Public Budget Composition, Fiscal (De)Centralization and Welfare

Calin Arcalean, Gerhard Glomm (), Ioana Schiopu and Jens Suedekum

No 2626, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We present a dynamic two-region model with overlapping generations. There are two types of public expenditure, education and infrastructure funding, and governments decide optimally on budget size (tax rate) and its allocation across the two outlays. Productivity of government infrastructure spending can differ across regions. This assumption follows well established empirical evidence, and highlights regional heterogeneity in a previously unexplored dimension. We study the implications of three different fiscal regimes for capital accumulation and aggregate national welfare. Full centralization of revenue and expenditure decisions is the optimal fiscal arrangement for the country when infrastructure spending productivity is similar across regions. When regional differences exist but are not too large, the partial centralization regime is optimal where the federal government sets a common tax rate, but allows the regional governments to decide on the budget composition. Only when the differences are sufficiently large does full decentralization become the optimal regime. National steady state output is instead highest when the economy is decentralized. This result is consistent with the “Oates conjecture” that fiscal decentralization increases capital accumulation. However, in terms of welfare this result can be reversed.

Keywords: capital accumulation; infrastructure; fiscal federalism; decentralization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E62 H72 H74 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33 pages
Date: 2007-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dge, nep-mac and nep-pbe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published - published in:Canadian Journal of Economics / Revue canadienne d'économique, 2010, 43 (3), 832-859

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp2626.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Public budget composition, fiscal (de)centralization, and welfare (2010)
Journal Article: Public budget composition, fiscal (de)centralization, and welfare (2010)
Working Paper: Public Budget Composition, Fiscal(De)Centralization, and Welfare (2007)
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:iza:izadps:dp2626

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().