Fiscal federalism in big developing countries: China and India

In South and East Asian countries a highly centralized government prevails, although recently some trends are moving toward a greater degree of decentralization. Also the two giants China and India, which cannot rely on a merely centralized Government, have experienced a greater or lesser degree of fiscal unionism. As to China the local government system provides four levels: provincial level; city level; county level; township level. Intergovernmental fiscal relations were revamped by the 1994 reform that established a new tax sharing system and gave local governments more control over the administration of local taxes but no significant degree of tax autonomy and no substantial expenditure assignments. The local financial revenue mainly derives from local taxes, shared taxes, and nontax revenue. As to India, the federal system is quite complex. The center-states relations are envisaged in the Constitution also for the financial aspects: two constitutional amendments adopted in 1992 made India one of the most politically decentralized countries among developing ones. However, the implementation of the decentralization program is still lagging: till now India seems to have considered decentralization mainly in terms of the local election system, without the transfer of all functions provided for devolution to local bodies. Only India set up a different system of local bodies in rural and urban areas with different expenditure responsibilities and financing powers. On the contrary, China has a unitary fiscal system. In India it is necessary to redesign the transfer system to improve accountability, incentives and equity, whereas in China, the fiscal revenue sharing schemes limit intergovernmental budget transfers. Finally, the rule of hard budget constraint in China is faced by all levels of government, while in India sub-national governments face soft budget constraint.

Intergovernmental equalization grants: some fundamental principles.

Propositions related to intergovernmental equalization grants are always implicitly or explicitly derived from one model of government or another. The paper assumes that governments are competitive organisms. In such a frame of reference, equalization payments serve to insure that all the units in a decentralized governmental system have a chance to share in the benefits of competition. In other words, equalization payments are stabilization instruments. As such they will generally have an effect on the interpersonal distribution of income, but they are not motivated by that effect. The paper also argues that economic globalization increases the need for equalization grants.

Tax system and tax reforms in India

This paper is part of a wider research on South-East Asia countries' taxation carried on under the supervision of. V. Tanzi. India is a federal republic and a big, highly populated and poor country, which however since some years has entered the catching up stage of development and shows impressive rates of GDP growth. General Government budget is structurally imbalanced and public debt stays high. Public spending (about 25 percent of GDP) is mainly devoted to general services, defense, and the support of economic activities, rather than to public health and welfare programs. Total fiscal pressure (about 17 percent of GDP) is in line with per capita GDP and is shared evenly enough between central and states governments. The structure of the tax system is not much beyond the Musgravian "early stage". A complex structure of taxes on goods and services is largely the main heading of the tax system and it is difficultly moving towards a VAT-kind structure. Direct taxes still are in an infant state, both as weight as well as structure. Import duties remain at not negligible levels. Social contributions are entirely lacking. A tax system of a country like India unavoidably raises more than one problem: foremost among these problems appear to be a too large dominance of a complex and obsolete indirect taxation and the fiscal relations among government layers. The road to updating and improving the Indian tax system has been entered since the early 1990s, but the reform is still largely to be accomplished. Introducing VAT ( so successfully adopted in other developing countries ) is the most striking but not the only example.

Explaining differences in environmental governance patterns between Canada, Italy and the United States.

The objective of the paper is to formulate a hypothesis that can help explain the different patterns of environmental governance in three countries: Canada and the United States (both federal states) and Italy (a decentralized unitary state). To that effect, we will make use of what is a robust theory of the assignment of powers in federal and decentralized unitary states on the role of competition as a driving force in shaping these assignments. The differing patterns of environmental governance we wish to explain are that most environmental policies are enacted and implemented by the national government in the United States, by provincial governments in Canada, and by both national and regional governments in Italy.

Stability of space-time isogeometric methods for wave propagation problems

This thesis aims at investigating the first steps toward an unconditionally stable space-time isogeometric method, based on splines of maximal regularity, for the linear acoustic wave equation. The unconditional stability of space-time discretizations for wave propagation problems is a topic of significant interest, by virtue of the advantages of space-time methods compared with more standard time-stepping techniques. In the case of continuous finite element methods, several stabilizations have been proposed. Inspired by one of these works, we address the stability issue by studying the isogeometric method for an ordinary differential equation closely related to the wave equation. As a result, we provide a stabilized isogeometric method whose effectiveness is supported by numerical tests. Motivated by these results, we conclude by suggesting an extension of this stabilization tool to the space-time isogeometric formulation of the acoustic wave equation.Comment: Masters thesi

Saracco e i problemi finanziari del Regno d'Italia

Giuseppe Saracco fu uno strenuo paladino della corretta gestione del bilancio ed ebbe a cuore il difficile risanamento delle finanze pubbliche. Esponente caratteristico di una tradizione tipicamente sardo-piemontese, fu molto attivo nelle discussioni parlamentari relative ai bilanci, sebbene alle sue riflessioni non sempre seguirono proposte fattive. Non mancò di assumere posizioni molto critiche nei confronti di chi proponeva politiche pericolose per gli equilibri della finanza pubblica. La sua competenza e la lunga esperienza maturata in Senato e come ministro lo portarono ad assumere la responsabilità di un governo in una situazione alquanto problematica. Il suo esecutivo, che era visto come governo di transizione, durò solamente otto mesi, ma Saracco rivendicò a sé il merito di aver tutelato l'ordine pubblico, di aver consentito la ripresa dell'attività legislativa e di aver favorito una rapida approvazione dei bilanci e della legge sull'emigrazione.Governo, Europa pre-1913 - Miscellanea

The likely impact of central bank digital currencies on quantitative easing

Many central banks are considering launching digital currencies. Far from a simple technological innovation, central bank digital currencies (CBDC) might persistently alter the size and composition of central bank balance sheets. Martina Fraschini, Luciano Somoza and Tammaro Terracciano analyse the equilibrium effects of the introduction of a CBDC and its interaction with current monetary policies. They show how and when issuing a CBDC might render expansionary policies quasi-permanent

La teoria economica dell'associazionismo tra enti locali

La gestione associata di servizi locali riguarda tutte quelle forme di cooperazione tra enti locali che comportano una gestione unitaria di uno o piu' servizi ed e' anche uno degli strumenti principali per affrontare e cercare di risolvere il problema della polverizzazione dei piccoli comuni e della ripartizione delle competenze tra piu' livelli di governo. Infatti, la costruzione di un efficiente sistema di governo decentrato richiede la presenza di attori locali adeguati e quindi, data la prevalenza nel nostro paese di comuni di piccole dimensioni, la via della gestione unitaria dei servizi per piu' enti locali sembra essere quella da perseguire. Tra le forme associative previste dal Testo unico delle leggi sull'ordinamento degli enti locali per la gestione associata di servizi si annoverano le convenzioni, i consorzi, le unioni di comuni, l'esercizio associato di funzioni e gli accordi di programma. In questo lavoro l'analisi e' focalizzata sull'unione, che sembra essere considerata dalla maggior parte degli studiosi lo strumento piu' adeguato a rivitalizzare i comuni di minori dimensioni. Inoltre, all'interno del concetto piu' ampio di aggregazione abbiamo tenuta separata la fusione, da intendersi tra giurisdizioni dello stesso livello, e la cooperazione, che puo' essere orizzontale o verticale. Nel discutere di questi temi le questioni economiche che abbiamo considerato riguardano le economie di scala, le economie di varieta' , l'equivalenza fiscale e gli effetti di traboccamento, a cui si puo' aggiungere la problematica connessa con la semplificazione amministrativa e con i costi di adempimento che la pubblica amministrazione, nel suo complesso, impone agli operatori.