Fiscal Federalism, Decentralization and Economic Growth: Survey and Meta-Analysis

Thushyanthan Baskaran, Lars Feld and Jan Schnellenbach

No 4985, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: The theoretical literature on the economics of fiscal federalism has identified several potential effects of government decentralization on economic growth. Much of the traditional literature focuses on the efficiency aspects of a decentralized provision of public services. However, decentralization may also increase growth by raising the ability of the political system to innovate and carry out reforms. On the contrary, some authors argue that decentralization increases corruption and government inefficiency. After a discussion of the theoretical arguments, we provide both a traditional survey and a meta-analysis of the empirical literature on decentralization and economic growth. Based on our survey, we identify open questions and discuss possible ways of answering them.

Keywords: fiscal federalism; fiscal competition; economic growth; meta-analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C18 E02 H11 H77 O43 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp4985.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_4985

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Klaus Wohlrabe ().