Asymmetric Decentralization,Intergovernmental Transfers,and Expenditure Policies of Local Governments

Although China’s asymmetric fiscal decentralization system has been criticized for many years, there have been few studies giving direct evidence of its negative incentives on local government spending policies. By introducing the mechanism of asymmetric decentralization and fiscal transfers to the objective function of local government, this paper studies the incentive effects of asymmetric decentralization and fiscal transfers on spending policies of local governments, and uses the provincial panel data to carry out an empirical test. The conclusion shows that the asymmetric decentralization significantly weakens the incentives of local government to increase social expenditure, and as a solution to asymmetric decentralization, fiscal transfers fail to play a good role. Due to the relatively large income effect, the financing mechanism of fiscal transfers not only significantly reduces the incentives of local government to provide social public goods, but also weakens the constraint effect of fiscal competition on expenditure policies of local governments because of the increase in the relative cost. Although the distribution mechanism of fiscal transfers has a significant positive incentive to local government in regions where the net inflow of fiscal resources is more than zero, because of common pooling effects, the comprehensive effects of fiscal transfers in the distribution of incentives of local governments to provide social public goods are negative in all regions.     

Are government transfers harmful to economic growth? A meta-analysis

A common perception is that government transfers are harmful to economic growth. However, existing empirical evidence on this point is mixed. Potential reasons for these conflicting results include differences in the level of economic development of the countries studied, different estimation methods and different measures of government transfers. By conducting a meta-analysis of 149 estimates reported in 23 studies, we sought to understand if – and if so, to what extent – government transfers are harmful to economic growth, as well as how important the abovementioned reasons are in explaining different findings in the literature. We found that government transfers are more detrimental to economic growth in developed countries compared to less-developed countries because such transfers can have a non-monotonic effect on growth. When government transfers are substantial, as they are in developed countries, they tend to reduce growth. We also found that the growth effects of government transfers are sensitive to the measurement of the transfers, i.e., studies that use unemployment benefits instead of social security tend to report a stronger negative growth effect.     

Political economy of taxation in an overlapping-generations economy

This paper analyzes the effects of intergenerational conflict on capital and labor income tax rates, transfers, and government spending in a model of multidimensional policy choice. The different nature of tax liabilities for the young and the old can explain why the old receive large gross lump-sum transfers through social security, while the young receive little or none. A natural link also emerges between the size of the government as a provider of public goods and the magnitude of transfers that the same government will implement.     

INTERFAMILY TRANSFERS AS ALTERNATIVES TO GOVERNMENT TRANSFERS TO PERSONS*

How have government transfers altered the distribution of income, the level of work effort, and the rate of personal saving? Most scholars approach this question by comparing the current level of government transfers with the unrealistic counterfactual of a zero-transfer situation. This method overlooks the fact that nongovernment transfers existed before government transfers and the possibility that private transfers might have grown more if government transfers had grown less. This paper explores the significance of one private alternative to government transfers-namely, direct interfamily giving of cash, food, and housing. Fragmentary evidence suggests that such interfamily transfer was quantitatively more important than governmental transfer for these purposes thirty years ago, but is now only half as great. If current government transfers are conversions of, or substitutes for, interfamily transfers, then it follows that some of the benefits of government transfer “slide” over to “secondary beneficiaries,” i.e. those who would have made the private transfers. Further, it follows that the effects of government transfers are not much different from those of the private transfers which they replace.     

How much to share: Welfare effects of fiscal transfers

Recent sovereign debt crisis has challenged policy makers to explore the possibility of establishing a fiscal transfer system that could alleviate the negative impact of asymmetric shocks across countries. Using a simple labour production economy, we first derive an analytically tractable solution for optimal degree of fiscal transfers. In this economy, fiscal transfers can improve welfare by moving the competitive equilibrium with fiscal transfers closer to the social planner's solution. We then extend the model to a DSGE setting with capital, international bond and linear taxes, and we analyze how implementation of a simple revenue sharing rule affects welfare and macroeconomic variables over time. Simulation results show that risk sharing through fiscal transfers always improves welfare in the long run. However, under certain model specifications, short‐run transitional welfare loss can outweigh the long‐run benefits. These results suggest that, in designing fiscal transfers across countries, government should take into consideration the intertemporal nature of welfare gains.     

Agricultural Roots in Intergenerational Transfers in China

Economists have been interested in the motivations of intergenerational transfers, for different motivations affect the effectiveness of anti-poverty public transfers. However, one’s motivation is largely shaped by culture and social conventions. This paper sheds light on the influence of rice cultivation in intergenerational transfers in China. This is also the first time that economists consider cultural factors in the study of intergenerational transfers. Cultivating rice requires elaborate irrigation systems and large amounts of labor input so that rice farmers have to cooperate extensively with their neighbors, which has gradually shaped people’s value to be more inter-dependent. Based on micro-level data from CHARLS and sub-national rice data from China, our empirical results show strong evidence that individuals from rice regions are more likely to provide economic support for their parents. A one-percentage point increase in the share of rice in the total grain planting area will raise transfer incidence by 0.2–0.4 percentage points, and rice region residents transfer on average 300–400 yuan more in 2011 and about 1,000 yuan more in 2013 to their parents than those from wheat regions. Meanwhile they are more inclined to rely on their adult children for elderly support. Urban citizens are less affected. Using instrumental variable estimation, we are able to prove the effect is causal. With future continued deepening of population aging in China, relying on children for old age support may become more and more unrealistic, the government needs to coordinate the relationship between public transfer and private transfer to ensure the quality of life for the elderly.     

Corruption and privatization: Evidence from a natural experiment in China

This paper investigates how government corruption shapes state-owned enterprises' (SOEs) privatization. To establish causality, we exploit a natural experiment (i.e., the investigations of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection) to document that SOEs significantly deepen privatization after the crackdown on corruption. Further evidence demonstrates two plausible mechanisms driving our findings. Specifically, anti-corruption campaign: 1) accelerates privatization process by curbing the underpricing transfers to state entities and encouraging the normal transfers to private entities or individuals; and 2) by reducing managers' incentives to maintain the dominance of state ownership for expropriation through the discretion of perk consumption. Moreover, our findings are particularly pronounced for SOEs located in areas with high levels of social trust, government intervention, and less information asymmetry.     

Political determinants of intergovernmental transfers in a regionally decentralized authoritarian regime: evidence from China

This article examines the political determinants of the allocation of intergovernmental transfers in the context of China. In a regionally decentralized authoritarian regime, a government marked by political centralization and fiscal decentralization, intergovernmental transfers are employed by politicians as instruments to achieve political goals. Using China’s provincial data from 1994 to 2009, we find that the officials’ political power is an important factor in the distribution process. A party secretary’s replacement facilitates an increase in transfers, especially if the replacement comes from the central government. If a party secretary is a member of the Central Politburo, the province receives more conditional transfers than others. The central government allocates the transfers in such a way that the province with a high proportion of the minority population receives more transfers than others.     

Transparency and Economic Policy

We provide a two period model of political competition in which voters imperfectly observe the electoral promises made to other voters. Imperfect observability generates an incentive for candidates to offer excessive transfers even if voters are homogeneous and taxation is distortionary. Government spending is larger than in a world of perfect observability. Transfers are partly financed through government debt, and the size of the debt is higher in less transparent political systems. The model provides an explanation of fiscal churning; it also predicts that groups whose transfers are less visible to others receive higher transfers, and that imperfect transparency of transfers may lead to underprovision of public goods. From the policy perspective, the main novelty of our analysis is a separate evaluation of the transparency of spending and the transparency of revenues. We show that the transparency of the political system does not unambiguously improve efficiency: transparency of spending is beneficial, but transparency of revenues can be counterproductive because it endogenously leads to increased wasteful spending.     

Nature of transfers,income tax function and empirical estimation of elasticity of taxable income for Brazil

This article aims to estimate the elasticity of taxable income (ETI), taking into account the nature of transfers and their use as a redistribution package (involving cash and in-kind transfers) to households in Brazil. Our contributions are twofold. First, we provide a simple model with balanced-budget government that reveals the role played by cash and in-kind transfers on the labour supply (and income tax revenues thereof). Next, in order to estimate ETI in the presence of cash and in-kind transfers, Brazilian population surveys (Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios [PNAD]) are used to explore a limited tax reform that was implemented between 1997 and 1998. This reform only affected the higher income tax bracket. Our findings suggest that in-kind (cash) transfers are positively (negatively) associated with reported taxable income and precise estimation of ETI requires estimates of both types of transfers. Last, we estimate the ETI for Brazil in the range from 0.4 to 1.3 not different from those that maximize income tax revenues.     

Fiscal policy in an endogenous-growth model with public investment: A note

This note extends the basic endogenous-growth model by Barro [Journal of Political Economy (1990) 98: S103–S125]. It is supposed that the government pays lump-sum transfers to the representative household or levies a lump-sum tax, besides financing public investment. Growth and welfare effects of fiscal policy are studied for the competitive economy and the growth rate of the social optimum is compared with the one of the competitive economy.     

Intergovernmental Transfers,Governance Structure and Fiscal Decentralization

We provide a model incorporating features of local public finance in Japan, including close fiscal ties between different levels of government as well as bureaucratic determinations of intergovernmental transfers. The discretionary nature of transfers softens local budgets ex post, which exerts perverse incentive effects on local governments ex ante. Fiscal decentralization that assigns more revenue responsibility to the local level serves to counteract this moral hazard incentive. The emphasis is on the endogenous nature of regional fiscal capacities at the local level. Fiscal devolution motivates local jurisdictions to become fiscally independent wherever possible. JEL Classification Number: H7.     

Repeated Interaction and the Public Provision of Private Goods

The literature suggests that governments can use in-kind transfers to design efficient and targeted redistribution schemes if individual incomes are not directly observable. We investigate the extent to which the self-selection property of in-kind transfers carries through if redistributive transfers are made repeatedly. In a two-period setting, the government may gain information about the individuals' incomes in the first period and exploit this information for making targeted transfers in the second-period. This, however, also triggers changes in the individuals' behavior. If the government can commit to its future policy, the least cost policy may involve randomization between cash and in-kind transfers. Without commitment, the dynamic setting works against the government's interest. It may no longer be able to use in-kind transfers to generate information about the individuals' types.
JEL classification : H 42; H 2     

影响收入分配关系的五个问题与八点建议

基于与收入分配密切相关的五个重要问题的分析,文章认为,我国现阶段收入分配的症结不在于雇员薪酬比重、政府收入规模(宏观税负)、国有经济比重等带有总量特征的指标出现了什么严重问题,而在于收入分配的结构存在较为显著的不合理,差距扩大,公正性不足,转移支付和直接税的再分配优化机制构建不到位、作用发挥不够,以及对财产性收入的影响缺乏有效的引导与约束,国有企业的资产收益对公共福利贡献较弱,等等。文章从政府与财政的职能定位出发,考虑全局的可持续发展和社会和谐,提出了八点完善收入分配关系的建议。     

Estimating the public economic consequences of introducing varenicline smoking cessation therapy in South Korea using a fiscal analytic framework

Background and aims: Smoking gives rise to many cross-sectorial public costs and benefits for government. Costs arise from increased healthcare spending and work-related social benefits, while smoking itself provides significant revenue for government from tobacco taxes. To better understand the public economic impact of smoking and smoking cessation therapies, this study developed a government perspective framework for assessing smoking-attributable morbidity and mortality and associated public costs. This framework includes changes in lifetime tax revenue and health costs, as well as changes in tobacco tax revenue, from fewer smokers.

Methods: A modified generational accounting framework was developed to assess relationships between smoking-attributable morbidity and mortality and public economic consequences of smoking, including lifetime tax revenue gains/losses, government social transfers, and health spending. Based on the current prevalence of smoking in South Korean males, a cohort model was developed for smokers, former-smokers, and never-smokers. The model simulated the lifetime discounted fiscal transfers for different age cohorts in 5 year age bands, and the return on investment (ROI) from smoking cessation therapy.

Results: Former smokers are estimated to generate higher lifetime earnings and direct tax revenues and lower lifetime healthcare costs due to the reduction of smoking-attributable mortality and morbidity compared to smokers, even after accounting for reduced tobacco taxes paid. Based on the costs of public investments in varenicline, this study estimated a ROI from 1.4–1.7, depending on treatment age, with higher ROI in younger cohorts, with an average ROI of 1.6 for those aged less than 65.

Conclusions: This analysis suggests that reductions in smoking can generate positive public economic benefits for government, even after accounting for lost tobacco tax revenues. The results described here are likely applicable to countries having similar underlying smoking prevalence, comparable taxation rates, and social benefit protection provided to individuals with smoking-related conditions.     

Electoral goals and center-state transfers: A theoretical model and empirical evidence from India

We construct a model of redistributive politics where the central government is opportunistic and uses its discretion to make transfers to state governments on the basis of political considerations. These considerations are the alignment between the incumbent parties at the central and state levels and whether a state is a swing state or not. A testable prediction from the model is that a state that is both swing and aligned with the central government is especially likely to receive higher transfers. We test this prediction using Indian data for 14 states from 1974–75 to 1996–97. We find that a state which is both aligned and swing in the last state election is estimated to receive 16% higher transfers than a state which is unaligned and non-swing.     

Social transfers and conditionalities under different regime types

This paper examines the implications of political factors for social policy choices. Specifically, we explore the link between regime type and adoption of unconditional transfers versus transfers conditioned on beneficiaries’ investments in human capital. Due to the direct nature of benefits, unconditional transfers are more likely to be used to buy off opposition and prevent social unrest. As transfers that are conditioned on education and health pay off only in a relatively distant future, they are rarely initiated for political motives and rather defined by interests of long-term development and human capital accumulation. Using the new dataset on Non-Contributory Social Transfer Programs (NSTP) in developing countries, we find that transfers are indeed chosen so as to be unconditional under less democratic regimes. There is some evidence that conditional transfers are more likely to be adopted in democracies. In particular, democracies tend to increase the number of conditional schemes once any social transfer program is introduced.     

ECONOMIC RESOURCES OF THE HOMELESS: EVIDENCE FROM LOS ANGELES

This paper examines the economic resources of homeless adults using a unique data set from Los Angeles. The homeless rely on a variety of sources for income; the two most common sources are the government and the family. Over 58% received government transfers in the 30 days prior to the interview, while one-third had received cash assistance from a family member or friend. Familial transfers in the form of shared housing and meals also are important. While familial transfers buffer declines in income among the homeless, private support networks are not pervasive enough to overcome the severe difficulties the homeless face. Moreover, it is unclear why such a high share of the homeless do not participate in government assistance programs, although the evidence suggests that transaction costs are likely to be an important factor.     

Political intergenerational risk sharing

In a stochastic two-period OLG model, featuring an aggregate shock to the economy, ex-ante optimality requires intergenerational risk sharing. We compare the level of intergenerational risk sharing chosen by a benevolent government and by an office-seeking politician. In our political system, the transfer of resources across generations is determined as a Markov equilibrium of a probabilistic voting game. Low realized returns on the risky asset induce politicians to compensate the old through a PAYG system. This political system typically generates an intergenerational risk sharing scheme that is (i) larger, (ii) more persistent, and (iii) less responsive to the realization of the shock than the social optimum. This is because the current politician anticipates her transfers to the elderly to be compensated by future politicians through offsetting transfers, and hence overspends.     

Public debt in a basic endogenous growth model

We work out the mechanism that makes public debt affect the allocation of resources in the long-run. To do so we analyze an AK growth model with elastic labor supply and a government sector. The government levies a distortionary income tax and issues bonds to finance lump-sum transfers and non-distortionary public spending. We show that the long-run growth rate is the smaller the higher the debt ratio if the government adjusts public spending to fulfill its inter-temporal budget constraint. If the government adjusts lump-sum transfers the public debt ratio does not affect the balanced growth rate.