 Fiscal Decentralization and Government Size in Latin AmericaJournal of Applied Economics, 1999, vol. 2, 357-391 Abstract: This paper explores the link between fiscal decentralization and government size in Latin America. While most related work attempts to test Brennan and Buchanan's "Liviathan" hypothesis, here the emphasis is placed on a different channel: the potential for decentralization to aggravate the common pool problem. In addition to the degree of expenditure decentralization, we consider the importance of vertical fiscal imbalance, as well as some institutional variables related to the nature of intergovernmental relations which can affect the ability of some jurisdictions to shift the cost of their local programs onto others: the degree to which intergovernmental transfers are discretional, and the degree to which subnational governments have borrowing autonomy. We find that decentralization tends to produce larger governments, but this effect is particularly important in cases where vertical imbalance is high, transfers are discretional and the degree of borrowing autonomy of subnational governments is large. Keywords: Decentralization; government expenditures; fiscal discipline (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cem:jaecon:v:2:y:1999:n:2:p:357-391 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Applied Economics is currently edited by Germán Coloma and Mariana Conte Grand and Jorge M. Streb More articles in Journal of Applied Economics from Universidad del CEMA Contact information at EDIRC. |
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