in the sense that transfer-out enhances risk sharing but transfer-in does not.     

多级政府间事权划分与财政支出职能结构的国际比较分析

政治、经济体制及文化传统等方面的差异，造成了美国、加拿大、英国、日本四个主要西方发达国家多级政府间事权划分与各级财政以出职能结构方面的明显区别。透过各国的具体情况，我们可以发现一些建设财政联邦体制应遵循的基本经验。     

地方财政风险测度与区域异质性分析

防范化解地方财政风险是我国目前财政工作的重点。为此,利用2015—2021年全国246个城市的财政数据,从地方财政内部运行风险、地方财政体制机制风险、地方财政信用风险及地方财政内部治理风险四个维度构建地方财政风险评价体系,以测度分析地方财政风险。结果显示：全国地方财政风险稳定在0.4左右,但区域差异显著。西北、华北、华中及东北地区的城市的财政风险水平显著上升,华东、华南和西南地区的城市的财政风险水平较低。沿海、新一线及省会城市财政风险水平相对较低,优于非沿海、非新一线及非省会城市。鉴于此,应构建区域财力协调机制,以助力我国实现地方财政高质量发展。