Accountability and fiscal equalization

A common feature of multi-jurisdictional systems is equalization programs. The implementation of such programs, that is based on some measurement of sub-national fiscal capacity and effort, is particularly complex. Within a political economy model, this paper analyzes the impact of such systems on accountability, identifying a positive and a negative effect. The positive effect arises because with equalized fiscal resources, a consequence of equalization, citizens attach more importance to any remaining variation in public good supplies and so punish rent-taking more severely. This induces politicians to restrain themselves and so accountability improves. The negative effect arises because the complexity of such programs reduces the informational content of observed public good supplies. This introduces a perverse fiscal incentive that reduces accountability. Thus, the overall impact of equalization programs on accountability depends on the balance of these effects.     

Competition in taxes and performance requirements for foreign direct investment

Tax incentives offered to attract firms engaged in foreign direct investment are often tied to performance requirements such as domestic content restrictions or adherence to environmental standards. The tax competition literature has repeatedly shown that competition between municipalities for mobile firms tends to drive taxes to low levels. One would expect a comparable result for burdensome performance requirements. Despite this, the evidence suggests that while taxes have indeed been driven down, performance requirements are as popular as ever. We explain this seeming conundrum by showing that in the presence of spillovers, binding performance requirements can act as a coordination device for firms. In equilibrium, municipalities choose performance requirements, which maximize joint surplus from investment. Competition between municipalities then transfers this surplus to firms via tax subsidies.     

Fiscal decentralization,fiscal rules and fiscal discipline

Fiscal decentralization (FD) and fiscal rules (FR) are institutional mechanisms that are implemented by varying degrees in increasing number of countries. This paper investigates empirically the effect of FR on the effectiveness of FD in achieving fiscal discipline. Panel evidence strongly supports that balanced budget and expenditure rules help FD to achieve this goal, while debt rule has a direct disciplinary effect.     

Bilateral commitment

We consider non-cooperative environments in which two players have the power to gradually and unilaterally rule out some of their actions. Formally, we embed a strategic-form game into a multi-stage game, in which players can restrict their action spaces in all but the final stage, and select among the remaining actions in the last stage. We say that an action profile is implementable by commitment if this action profile is played in the last stage of a subgame-perfect equilibrium path. We provide a complete characterization of all implementable action profiles and a simple method to find them. It turns out that the set of implementable profiles does not depend on the length of the commitment process. We show, furthermore, that commitments can have social value in the sense that in some games there are implementable action profiles that dominate all Nash equilibria of the original game.     

On government centralization and fiscal referendums

Several authors have argued that a centralization of fiscal powers in a federation is less likely to occur if citizens have to approve a change in the assignments of responsibilities by a popular referendum. This outcome may be due to the fact that logrolling is more difficult under direct than under representative democracy. It may also be caused by citizens’ fear that a centralization of fiscal authority facilitates the extraction of rents by the government or the legislature. In this paper, we test the hypothesis that centralization is less likely under referendum decision-making in the unique institutional setting of Switzerland. Using a panel of Swiss cantons from 1980 to 1998, the empirical analysis provides evidence that referendums induce less centralization of fiscal activities.     

Central governance or subsidiarity: A property-rights approach to federalism

We consider a model where one region in a federation can realize a public project after undertaking value-increasing investments. While negotiations on the federal level ensure that an efficient project size is implemented in equilibrium, non-contractibility of investments causes the overall outcome to differ across regimes. If the region bears the entire implementation costs of its policies, underinvestment prevails and subsidiarity (centralized governance) is superior when spillovers are weak (strong). Conversely, if linear cost sharing arrangements are feasible, decentralized authority often admits a socially optimal outcome while centralized authority (with majority or unanimity rule) does not.     

Correlated equilibria and local interactions

Summary This paper shows that Nash equilibria of a local-interaction game are equivalent to correlated equilibria of the underlying game.This work was done while George Mailath and Larry Samuelson were visiting the University of Bonn, whose hospitality is gratefully acknowledged. We thank Ken Binmore for helpful discussions. This is a revision of Section 2 of Mailath, Samuelson, and Shaked [6]. Financial support from the National Science Foundation and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Sonderforschungsbereich 303 at the University of Bonn, is gratefully acknowledged.     

Determinacy of equilibrium outcome distributions for zero sum and common utility games

We show the generic finiteness of probability distributions induced on outcomes by the Nash equilibria in two player zero sum and common interest outcome games.     

The incentive effect of fiscal equalization transfers on tax policy

A theoretical analysis considers the impact of a typical system of redistributive “fiscal equalization” transfers on the tax effort of local jurisdictions. More specifically, it shows that the marginal contribution rate, i.e. the rate at which an increase in the tax base reduces those transfers, might be positively associated with the local tax rate while the volume of grants received is likely to be inversely related to the tax rate. These predictions are tested in an empirical analysis of the tax policy of German municipalities. In order to identify the incentive effect the analysis exploits discontinuities in the rules of the fiscal equalization system as well as policy changes. The empirical results support the existence of an incentive effect, suggesting that the high marginal contribution rates induce the municipalities to set significantly higher business tax rates compared with a situation without fiscal equalization.     

Foreign (in)direct investment and corporate taxation

Abstract Foreign investments of multinational firms are often complex in that they involve conduit entities. In particular, a multinational can pursue either a direct or an indirect investment strategy, where the latter involves an intermediate corporate entity and is associated with enhanced opportunities for international tax planning. As a consequence, in the case of indirect investments, the role of corporate taxation in destination countries may change. This paper investigates the effects of corporate taxation on foreign investment decisions of German multinationals, taking explicitly into account that firms choose in a first stage the investment regime (direct vs. indirect). The empirical findings, consistent with theoretical predictions, suggest that tax effects differ according to whether the investment is direct or indirect.     

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.     

Proposal power and majority rule in multilateral bargaining with costly recognition

This paper studies a sequential bargaining model in which agents expend efforts to be the proposer. In equilibrium, agents’ effort choices are influenced by the prize and cost effects. The (endogenous) prize is the difference between the residual surplus an agent obtains when he is the proposer and the payment he expects to receive when he is not. Main results include: (1) under the unanimity voting rule, two agents with equal marginal costs propose with equal probabilities, regardless of their time preferences; (2) under a nonunanimity rule, however, the more patient agent proposes with a greater probability; (3) while, under the unanimity rule, the social cost decreases in group heterogeneity, it can increase under a nonunanimity rule; and (4) when agents are identical, the unanimity rule is socially optimal.     

Species survival and evolutionary stability in sustainable habitats

Abstract. Whoever exists belongs to a species, which did not become extinct, has a (geno-)type, which should be well adjusted, and lives in a habitat which has been sustainable for a long time. We do not only analyze interspecies competition and the conditions for species survival, but also intraspecies competition of (geno-)types as in evolutionary biology and game theory. Survival in inter- and intraspecies competition together with sustainability define ecological stability, a concept which we illustrate by an example of solitary and social grazers who compete for food supply and who are endangered by the same predators. Although our approach is inspired by empirical evidence, no systematic attempt is made to apply it to some specific ecology.     

Coalitional stability under perfect foresight

Summary. We analyze strategic social environments where coalitions can form through binding or nonbinding agreements and actions of a coalition may impose externalities upon the welfare of the rest of the players. We define a solution concept that (1) captures the perfect foresight of the players that has been overlooked in the literature (e.g., Harsanyi [10] and Chwe [6]) and (2) identifies the coalitions that are likely to form and the “stable” outcomes that will not be replaced by any coalition of rational (and hence farsighted) players. The proposed solution concept thereby offers a notion of agreements and coalition formation in complex social environments. Received: February 12, 1996; revised version: March 3, 1997     

Aggregate instability under balanced-budget consumption taxes: A re-examination

We re-examine the destabilizing role of balanced-budget fiscal policy rules based on consumption taxation. Using a one-sector model with infinitely-lived households, we consider a specification of preferences derived from Jaimovich (2008) [14] and Jaimovich and Rebelo (2009) [15] which is flexible enough to encompass varying degrees of income effect. When the income effect is not too large, we show that there exists a Laffer curve, which explains the multiplicity of steady states, and that non-linear consumption taxation may destabilize the economy, promoting expectation-driven fluctuations, if the elasticity of intertemporal substitution in consumption is sufficiently larger than one and the tax rate is counter-cyclical with respect to consumption. Numerical illustrations also show that consumption taxation may be a source of instability for most OECD countries for a wide range of structural parameters? configurations. We finally prove the robustness of our conclusions if we consider a discrete-time setup.     

Sources of investment inefficiency: The case of fixed-asset investment in China

This study attempts to measure the inefficiency associated with aggregate investment in a transitional economy. The inefficiency is decomposed into allocative and technical inefficiency based on standard production theory. Allocative inefficiency is measured by the deviation of actual investment from the theoretically desired investment demand. Institutional factors are then identified as part of the driving force of the deviation. The resulting model is applied to Chinese provincial panel data. The main findings are: Chinese investment demand is strongly receptive to expansionary fiscal policies and inter-provincial network effects; the tendency of over-investment remains, even with signs of increasing allocative efficiency and improving technical efficiency.     

Dynamic group formation in the repeated prisoner?s dilemma

We consider dynamic group formation in repeated n-person prisoner?s dilemma. Agreements in coalitional bargaining are self-binding in that they are supported as subgame perfect equilibria of repeated games. Individuals are allowed to renegotiate the cooperating group agreement through a process of voluntary participation. We prove that a cooperating group forms as an absorbing state of a Markov perfect equilibrium after a finite number of renegotiations if and only if the group is Pareto efficient, provided that individuals are patient. The cooperating group can only expand.     

Trees and extensive forms

This paper addresses the question of what it takes to obtain a well-defined extensive form game. Without relying on simplifying finiteness or discreteness assumptions, we characterize the class of game trees for which all pure strategy combinations induce unique outcomes. The generality of the set-up covers “exotic” cases, like stochastic games or decision problems in continuous time (differential games). We find that the latter class, though a well-defined problem, fails this test.     

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.     

Quasi-option value under strategic interactions

We consider a simple two-period model of irreversible investment under strategic interactions between two players. In this setup, we show that the quasi-option value may cause some conceptual difficulties. In case of asymmetric information, decentralized investment decisions fail to induce first-best allocations. Therefore a regulator may not be able to exercise the option to delay the decision to develop. We also show that information-induced inefficiency may arise in a game situation and that under certain assumptions inefficiency can be eliminated by sending asymmetric information to the players, even when the regulator faces informational constraints. Our model is potentially applicable to various global environmental problems.