Voting in federal elections for local public goods in a fiscally centralized economy

In this paper we develop a probabilistic voting model of inter-gov\-ern\-men\-tal transfers to explain the distribution and size of local public goods. We find that: i) The parties’ political competition for votes induces the central government to provide regional transfers that lead to Pareto efficient local public goods with and without inter-regional spillovers. ii) The central government has political incentives to produce differentiated and uniform local public goods. Moreover, we provide a comparative analysis to study the influence of political competition, the extent of inter-regional spillovers of local public goods, and the distribution of the population in the economy on the size and distribution of local public spending.inter-governmental transfers, size of government, electoral competition

The Politics of Fiscal Federalism: Building a Stronger Decentralization Theorem

We explore how party structures can condition the benefits of decentralization in modern democracies. In particular, we study the interaction of two political institutions: democratic (de)centralization (whether a country has fiscally autonomous and elected local governments) and party (non)integration (whether power over local party leaders flows upwards through party institutions, which we model using control over candidate selection). We incorporate these institutions into our strong decentralization theorem, which expands on Oates (1972) to examine when the decentralized provision of public services will dominate centralized provision even in the presence of inter-jurisdictional spillovers. Our findings suggest that, when externalities are present, democratic decentralization will be beneficial only when parties are integrated. In countries with non-integrated parties, we find that the participation rules of primaries have implications for the expected gains from democratic decentralization. Under blanket primaries, Oates’ conventional decentralization theorem holds but our strong decentralization theorem does not. By contrast, when primaries are closed, not even Oates’ conventional decentralization theorem holds

Latin American registry of renal involvement in COVID-19 disease. The relevance of assessing proteinuria throughout the clinical course

The Latin American Society of Nephrology and Hypertension conducted a prospective cohort, multinational registry of Latin American patients with kidney impairment associated to COVID-19 infection with the objective to describe the characteristics of acute kidney disease under these circumstances. The study was carried out through open invitation in order to describe the characteristics of the disease in the region. Eight-hundred and seventy patients from 12 countries were included. Median age was 63 years (54–74), most of patients were male (68.4%) and with diverse comorbidities (87.2%). Acute kidney injury (AKI) was hospital-acquired in 64.7% and non-oliguric in 59.9%. Multiorgan dysfunction syndrome (MODS) due to COVID-19 and volume depletion were the main factors contributing to AKI (59.2% and 35.7% respectively). Kidney replacement therapy was started in 46.2%. Non-recovery of renal function was observed in 65.3%. 71.5% of patients were admitted to ICU and 72.2% underwent mechanical ventilation. Proteinuria at admission was present in 62.4% of patients and proteinuria during hospital-stay occurred in 37.5%. Those patients with proteinuria at admission had higher burden of comorbidities, higher baseline sCr, and MODS was severe. On the other hand, patients with de novo proteinuria had lower incidence of comorbidities and near normal sCr at admission, but showed adverse course of disease. COVID-19 MODS was the main cause of AKI in both groups. All-cause mortality of the general population was 57.4%, and it was associated to age, sepsis as cause of AKI, severity of condition at admission, oliguria, mechanical ventilation, non-recovery of renal function, in-hospital complications and hospital stay. In conclusion, our study contributes to a better knowledge of this condition and highlights the relevance of the detection of proteinuria throughout the clinical course

Social Weights and the Regional Allocation of Inter-Governmental Transfers

Abstract We develop an optimal theory of intergovernmental transfers and a simulation analysis that provides estimates of the optimal shares of resources to be allocated to state governments in Mexico. Our models provide several insights: First, the best fit of our model to observed data suggests that the best predictor of the share of intergovernmental transfers to states is the density of population in Mexico. Second, our analysis provides recommendations of economic policy design by estimating the optimal shares of intergovernmental transfers to states in Mexico. Our analysis is the first to develop estimates of intergovernmental transfers by using Paretian distribution functions of the interregional distribution of income and the interregional distribution of preferences for local public spending. Our estimates help to understand advantages and shortcomings of the current system of allocation of intergovernmental transfers and propose an alternative way to allocate intergovernmental transfers that couldimprove the welfare associated with local public spending in Mexico.Resumen Desarrollamos una teoría de transferencias intergubernamentales optimas y un análisis de simulación que nos permite estimar las transferencias óptimas de recursos del gobierno central a los gobiernos estatales en México. Nuestros resultados son: Primero, nuestros modelos demuestran que el mejor predictor de las transferencias intergubernamentales observadas en México es la densidad poblacional. Segundo, nuestro trabajo provee recomendaciones de política económica al proporcionar estimaciones sobre la proporción óptima de transferencias intergubernamentales a los estados en México. Nuestro análisis es el primero en desarrollar estimaciones de las transferencias intergubernamentales al utilizar funciones paramétricas Paretianas de la distribución regional del ingreso y las preferencias inter-regionales por el gasto público local. Nuestras estimaciones ayudan a entender las ventajas y desventajas del sistema actual de transferencias y, adicionalmente, propone una alternativa de asignación de las transferencias intergubernamentales que podría mejorar el bienestar asociado con el gasto público local en México

Electoral competition, tax design and the tradeoff between redistribution and efficiency

This paper analyzes a political economy model of taxation in which political parties design the provision of a public good and the structure of a commodity tax system to maximize votes in the election. In this economy the individuals vote choice is determined by parties policies and voters partisan preferences. In our model, voters partisan preferences are a form of political heterogeneity that helps to explain the votes distribution in the election and inuences parties scal policy design. It also predicts that left parties have a purely electoral incentive to propose a commodity tax system in which income redistribution plays a more prominent role than efciency in guiding the design of the tax structure and public spending is high. In contrast, right parties have an electoral incentive to weigh less heavily redistribution in tax design and spending is lower compared with the provision of the public good under administrations ruled by left parties. These predictions explain stylized facts suggesting that left (right) parties tend to implement more (less) progressive tax systems. Our paper also contributes to the literature of taxation by providing a new set of empirically veriable propositions on the role of electoral competition on the governments design of a tax structure

¿Integración vertical o desintegración? Un modelo de negociación del caso de la maquiladora

En este trabajo se presenta un marco teórico para analizar la demanda de insumos extranjeros y domésticos de la industria Maquiladora. En particular, caracterizamos la rentabilidad neta de demandar insumos de alta y baja calidad. Argumentamos que las diferencias en la calidad de los insumos entre los factores nacionales y extranjeros pueden explicar la baja integración vertical de la Maquiladoras con la industria mexicana. En este artículo se demuestra que si la diferencia de calidad y su efecto positivo en la producción marginal compensan la diferencia de precios, la Maquiladora puede ser inducida a una integración vertical con los proveedores de insumos extranjeros aún y cuando el costo unitario de la demanda de insumos extranjeros es estrictamente mayor que la de los insumos domésticos. También demostramos que una depreciación del tipo de cambio mexicano no necesariamente aumenta la demanda de la Maquiladora de insumos mexicanos. Esto es consistente con evidencia reciente que sugiere este fenómeno. Por el contrario, una depreciación del tipo de cambio podría aumentar la demanda de la maquiladora de los insumos importados si los factores nacionales y extranjeros son complementarios. Lo anterior es válido incluso si el proveedor nacional participa en un juego de negociación en el que ofrece un contrato eficiente

Rethinking the Political Economy of Decentralization: How Elections and Parties Shape the Provision of Local Public Goods

As more and more of the world’s states devolve power and resources to sub-national governments, decentralization has emerged as one of the most important global trends of the new century. Yet, there is still no consensus as to the benefits of decentralization and how to design institutions that can realize these benefits. We investigate the political conditions under which the decentralization of authority will improve the delivery of public goods. Building off Oates’ “decentralization theorem” to include inter-jurisdictional spillovers, we develop a new theory suggesting that the interaction of democratic decentralization (the popular election of sub-national governments) and party centralization (the power of national party leaders over sub-national office-seekers) will produce the best service delivery outcomes. To test this argument empirically, we develop a new dataset of sub-national political institutions. Our analyses, which examine educational and health service delivery in 135 countries across thirty years, provide support for our theoretical expectations