 National or political cake? The political economy of intergovernmental transfers in NigeriaJean-François Maystadt and Muhammad-Kabir Salihu Journal of Economic Geography, 2019, vol. 19, issue 5, 1119-1142 Abstract: Rule-based intergovernmental transfers are often presented as the panacea to avoid the manipulation of transfers for political motives. We question that assertion in the case of Nigeria, where these transfers are highly dependent on natural resources and likely to be subject to elite capture. In this article, we use oil windfalls as a source of exogenous variation in the political discretion an incumbent government can exert in rule-based transfers. Exploiting within-state variation between 2007 and 2015 in Nigeria, an increase in VAT transfers induced by higher oil windfalls is found to improve the electoral fortune of an incumbent government. Our results question the promotion of rule-based transfers as a one-fits-all institutional solution in resource-abundant countries with relatively weak institutions. Keywords: Intergovernmental transfers; rule-based transfers; political manipulation; fiscal federalism; regional favouritism; fiscal decentralization; Nigeria (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:oup:jecgeo:v:19:y:2019:i:5:p:1119-1142. Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Journal of Economic Geography is currently edited by Jorge De la Roca, Stephen Gibbons, Simona Iammarino, Amanda Ross and James Faulconbridge More articles in Journal of Economic Geography from Oxford University Press Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK. |
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