Economic Integration and the Welfare State

Wirtschaftsintegration, Sozialstaat, Mobilität, Europäische Wirtschafts- und Währungsunion, Economic integration, Welfare state, Mobility, European Economic and Monetary Union

Externalities and bailouts : hard and soft budget constraints in intergovernmental fiscal relations

Subnational governments are assuming greater fiscal responsibility in many developing and transition countries. There is concern, however, that fiscal decentralization may weaken fiscal discipline -that local authorities may undertake commitments or incur debt obligations that subsequently result in massive central government support, in the form of extraordinary transfers, or bailouts. (Recent experience in major U.S. cities shows that these problems are not restricted to developing countries.) Such bailouts could in turn cause national fiscal imbalances, excessive borrowing, and macroeconomic instability. Some analysts recommend that central authorities maintain strict control over the fiscal behavior of lower-level governments, but others argue that such controls could undercut the goals of fiscal decentralization, including autonomy. The author shows that central authorities may have strong incentives to prop up the finances of local governments when the public services provided locally benefit the rest of society. The prospect of such interventions may in turn create incentives for localities to underprovide services that produce substantial spillover benefits, using local resources instead for purposes that may benefit local constituencies but not nonresidents. When central fiscal interventions are big enough, and when a loss of local control over the use of fiscal resources is not too costly to local residents, local decisionmakers will act to induce central government bailouts, resulting in inefficient outcomes for the system as a whole. This is not to say that fiscal decentralization produces perverse incentives or requires central government control over local fiscal policies. But incentives for bailouts can be especially strong when local governments are considered too big to fail -for example, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC (in the United States) and Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro (in Brazil). In such cases, the repercussions from major breakdowns in the provision of services -or in debt servicing- can be too costly for central governments to ignore. Problems of fiscal discipline may result not because there is too much fiscal decentralization, says the author, but because there is too little. It may make sense to carry out more thorough decentralization -for example, devolving fiscal authorities to smaller jurisdictions or special-purpose functional units, or subdividing large subnational jurisdictions into many smaller units.Public Sector Economics&Finance,Banks&Banking Reform,Municipal Financial Management,National Governance,Decentralization,National Governance,Banks&Banking Reform,Municipal Financial Management,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Urban Economics

Fiscal aspect of evolving federations : issues for policy and research

Recent experience with fiscal decentralization in many developing and transition economies has led many observers to question whether fiscal decentralization undermines macroeconomic stability. In several countries, transfers from central to lower-level governments have increased fiscal deficits at the central level, creating pressures on central banks to monetize additional debt, thus jeopardizing price stability. In other countries, central governments trying to control their deficits have reduced transfers to lower level governments, creating fiscal distress at lower levels. These issues of macroeconomic fiscal stability have not featured prominently in North American policy debates about fiscal federalism, nor has much academic research been devoted to them. In a world where the state's basic political organization is undergoing rapid reform and restructuring, the tensions and opportunities created by fiscal interactions among levels of government are of critical concern. Much of the literature on fiscal federalism has been geared to the situation in such industrial countries as Canada and the United States. Policymakers and researcher should identify the institutional structures of stable, mature federations that help sustain satisfactory macroeconomic performance. But different policy problems are likely to arise in different settings, especially in the developing world. Among topics that deserve further research attention: i) The interplay between intergovernmental grants and government borrowing. ii) What is the difference in effect on lower-level governments between"hard"and"soft"budget constraints? What economic distortions are associated with soft budget constraints? What institutional reforms might help to establish hard budget constraints? iii) Is the"country"still the appropriate unit of analysis for important economic issues? What economic benefits or costs result from including several regions within one jurisdictional structure? What economic considerations determine the optimal size of a"country"and what are the crucial economic functions of"national"governments? iv) Demographic change, changes in communication and transportation technology, and the development of market institutions may alter the optimal or equilibrium boundaries of political units over time. Such change invariably raises questions about the organization of the public sector and the assignment of expenditures and revenues to different levels of government. The patterns of gains and losses from reorganizing factor markets and jurisdictional structures can be complex. To understand them fully requires understanding the economic consequences of changes in both market organization and policy outcomes resulting from reorganization of the public sector.Public Sector Economics&Finance,Banks&Banking Reform,National Governance,Municipal Financial Management,Public&Municipal Finance,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Municipal Financial Management,Urban Economics,National Governance,Banks&Banking Reform

The Institutions of Federalism: Toward an Analytical Framework

Mature federations have relatively transparent delineations of authority among levels of government; subnational governments enjoy considerable autonomy in their expenditure, revenue, and debt policies. In other countries, problems of soft budget constraints, bailouts, and fiscal and financial instability demonstrate the difficulties of institutional design in a federation. This paper outlines an analytical framework within which interjurisdictional spillovers may create incentives for higher-level governments to intervene in the control and financing of lower-level governments (bailouts). This framework helps to identify directions for theoretical and empirical research that can illuminate important features of observed institutions and guide policy analysis.federalism, bailouts, soft budget constraint, externalities

Fiscal Competition for Imperfectly-Mobile Labor and Capital: A Comparative Dynamic Analysis

Interjurisdictional flows of imperfectly-mobile migrants, investment, and other productive resources result in the costly dynamic adjustment of resource stocks. This paper investigates the comparative dynamics of adjustment to changes in local fiscal policy with two imperfectly mobile productive resources. The intertemporal adjustments for both resources depend on complementarity/substitutability in production and the adjustment cost technologies for each, implying that the evaluation of the fiscal treatment of one resource must account for the simultaneous adjustment of both.fiscal competition, labor mobility, capital mobility, comparative dynamics

Global Competition for Mobile Resources: Implications for Equity, Efficiency, and Political Economy

International integration of markets for labor and capital has far-reaching policy implications in economies where governments pursue extensive programs of redistribution through tax and transfer policies. The large fiscal impacts that result from movement of high- and low-income populations, as well as of capital, affect the benefits, costs, and political payoffs of redistributive policies, creating incentives for fiscal competition that may limit the extent of redistribution over time. Migration and capital flows are dynamic adjustment mechanisms, analysis of which can shed light on the consequences of structural changes such as globalization of factor markets and EU enlargement.Fiscal Competition

Externalities and Bailouts: Hard and Soft Budget Constraints in Intergovernmental Fiscal Relations

Central government matching grants can, in principle, induce socially- efficient provision of local public goods that produce spillover benefits. Local underprovision of public goods may however elicit direct central-government provision and finance (a ``bailout") that makes local residents better off than under grant-subsidized local provision; local underprovision that induces bailouts reveals the local budget constraint to be ``soft." Simulations suggest that the ability of a locality to extract a welfare-improving bailout depends positively on its size: budget constraints are more likely to be ``hard" for small localities.fiscal federalism intergovernmental transfers

Fiscal Competition in Space and Time

This paper analyzes fiscal competition among numerous spatially- separated jurisdictions in an explicitly dynamic framework. The degree of factor mobility between jurisdictions is imperfect because it is costly and time-consuming to adjust factor stocks. Even if it is harmful in the long run, a jurisdiction's residents can benefit in the short run from taxing mobile factors owned by non-residents. The optimal tax on mobile factors is lower, the faster the speed with which factors adjust to fiscal policy. Anticipated taxes are less beneficial than those that can be imposed unexpectedly.

Disasters: Issues for State and Federal Government Finances

Extreme events like hurricanes, earthquakes, or terrorist attacks present major challenges for fiscal systems at all levels of government. Analysts concerned with the fiscal and financial impacts of disasters must attempt to assess the likelihood of rare events of large magnitude such as Hurricane Katrina. Extreme value theory, applied here to flood damage data for Louisiana, offers one promising methodology for this purpose. The experience of Katrina and 9/11 also show that large disasters have large intergovernmental impacts. Individual states could, in principle, engage in more extensive ex ante financial and policy preparations for disasters, including disaster avoidance, but the “revealed institutional structure” exposed by recent experience shows that the US federal system shifts much of the economic incidence of local disasters to the rest of society through intergovernmental transfers. This raises policy questions regarding the assignment of responsibility for disaster avoidance in the US federation. In particular, Federal “ownership” of the consequences of disasters may invite or necessitate new forms of Federal “control” of subnational government.

Fiscal Competition

The theory of fiscal competition seeks to ascertain how fiscal policymaking is affected by competitive pressures faced by governments. This requires a theory of policy choice, and, as such, the theory of fiscal competition lies squarely in the realm of political economy. This essay presents a concise overview of some of the principal themes that have figured prominently in economic analyses of fiscal competition and identifies significant gaps that warrant further attention and that may occupy the attention of investigators in the years to come. It first sketches a model that has been used frequently in theoretical and empirical analyses of fiscal competition, emphasizing how fiscal policies affect the welfare (real incomes) of various groups and how these impacts depend on the mobility of resources. Subsequent sections address parts of the subject that are less well-settled, highlighting, for example, the fact that exit (or entry) options for mobile resources alters the payoffs from alternative fiscal policies among those who participate actively in the political process and, thus, participation incentives. Two intertemporal aspects of fiscal competition are emphasized: the determination of the "degree" of factor mobility, especially for the purposes of empirical analysis, and the issue of time-varying policies, commitment, and dynamic consistency. The paper also discusses the role of institutions, and particularly of higher- and lower-level governments (i.e., the vertical and horizontal structure of government), in fiscal competition.Fiscal Competition, Political Economy