Fiscal responsibility laws for subnational discipline : the Latin American experience

This paper discusses fiscal responsibility laws in Latin America, with special attention to their provisions for fiscal discipline by subnational governments. It discusses why and when such laws might be useful-to help resolve the coordination problem in getting diverse governments to avoid overusing the common national credit market and to help individual governments make a time-consistent commitment for fiscal prudence. It examines the cases of Brazil, Colombia, Peru, and Argentina, as well as the case of Mexico where other types of laws and regulations aim to achieve the same objectives of solidifying incentives for fiscal discipline at all levels of government. Fiscal responsibility laws are found to be useful in some cases, although the experience is not long enough to be certain, but they are clearly not necessary in every case, nor always sufficient to assure fiscal stability.Urban Economics,Banks&Banking Reform,Public&Municipal Finance,Public Sector Economics&Finance,National Governance,National Governance,Banks&Banking Reform,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Urban Economics,Public&Municipal Finance

The distribution of UK household expenditure, 1979-92

The rapid growth in income inequality in the UK over the 1980s has excited a good deal of interest and concern. A primary reason for this concern has been the widely- drawn conclusion that the living standards of the very poorest have at best failed to keep pace with the living standards of the rest of society. This report sheds new light on the living standards debate, by considering how household expenditure has changed over the period 1979-92. Examination of the expenditure of households appearing in the Family Expenditure Surveys of 1979-92 reveals some rather different trends from the well-documented changes in household incomes.

For richer, for poorer: the changing distribution of income in the United Kingdom, 1961-91

This article describes the changing patterns in income inequality and real living standards over the last 30 years. Whilst it is well documented that inequality has been rising since 1979,2 there is rather less information on how the pattern of inequality changed in the period up to 1979. This study is based on an analysis of detailed information on the incomes and characteristics of around 200,000 households between 1961 and 1991, and provides for the first time ever a consistent description of trends in household incomes over such a long period.

Laws for fiscal responsibility for subnational discipline : international experience

Fiscal responsibility laws are institutions with which multiple governments in the same economy -- national and subnational --can commit to help avoid irresponsible fiscal behavior that could have short-term advantages to one of them but that would be collectively damaging. Coordination failures with subnational governments in the 1990s contributed to macroeconomic instability and led several countries to adopt fiscal responsibility laws as part of the remedy. The paper analyzes the characteristics and effects of fiscal responsibility laws in seven countries -- Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, India, and Peru. Fiscal responsibility laws are designed to address the short time horizons of policymakers, free riders among government units, and principal agent problems between the national and subnational governments. The paper describes how the laws differ in the specificity of quantitative targets, the strength of sanctions, the methods for increasing transparency, and the level of government passing the law. Evidence shows that fiscal responsibility laws can help coordinate and sustain commitments to fiscal prudence, but they are not a substitute for commitment and should not be viewed as ends in themselves. They can make a positive contribution by adding to the collection of other measures to shore up a coalition of states with the central government in support of fiscal prudence. Policymakers contemplating fiscal responsibility laws may benefit from the systematic review of international practice. One common trait of successful fiscal responsibility laws for subnational governments is the commitment of the central government to its own fiscal prudence, which is usually reinforced by the application of the law at the national as well as the subnational level.Debt Markets,Banks&Banking Reform,Subnational Economic Development,Public Sector Economics,Access to Finance

Fiscal management in federal democracies : Argentina and Brazil

In shifting to decentralized public finances, a country's central government faces certain fiscal management problems. First, during and soon after the transition, unless it reduces pending or increases its own tax resources, the central government tends to have higher deficits as it shifts fiscal resources to sub-national governments through transfers, revenue sharing, or delegation of tax bases. Reducing spending is hard, not only because cuts are always hard, but because sub-national governments might not take on expected tasks, leaving the central government with a legal or political obligation to continue spending for certain services. Second, after decentralization, the local or state government faces popular pressure to spend more and tax less, creating the tendency to run deficits. This tendency can be a problem if sub-national governments and their creditors expect or rely on bailouts by the central government. Econometric evidence from 32 large industrial and developing countries indicates that higher sub-national spending and deficits lead to greater national deficits. The authors investigate how, and how successfully, Argentina and Brazil dealt with these problems in the 1990s. In both countries, sub-national governments account for about half of public spending and are vigorous democracies in most (especially the largest) jurisdictions. The return to democracy in the 1980s revived and strengthened long-standing federal practices while weakening macroeconomic performance, resulting in unsustainable fiscal deficits, high inflation, sometimes hyperinflation, and low or negative growth. Occasional stabilization plans failed within a few years. Then Argentina (in 1991) and Brazil (in 1994) introduced successful stabilization plans. National issues were important in preventing and then bringing about macroeconomic stabilization, but so were intergovernmental fiscal relations and the fiscal management of sub-national governments. State deficits and federal transfers were often out of control in the 1980s, contributing to national macroeconomic problems. Stabilization programs in the 1990s needed to establish control, and self-control, over sub-national spending and borrowing.National Governance,Public&Municipal Finance,Banks&Banking Reform,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Municipal Financial Management,Urban Economics,National Governance,Banks&Banking Reform,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Municipal Financial Management

Decentralization and fiscal management in Colombia

Colombia's political geography contrasts sharply with its economy. Physical characteristics and guerilla war fragment the country geographically, yet it has a long tradition of political centrism and macroeconomic stability. Recently, with political and economic decentralization, there has been some weakening of macroeconomic performance. The authors explore institutional arrangements that have helped Colombia manage the fiscal aspects of decentralization, despite the country's political problems. Fiscal decentralization proceeded rapidly in Colombia. Education, health, and much infrastructure provision have been decentralized to the departmentos and municipios. Decentralization has led to substantial but not overwhelming problems, both in maintaining fiscal balance nationally ( as resources are transferred of subnational levels) and in preventing unsustainable deficits by the subnational governments. The problems have arisen because central government interference prevents departments from controlling their costs and because of expectations of debt bailouts. Both are legacies of the earlier pattern of management from the center, and some recent changes - especially about subnational debt - may improve matters. Colombia's traditional political process has had difficulty dealing with problems of decentralization because traditional parties are weak in internal organization and have lost de facto rule over substantial territories. The fiscal problems of subnational government have been contained, however, because subnational governments are relatively weak politically and the central government, for the time being, has been able to enforce restrictions on subnational borrowing.Urban Economics,Banks&Banking Reform,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Municipal Financial Management,Public&Municipal Finance,Banks&Banking Reform,National Governance,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Municipal Financial Management,Urban Economics

Political economy of policy reform in Turkey in the 1980s

Turkey's adjustment experience was a tremendous success in terms of structurally reorienting the economy. The share of output for export rose from 5 percent in 1979 to 23 percent in 1989, and real output roughly doubled. The financial markets opened and have developed depth and sophistication. The program failed to reduce fiscal deficits, inflation, income inequality, and the size of the inefficient public enterprise sector, but the transformation of trade and finance fundamentally altered the context of the problems, changing their effects on the private sector and changing the government's options for dealing with them. The first phase of economic adjustment was sustained, although not initiated, in an authoritarian context, but the Turks restored democracy when the agenda for reform was incomplete. The Motherland Party (ANAP) won office on the platform of economic success and eventally lost partly because of the failure of economic policy. ANAP's electoral defeat in 1991 did not mean, however, the demise of the pro-structural adjustment or the pro-liberalization coalitions. The long period of ANAP rule helped consolidate reforms to such a degree that all of the principal parties agreed on a broadly similar economic program. The ideological differences between the left and the right - a state-directed versus a marked-oriented economy - substantially diminished. The reforms of the early 1980s greatly reduced the importance of rent-seeking, particularly through foreign trade, but patronage politics became widespread again in the second half of the decade. The initial strength ANAP derived from privileged access to state resources progressively became a disadvantage, creating resentment and reaction among the populace. One source of discontent was the over-invoicing of exports (that is, fictitious exports), designed to take advantage of favorable export subsidies, and the government's failure to discipline or penalize the companies involved. This jeopardized attempts to build a pro-export coalition, and some key features of import substitution continued. The authors attribute the failure of Turkey's macroeconomic policies in the late 1980s to the government's failure tocultivate popular support for macroeconomic stability; to the top bureaucrats'lack of autonomy to counteract political pressures to expand the fiscal deficit; and to the continuation of top-down individualistic linkages between policymakers and key economic interests.National Governance,Parliamentary Government,Politics and Government,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research

The dynamics of incomes and occupational pensions after retirement

This paper uses two waves of the UK Retirement Survey to look at how incomes change during retirement. We concentrate on men aged 65-69 and women aged 60-69 in 1988-89 and look at how their incomes change over the following five years. Overall, we find a considerable degree of stability in real incomes. We use the panel data to look at the incomes of widows before and after they are widowed and find that, for this group of relatively young widows, their low incomes are in large part determined by the fact that it tends to be the relatively poorer husbands who die among this age-group. Finally, we consider the most important component of private income — occupational pensions — separately. We find a strong relationship between pension level and the probability of indexation — pensions that start low are less likely than higher pensions to keep up with inflation.

Bargaining for a new fiscal pact in Mexico

The authors consider the malaise with the present set-up of fiscal federalism in Mexico from the points of view of the main players-the federal government, the states, the municipalities, and the citizen voters-in order to identify the areas of potential common interest as well as the direct conflicts. There is a zero-sum game on some issues, like the size of aggregate transfers, but not on others, likeraising tax collection and improving accountability for service delivery. The authors consider bargain packages that combine mutually beneficial changes and thus might obtain broad enough political support. They analyze the bargaining packages in two main tracks-one concerning tax assignments, revenue sharing, and tax administration, and another concerning the conjunction of earmarked transfers and accountability for service provision. An important result is that almost all states would find it fiscally attractive to impose a sales tax that replaced part of the federal value-added tax (VAT), even if the federal government reduced revenue sharing enough to cover half the cost of reducing the VAT rate to make room for the state tax.National Governance,Urban Governance and Management,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Banks&Banking Reform,Regional Governance,National Governance,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Banks&Banking Reform,Municipal Financial Management,Regional Governance

A new model for market-based regulation of subnational borrowing - the Mexican approach

Faced with weak sub-national finances that pose a risk to macroeconomic stability, Mexico's federal government in April 2000 established an innovative incentive framework to bring fiscal discipline to state and municipal governments. That framework is based on two pillars: an explicit renunciation of federal bail-outs, and a Basel-consistent link between the capital-risk weighting of bank loans to sub-national governments, and the borrower's credit rating. In theory, this new regulatory arrangement should reduce moral hazard among banks and their state, and municipal clients; differentiate interest rates on the basis of the borrower's creditworthiness; and, elicit a strong demand for institutional development at the sub-national level. But its access will depend on three factors critical to implementation: 1) Whether markets find thefederal commitment not to bail out defaulting sub-national governments credible. 2) Whether sub-national governments have access to financing other than bank loans. 3) How well bank capital rules are enforced.Environmental Economics&Policies,Banks&Banking Reform,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Economic Theory&Research,Financial Intermediation,Banks&Banking Reform,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Financial Intermediation,Insurance&Risk Mitigation