Fiscal Federalism in Transition: Evidence from Ukraine

Effects of fiscal federalism on redistribution and economic growth are analyzed for Ukraine, a country with large regional differences. Since there is virtually no such empirical literature, except a study of the German case, and since there are several potential flaws, the results must be interpreted in a very tentative way. We find that this relatively poor, disorganized country with little democracy has effectively redistributed income from relatively wealthy to relatively poor regions and thus promoted regional economic convergence, and even dampened the recession in both types of regions. We also find that the evidence does not reject the view that relatively poor regions used the transfers in a growth-conducive fashion, and the paper argues that the findings may have implications beyond the case of Ukraine. But the analysis is tricky, uncertain, and merely a small step to an interesting research issue.     

Local Government Finance and Industrial Policy in China

The paper considers the way in which the system of local government finance in China affects the design of local industrial policy. It starts by using recently collected data from selected cities to demonstrate the importance of indirect taxes for financing local services. It then presents a theoretical model which shows how the financing system can lead local governments to distort local industrial structure. Finally, it uses this model to consider whether the 1994 tax reforms can be expected to reduce these distortions. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Grants structure in an intergovernmental fiscal game

Abstract. Systems of intergovernmental grants change over time. We explain this observation in terms of political and economic shocks in a noncooperative game between federal and provincial governments. The effects on the equilibrium grants structure arising from political disagreement, fiscal burden, increased revenue instability, and federalistic behaviour are examined. Our results provide a new theoretical perspective on grants. We show that the role of matching grants may be to influence the pattern of social spending by provincial or state governments, while conditional lump-sum grants are used simultaneously to determine the composition of the tax burden across the levels of government. Received: January 2001 / accepted: April 2002 We are grateful for the helpful comments received from Richard Bird, Amihai Glazer, and two anonymous referees.     

CAPITALIZATION AND THE THEORY OF LOCAL PUBLIC FINANCE: AN INTERPRETIVE ESSAY

Abstract. The Tiebout hypothesis that consumer mobility and interjurisdictional competition leads to efficient provision of local services has provoked much controversy and debate in recent years. This article summarizes the opposing and conflicting viewpoints on this subject and presents a synthesis of the theoretical and empirical literature. The basic conclusion of this literature is that only under very restrictive assumptions will foot-voting and interjurisdictional competition ensure allocative efficiency in the local public sector. Nevertheless, the Tiebout mechanism offers important insights for public policy debates on the assignment of taxes and services and the design of equalization grants. Oates' suggestion that capitalization of fiscal differentials into residential property values provides an empirical test of the Tiebout hypothesis also generated an intense debate on the theoretical validity of this procedure and a heightened interest in its empirical applications. This debate is evaluated and an overview is given of the leading empirical approaches to test the efficiency and equity implications of the Tiebout mechanism. Controversial empirical issues such as the choice of the tax price term, the level of aggregation and econometric estimation problems are highlighted in this part of the survey.     

公租房小区的特征及治理

公租房小区有三个特征:一是租房者和买房者的混居;二是政府在公租房小区有着相当比重的经济利益;三是居民都是社会的收入中下阶层。公租房小区要避免变成贫民窟,其关键之一是中下阶层的居民能够也愿意参与到小区的治理中来。在此基础上,公租房小区的治理应该强调以小区居民代表为主体组成小区管理委员会,居民代表由居民大会选举产生,买房者的投票权高于租房者,政府代表拥有一定比例的投票权。     

On the cost-benefit of the regionalisation of the National Health Service

In this paper we analyse in formal terms the desirability of the regionalisation of a National Health Service. The policy consists of a devolution process, i.e. the increase in the health services provision to be decided by a region and financed by an increase in its revenues. The change is a marginal one, as it regards the part of supply of the health services exceeding a minimum standard, which for purposes of equity is maintained uniform in the national territory. As the central government is responsible for this component of the provision of health care (a federal “mandate”), the level of the said component is chosen by this authority and financed by federal taxation. Moreover, the government also applies an equalisation scheme based on the difference between a standard level of tax revenues and the revenues which the region is deemed able to raise for this purpose. Within the theoretical context of welfare improving reforms with distortionary taxation, we derive two conditions which focus on the regional, as well as the social, convenience of regionalisation. Received: May 5, 1999 / Accepted: January 21, 2000     

A cost-minimization approach to the international transfer of HRM/IR practices: Anglo-Saxon multinationals in the Federal Republic of Germany

The existence of host-country and country-of-origin effects is analysed by using the concept of fiscal federalism as a theoretical analogy. It is argued that multinationals try to minimize the costs of centralization and decentralization associated with cross-national personnel policy. The higher the costs of decentralization, the more likely is the existence of country-of-origin effects. The opposite holds true for increasing costs of centralization. This is tested empirically by comparing the human resource management and industrial relations (HRM/IR) practices of US and British subsidiaries operating in Germany with those of native German firms. Based on 297 valid cases, it is shown that the existence of decentralization costs is associated with country-of-origin effects in various areas of personnel management, such as the use of variable compensation, employee ownership and initial vocational training. In contrast, in the field of industrial relations (co-determination, compliance with collective bargaining), there are strong pressures to adapt to local norms, leading to host-country effects. These results indicate that a rationalistic cost-minimization approach is well suited to explaining the patterns of host- and home-country effects in regard to the HRM/IR practices of multinational enterprises.     

The central government grant allocation problem in the presence of misrepresentation and cheating

This study deals with the central government grant allocation problem under conditions of asymmetric information. Using a simple model, we examine herein the optimal design of random audit and incentive mechanisms to encourage the grantee (the local government authority) to report truthfully on local parameters required in the granting process. The local government authority must choose between two possibilities: a menu of contracts that could be considered as a matching grant programme with random auditing vs. a lump-sum grant without any audit mechanism. We will show that addressing the optimal grant system problem is similar to comparing slopes on the graph of the indirect local government welfare function at two distinct points.Received: January 2003, Accepted: November 2003, JEL Classification: H21, H23, H71, H77We would like to express our thanks to Howard Chernick and an anonymous referee for their extremely helpful comments.     

Existence of a competitive equilibrium when all goods are indivisible

This paper investigates an economy where all consumption goods are indivisible at the individual level, but perfectly divisible at the overall level of the economy. In order to facilitate trading of goods, we introduce a perfectly divisible parameter that does not enter into consumer preferences — fiat money. When consumption goods are indivisible, a Walras equilibrium does not necessarily exist. We introduce the rationing equilibrium concept and prove its existence. Unlike the standard Arrow–Debreu model, fiat money can always have a strictly positive price at the rationing equilibrium. In our set up, if the initial endowment of fiat money is dispersed, then a rationing equilibrium is a Walras equilibrium. This result implies the existence of a dividend equilibrium or a Walras equilibrium with slack.     

Local Public Debt with Overlapping Generations

Discussions of Ricardian equivalence for local public debt have generally centered on the role of land within a particular generation. This paper examines the full neutrality of local public debt in determining whether local public debt is neutral in the resource allocation between (1) mobile and immobile individuals who belong to the same generation, and between (2) individuals belonging to different generations. We find that local debt neutrality continues to hold across generations under migration.     

Equilibria under monetary and fiscal policy interactions in a portfolio choice model

This paper studies how the presence of income-taxes changes the properties of general equilibrium models with monetary and fiscal policy interactions. It is found that from a global perspective, the only policy regime that leads to a unique equilibrium is one where fiscal policy is active, i.e. the fiscal theory of the price level regime in Sims (1994). From a local perspective, there are three regimes. In particular, and relative to the previous literature following Leeper (1991), a new third regime exists where a passive fiscal rule combined with a passive monetary rule can still deliver determinacy where the same area of the parameter space would lead to multiple solutions if taxes were lump sum. To obtain the size of the new regime, the paper characterizes analytically the extent to which tax cuts are self-financing and how the distortionary tax Laffer curve looks near the steady state. In the new regime, monetary and fiscal backstops are brought into play so as to rule out off equilibrium dynamics, and inflation can temporarily increase in order to increase seigniorage revenues. With this flexibility, the monetary policy is consistent with the real debt remaining bounded, and the arithmetic that follows is monetarist and unpleasant in the sense of Sargent and Wallace (1981).     

Efficient inequality: differential allocation in the local public sector

This paper examines the consequences for social efficiency if the locally provided public input can be differentially allocated among residents. We derive the distributional efficiency condition, which is the distribution of public inputs that maximizes within-city gains from trade. Differential allocation also causes modifications to the standard (Samuelsonian) allocative efficiency condition. Additionally, we explore the consequences of differential allocation for the median voter model. Standard empirical voter models are seriously flawed because they fail to distinguish final public output production from either individual demand or the distribution of publicly provided inputs. Finally, we derive the club sharing efficiency condition.     

我国中间产品反倾销的公共利益问题探讨

自1997年我国发起第一起反倾销调查至今,我国反倾销调查绝大多数是针对中间产品的进口。本文针对我国反倾销产品的特征,结合这些产品下游产业的行业垄断特征,研究了我国中间产品反倾销的公共利益问题,指出对中间产品合理征收反倾销税可以提高我国整体福利。     

农村公共产品供给层次性分析

统筹城乡经济发展和建设社会主义新农村首要面临的问题是为农村、农民提供基本而有保障的公共物品。农村公共物品不仅存在供给总量的短缺问题,而且存在需求层次与供给结构之间的脱节。因此,解决现阶段农村公共物品供给矛盾的有效途径是抓住"工业反哺农业"这一契机,优化农村公共物品的供给结构,不断提高公共财政资金的利用效率。     

南宁市良庆区公共财政对民生支出问题及对策研究

党的十八大具体论述了教育、就业、收入、社保、医疗这五个与人民群众关系最密切的现实问题,民生问题一直是社会高度重视的焦点。通过对公共财政和民生的研究探讨,进行现状描述和数据对比,分析南宁市良庆区公共财政对教育、社会保障、医疗卫生、住房保障、农业支出存在的问题,提出民生支出的对策建议,以促进民生的改善。     

Second generation fiscal federalism: The implications of fiscal incentives

First generation fiscal federalism (FGFF) studies the performance of decentralized systems under the assumption of benevolent social planners. Second generation fiscal federalism (SGFF) studies performance based on the fiscal and political incentives facing subnational officials. The paper focuses on three aspects of SGFF. First, it considers the design of intergovernmental transfers. While FGFF emphasizes correcting vertical and horizontal equity, SGFF emphasizes the importance of fiscal incentives for producing local economic prosperity. SGFF extends FGFF approaches by showing how non-linear transfer systems can produce both equalization and high marginal fiscal incentives to produce local economic growth. Second, the paper raises the fiscal incentive approach, showing how different tax systems produce different fiscal incentives for political officials to choose policies. Third, the paper discusses the interaction of democracy and fiscal federalism.     

我国农民体育公共产品供给的激励问题研究

论文分析了农民体育公共产品的供给概念,政府提供农民体育公共产品上存在供给效率低下的问题,由此引出农民体育公共产品供给的激励问题分析,设计好农民体育公共产品的激励机制是解决农民体育发展问题的关键。     

公共物品供给中内在性问题的探讨

公共物品供给中的内在性问题导致了公共物品供给的低效率,具体表现为公共物品的高成本和非均衡供给、反公共物品以及派生外在性问题等.产生内在性问题的原因在于公共机构演进的路径依赖被进一步强化以及公共机构内部产权的畸形化.要克服内在性问题、提高公共物品供给效率,就应该在改革政府职能、引入市场机制的基础上赋予公民更多的话语权.     

物流现代化的关键技术之一：物流标识技术

本文以供应链物流为研究对象,专门阐述物流标识技术。对物流标识技术中的物流编码技术与物流条码符号标识技术进行了分析,并对物流标识技术在国内外物流领域的应用作了介绍     

论国家审计信息产品的属性和价格

国家审计信息产品属性分为纯公共产品、准公共产品和私人产品,它们在一定条件下相互转化.纯公共产品审计信息的价格为税收.在准公共产品审计信息中,依照申请人要求而公开的审计信息的价格为收费;其他审计信息没有价格.在私人产品审计信息中,二次开发的审计信息的价格为市价;其他审计信息没有价格.国家审计信息的最优公开范围为纳税的边际成本等于边际收益.