Are Hard Budget Constraints for Sub-National Governments Always Efficient?

Martin Besfamille and Ben Lockwood

The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) from University of Warwick, Department of Economics

Abstract: In fiscally decentralized countries, sub-national governments (SNGs) may face soft budget constraints and consequently invest and borrow too much. The policy literature claims that, with competitive capital markets and central governments imposing hard budget constraints (HBCs), inefficient investment by SNGs should not arise. We present a model where this is not the case : HBCs can be too "hard" and discourage investment that is socially efficient. The model combines a dynamic commitment problem as in Kornai, Maskin and Roland (2004) for central government with a moral hazard problem between central and SNG. The HBC over-incentivises the SNG to provide effort by penalizing it too much for project failure, thus leading ultimately to the possibility that socially efficient projects may not be undertaken.

Keywords: Fiscal federalism; Bailouts; Hard budget constraints (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26 pages
Date: 2004
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/workingpapers/2008/twerp717.pdf

Related works:
Working Paper: Are Hard Budget Constraints for Sub-National Governments Always Efficient? (2004)
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:wrk:warwec:717

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) from University of Warwick, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Margaret Nash ().