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Fiscal adjustment, decentralisation and sub-national autonomy
No full textThis paper studies the relationship between fiscal decentralisation and the duration of the fiscal consolidation episodes in 17 OECD countries between 1978 and 2009. It appears that consolidation lasts longer when expenditure decentralisation is higher. The paper also finds that transfers from higher levels of government are reduced during consolidation episodes. This suggests that, given a certain institutional structure within the country, central governments are able to shift the burden of consolidation towards lower tiers of government by reducing intergovernmental transfers. This is particularly the case when sub-national governments have little legal autonomy to raise tax revenues and cannot affect executive decisions taken at the central level
Decentralization and the duration of fiscal consolidation. Shifting the burden across layers of government
Full text linkThis paper analyzes the relationship between fiscal decentralization, the duration of fiscal consolidation episodes, and their success for 17OECDcountries between 1978 and 2009. The consolidation of the general government budget appears to be of longer durationwhen expenditure decisions are more decentralized.We also find that transfers from higher levels of government are
cut during consolidation episodes, suggesting that central governments shift the burden of consolidation towards lower tiers of government. This is especially true when the latter have little legal autonomy to raise tax revenues and have little influence over executive decisions taken at the central level. We document that this increases local governments’ public debt/GDP ratios. In terms of the success of consolidation episodes, countrieswith greater degrees of decentralization appear to make smaller improvements in their primary balance when consolidating
Fairness Unchained : The determinants of a fair local tax burden
Full text linkTreballs Finals del Màster d'Economia, Facultat d'Economia i Empresa, Universitat de Barcelona, Curs: 2020-2021, Tutor: Dirk ForemnyThe current socioeconomic paradigm of most modern societies clearly constraints the citizen’s capacity to conceive alternative economic models and their viability. Policy-qualifiers such as rigour or consistency are now tarnished by social views’ reinforcement through changing fairness connotations among communities.
We put the spotlight on the municipality of l’Ametlla del Vallès to study the possible determinants behind a fair local tax contribution. Through a survey experiment and local administrative and tax records, we assess the possible relationship between a perceived fair local tax contribution and (1) the local tax burden, (2) public spending, (3) social position and (4) redistribution. We also control for the effect of information and some possible locally-based bias through a difference-in-difference treatment design.
We do not find a causal relationship for the tax burden patterns, while satisfaction towards public services is found to be statistically significant. We also find evidence of a causal relationship for social position and redistribution views. The role of information is found not interfere in the allocation of a fair local contribution
Social capital : A key determinant of economic development in Sub-Saharan Africa?
Full text linkTreballs Finals del Màster d'Economia, Facultat d'Economia i Empresa, Universitat de Barcelona, Curs: 2020-2021, Tutor: Dirk Foremny ; Matteo GamalerioSocial capital is believed to spur regional economic development. Since the groundbreaking works of Putnam, scholars hypothesized that it determines how well institutions function at the regional level and thus influences a region’s economic performance. In Europe, a positive association between social capital and regional per-capita income levels could be established. However, is such a relation also found in a set of developing countries? This study investigates the relationship between social capital and subnational economic development in a sample of Sub-Saharan African countries. Using Afrobarometer data on trust, it estimates the relationship by Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and Instrument Variables (IV). The OLS results suggest that trust is not significantly related to regional economic development in Sub-Saharan Africa. Exploiting regional differences in ethnolinguistic diversity and distances to slave demand centers, the study tries to isolate a potential effect of social capital via IV estimation. Although the results seem to corroborate the OLS findings, caveats remain since distances to slave ports were unrelated and deep cleavages of ethnic diversity only weakly related to trust
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Sub-national deficits in European countries: The impact of fiscal rules and tax autonomy
Full text linkThis paper empirically examines how fiscal rules and tax autonomy influence deficits of sub-national sectors across European countries. I use a new panel-data set to measure tax autonomy and the stringency of fiscal rules for EU15 regional and local government sectors over the period 1995 to 2008. I apply an instrumental variables approach to obtain an unbiased estimate of the impact of fiscal rules on deficits. I use political variables describing the central governments characteristics as instruments for fiscal rules at the sub-national level. The results show that the effectiveness of fiscal rules and tax autonomy depends on the constitutional structure. Fiscal rules decrease deficits only in unitary countries. Deficits of sub-national sectors in federations can be avoided through tax autonomy
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Essays in Empirical Public Finance
Full text linkThis thesis consists of three empirical contributions – each of them concerned with aspects of public finances at the sub-national level in the European Union. Chapter 1 offers an empirical answer to the question of which institutional arrangements can help to keep the accounts of sub-national governments in balance. I take into consideration the autonomy that these governments have in raising their revenues and fiscal rules as formulated in law or constitutions. The former works as an implicit constraint since governments with more autonomy might assume higher responsibility for accumulated deficits. The latter works as a direct explicit constraint on sub-national borrowing, but might be subject to endogeneity through preferences for fiscal responsibility. This potential source of bias is taken into account by using IV techniques for fiscal rules. Results from my original dataset, covering full information for 14 years of all EU15 countries, show that the effectiveness of tools depends critically on the federal background. Fiscal rules work in unitary countries, while higher tax autonomy yields lower deficits in federations. The purpose of chapter 2 is to assess whether politicians manipulate the timing of tax rate changes in a strategic way to maximize reelection prospects. To do so, we exploit the information on the German local business tax which is set autonomously by municipalities. As election dates vary across local councils, the data allows us to disentangle effects related to the timing of elections from common trends. Using a rich panel data-set for German municipalities, we assess the impact of elections on local business tax choices. The findings support the notion of a political cycle in tax setting as the change in local business tax rates is significantly reduced in the election year and the year prior to the election, while it jumps up in the year after the election. This pattern turns out to be robust against a number of sensitivity checks. Chapter 3 contributes to the literature on local tax interactions. Its novelty lies in its focus on the interactions of local governments across national borders. We use panel data for the French and German municipalities in the Rhine Valley for the period 2000–2007. The local governments of each country influence firms’ overall tax burdens, but the tax instruments available at the local level differ. We estimate panel models that distinguish between the effects of competing municipalities belonging to the same country and belonging to the other country. Our empirical model shows that local jurisdictions along borders choose their business tax rates based on those of their domestic neighbors and that foreign fiscal policy does not have an impact on the local domestic tax setting behavior in these contexts
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