Institutional design and implicit incentives in Bolivia's decentralization model

Abstract

The second generation fiscal federalism approach is used as a reference to analyze the political and fiscal institutional design of Bolivia’s decentralization model and its evolution. Sub-national public finance data up to 2008 is used to verify that decentralization of expenditure was higher than that of revenue, establishing a context of vertical fiscal imbalance that increased due to growing fiscal transfers during the positive external shock (boom) period. Panel models were estimated at sub-national levels to identify and assess the implicit incentives embedded in fiscal institutions of the decentralization model