Le fédéralisme financier en Allemagne: Coopération ou concurrence?

Lars Feld

No 200416, Marburg Working Papers on Economics from Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung)

Abstract: In this paper, German federalism is analysed with respect to its implications for public spending and revenue. Since the Second World War, taxing and spending competencies in Germany have become more and more centralised. This is demonstrated with respect to (1) changes of the power to tax, (2) the important territorial reforms, and (3) the increase of the federal influence on spending of sub-federal jurisdictions. In addition, the fiscal equalization system between jurisdictions is too egalitarian and the effects of German fiscal federalism on regional development are disastrous. Compared to unitary states with a powerful central government, this kind of cooperative federalism has the disadvantage of a federal state which cannot often decide anything without the consent of the states. Consequently, many reforms are blocked in the struggle between Bundestag and Bundesrat. It appears that only the introduction of fiscal competition between the states is able to improve economic policy in Germany.

Pages: 22 pages
Date: 2004
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Forthcoming in Journal des Économistes et des Études Humaines 2004

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.uni-marburg.de/fb02/makro/forschung/gel ... 4-16-Feld_gesamt.pdf First version, 2004 (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:mar:volksw:200416

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Marburg Working Papers on Economics from Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Bernd Hayo ().