rebalancing the chinese economy china has run a current account surplus for two decades its current account surplus is not simply a result of the saving gap rather the current account surplus as well as the saving gap is a result of complicated interaction among various factors in a dynamic fashion while running a large current account surplus china has also run a large capital account surplus mainly in the form of fdi over decades china s twin surpluses are a re ection of market distortion which has caused large welfare losses for the country the chinese government should not only pay attention to internal balance but also to external imbalance hence it should combine expenditure switching policies and expenditure changing policies to maintain a decent non in ationary growth rate while keeping the current account balance to gdp ratio at a rational level

efficiency and equalization payments in a federal system of government a synthesis and extensions of recent results this paper investigates the rationale for a system of equalization transfers in a federal system of government the existing sources of inefficiency of resource allocation in economies with more than one level of government are synthesized in the framework of a simple decentralized multiprovince model with mobile factors of production the sources of inefficiency arise first because migrants respond at the margin to incorrect signals owing to the phenomena of rent sharing and fiscal exterality and second because of global rather than local inefficiencies the model is then extended to consider the role of the federal government in providing intergovernmental transfers in the face of such inefficiencies in addition to synthesizing the sources of inefficiency in federal models the equity arguments for equalization are briefly recounted efficacite et paiements de perequation dans un systeme federal de gouvernement synthese et extensions de certains resultats recents ce memoire examine la logique qui soustend un systeme de paiements de perequation dans un systeme fdderal de gouverement les auteurs utilisent un modele simple d un systeme multi provincial decentralise avec des facteurs de production mobiles pour definir les sources d inefficacite dans l allocation des ressources dans les dconomies qui possedent plus d un niveau de gouvernement ces inefficacites proviennent de ce que d abord ceux qui se deplacent le font en reponse a la marge a des signaux incorrects engendres par le partage de la rente sur la base de la residence et par les phenomenes d exteralites fiscales elles sont aussi le resultat d inefficacites globales plutot que locales dans le cadre de ce modele les auteurs analysent le role du gouvernement federal effectuant des transferts inter gouverementaux pour corriger ces inefficacites en plus de presenter une synthese des sources d inefficacite dans les regimes federaux les auteurs font un bref rappel en passant a l ensemble des arguments fondes sur l equite qu on utilise pour rationaliser les paiements de perequation this paper is a linear combination of two papers presented at the may 1982 meetings of the canadian economics association in halifax entitled the case for equalization payments by the authors and recent developments in the theory of regional economic policy in canada by boadway the authors are grateful for comments by the discussants jim johnson and baxter macdonald and by jack mintz brian scarfe gerard belanger david sewell tom courchene and the referees we are especially heavily indebted to dan usher for many stimulating comments and suggestions while the work was in progress some of the above persons will undoubtedly disagree with the emphasis we have chosen to put on various aspects of the analysis for policy purposes support for some of this work has been provided by the economic council of canada and is gratefully acknowledged canadian journal of economics revue canadienne d economique xv no 4 november novembre 1982 printed in canada imprimd au canada 0008 4085 82 0000 0613 01 50 1982 canadian economics association this content downloaded from 207 46 13 127 on wed 12 oct 2016 04 27 47 utc all use subject to http about jstor org terms 614 robin boadway and frank flatters

reassessment of the tiebout model abstract the tiebout model has been the reference point for the classical approach to fiscal federalism its emphasis on mobility benefit taxation and the advantages of fiscal competition have informed fiscal federalism since the seminal contributions of musgrave and oates this paper reviews the influence that the tiebout model has had on fiscal federalism and argues that while its insights remain relevant for local government it is far from compelling as a positive description of or a normative prescription for fiscal federalism at the state level some aspects of alternative approaches are presented which lead to different perspectives than tiebout inspired ones

decentralization and corruption evidence from u s federal transfer programs while some recent evidence suggests that more decentralization is associated with reduced corruption no empirical work has examined whether different types of decentraliz ation have differential effects on corruption the theoretical literature has emphasized that expenditure decentralization will only be effective if accompanied by the devolution of rev enue generation to local governments in this paper we examine this hypothesis empirically by studying the mismatch between revenue generation and expenditure in u s states larger federal transfers are associated with higher rates of conviction for abuse of public office supporting the theory that soft budget constraints created by federal transfers are potentially problematic

income redistribution in a common labor market when households are mobile among jurisdictions income redistribution by individual jurisdictions creates fiscal externalities a model of interjurisdictional migration is used to study the nature of this redistributive externality analysis of optimal redistribution and optimal corrective subsidies from higher level governments shows that benefit levels for the recipients of income transfers and tax rates on mobile taxpayers should be equalized across jurisdictions a system of jurisdictions with a common labor market can achieve welfare improvements through coordination of domestic redistributive policy or through the intervention of a higher level government copyright 1991 by american economic association

the implications of competition among jurisdictions does tiebout need politics the paper investigates whether compensation among local jurisdiction is by itself sufficient to ensure efficient provision of local public goods jurisdictions have fixed boundaries and each has an entrenched government with the power to tax and supply the public good residents can move costlessly among jurisdictions it is shown that competition among numerous jurisdictions is not sificient to guarantee public sector efficiency though residents can vote with their feet land is immobile hence governments can unsurp some land rents for their own ends increasing the number of jurisdictions limits but cannot completely eliminate the ability to exercise discretionary governmental power

a theory of interregional tax competition a general equilibrium model is constructed to study tax competition where local governments compete for capital by holding down property tax rates and public expenditure levels an exact definition of tax competition is provided and both the existence and nonexistence of tax competition are shown to be theoretically possible it is argued however that tax competition must occur under empirically reasonable conditions inefficiency in public production is also explicitly modeled the amount of capital used to produce a given level of public service output is shown to be greater than that which is required to minimize costs evaluated at the prices facing private firms

an empirical analysis of intergovernmental tax interaction the case of business income taxes in canada both federal and provincial governments in canada levy corporate taxes on busi nesses in their jurisdictions which potentially gives rise to horizontal and vertical tax exter nalities within the federation using a simple model of interdependent tax choices we estimate tax setting functions for the federal government ontario quebec and an aggregate of the remaining eight provinces we find evidence of significant vertical and horizontal tax inter actions provincial tax rates respond negatively to the federal tax rate while at least some provinces increase their tax rates in response to increases in the tax rates of other provinces

political decentralization and corruption evidence from around the world abstract how does political decentralization affect the frequency and costliness of bribe extraction by corrupt officials previous empirical studies using subjective indexes of perceived corruption and mostly fiscal indicators of decentralization have suggested conflicting conclusions in search of more precise findings we combine and explore two new data sources an original cross national data set on particular types of decentralization and the results of a firm level survey conducted in 80 countries about firms concrete experiences with bribery in countries with a larger number of government or administrative tiers and given local revenues a larger number of local public employees reported bribery was more frequent when local or central governments received a larger share of gdp in revenue bribery was less frequent overall the results suggest the danger of uncoordinated rent seeking as government structures become more complex

public input competition abstract public investment in infrastructure may help create agglomeration economies by attracting mobile factors such as skilled labour competition among regions in public investment can then be destructive this paper analyzes the nash equilibria to a simple model of public input competition even though the regions are assumed identical the equilibrium may not be symmetric the problem with non cooperative behaviour is not only that regions invest too much but that too many regions may choose to invest depending on the parameter values the nash equilibrium may be efficient may be inefficient or may not exist at least not in pure strategies better mobility among regions leads to more aggressive competition the analysis suggests that rents from public investment may be dissipated by governments competition to attract mobile factors

fiscal inequivalence incentive equivalence and pareto efficiency in a decentralized urban context abstract we develop a simple urban model consisting of a center and a suburb populated by a fixed number of identical individuals who can migrate costlessly between jurisdictions land ownership ranges from rent sharing to an absentee landlord who owns all urban land we discuss laissez faire equilibrium and show that it is pareto efficient we then introduce local governments which are only concerned about the welfare of their residents and which can collect head and land taxes whereas the former is purely local the latter will extend to both jurisdictions if individuals own a positive share of the entire urban land and beyond if there is an absentee landlord this produces a simple kind of fiscal inequivalence tax exporting since local governments do not provide public goods their role is limited to stopping the flow of resources leaving their jurisdiction they then redistribute this revenue as a head subsidy to the residents of their jurisdiction if it just happens that the head subsidy is equal between jurisdictions the equilibrium is both pareto efficient and a preferable to laissez faire from the viewpoint of urban residents if however it varies between jurisdictions the equilibrium is pareto inefficient the jurisdiction providing a higher per head subsidy becomes overpopulated we thus arrive at a classic market failure in the literature of competing regions correction involves aggregate interjurisdictional transfers to equalize head subsidies which in the literature must be undertaken by a central government following myers j public econ 43 107 121 1990 we treat this as an assumption rather than a necessity we show that if aggregate transfers become a local instrument the nash equilibrium will be both pareto efficient and preferable to laissez faire this happens because free mobility compels noncooperative local governments to act in a cooperative way we then extend this result to public goods which need be neither purely public congestion nor purely local spillovers we conclude by discussing implications for the existing urban literature

property value maximization and public sector efficiency abstract this paper analyses the efficiency implications of property value maximization communities are open so that utilities are parametric to housing producers and the local government each local government chooses its public good output to maximize aggregate property value in the community ignoring feedback effects on the composition of the housing stock it is shown that this type of government behavior generates an equilibrium in which all communities are internally pareto efficient

taxation and the tiebout model the differential effects of head taxes taxes on land rents and property taxes on the theory of state and local public finance is the seminal paper by charles tiebout 1956 tiebout constructed a multijurisdictional model in which independent local governments offer a wide variety of expenditure and tax policies and perfectly mobile consumers reveal their preferences for local public goods through their choice of residential community he argued that under such circumstances local public service provision would be efficient the tiebout model has formed the basis of a vast number of subsequent articles in the state and local public finance literature and has also been very influential in urban and regional economics the efficiency properties of various tiebout type models of local public good provision have been examined and the role of politics in these models has been debated at length in this literature of more direct relevance to this paper however is the fact that although tiebout had little to say directly about taxation simply assuming the existence of head taxes subsequent analyses have used adaptations of this model to examine the effects of local head taxes land taxes and property taxes it is the literature on the efficiency and distributional effects of alternative local taxes that is the subject of this survey 1

income redistribution in a federal system the question of the appropriate level of government to undertake income redistribution is receiving renewed attention from economists the standard argument about the issue might be summarized as follows 1 interstate migration of taxpayers and transfer recipients raises the cost to voters of income redistribution at the state level above the cost at the federal level 2 statewide redistribution confers spillover benefits to residents of other states 3 therefore as compared with a national system decentralized responsibility for income redistribution yields both less redistribution and less than the socially optimal amount of income redistribution the purpose of this paper is only to question step 1 of the above argument of course readers who accept the assumptions of the standard argument may conclude that the possible weakening of step 1 of that argument reduces the likelihood that its conclusion holds the paper argues that the cost of redistribution faced by state residents may in fact be lower at the state level than at the national level because their federal tax obligations fall as the state redistributes more income thus part of the cost of redistribution at the state level can be exported to residents of other states the state s federal tax bill falls when taxable incomes in the state are reduced by increased redistribution deductibility of state taxes enhances this result but is not necessary for it to demonstrate the proposition without adding unnecessary complication a simple model of income redistribution is described in which governments at all levels use linear tax transfer schedules to redistribute income the single government case is considered first then two levels of government are introduced and finally migration is allowed it is shown that without migration state costs are never greater than national costs of redistribution as long as redistribution reduces total money income when migration is allowed the result depends on the elasticity of migration responses compared with the elasticity of labor supply responses

clubs local public goods and transportation models a synthesis abstract clubs local public goods and transportation models are analyzed within a unified model the emphasis is on the derivation of optimal allocation pricing and the size of the sharing group we derive the conditions under which optimal prices will yield surplus or deficit as well as those under which competitive provision will be efficient given heterogeneous tastes we prove that segregation according to tastes is generally efficient although several cases where this result does not hold are also discussed we show that the existing literature is unnecessarily restrictive and that the unified approach suggested here considerably extends the existing analysis of clubs local public goods and the transportation problems

tax competition and leviathan abstract attitudes towards downward pressure on tax rates from international tax competition depend on attitudes towards government this paper synthesises the two extremes which as in other areas of public finance have dominated the debate typically being presented as stark alternatives the view of government as a leviathan from which tax competition emerges as a useful constraint on policy makers and the view of government as a benevolent maximiser of their citizens welfare from which it emerges as a source of inefficiency conditions are derived under which when policy makers are neither entirely benevolent nor wholly self serving tax coordination benefits the representative citizen

vertical fiscal externalities in a federation abstract we examine vertical fiscal externalities in a model where a state government provides a productivity enhancing public input and both the state and the central government tax wages and profits previous literature has emphasized the negative tax externality that occurs when two levels of government impose distortionary taxes on the same tax base we show that an increase in the state government s tax rate on wage income can increase federal revenues if the federal government imposes an ad valorem tax on employees wages and the demand for labour is inelastic we also show that an increase in the provision of the public input can either increase or reduce federal tax revenues leading to either under or over provision of the public input by the state government

the power to tax analytical foundations of a fiscal constitution preface 1 taxation in constitutional perspective 2 natural government a model of leviathan 3 constraints on base and rate structure 4 the taxation of commodities 5 taxation through time income taxes capital taxes and public debt 6 money creation and taxation 7 the disposition of public revenues 8 the domain of politics 9 open economy federalism and taxing authority 10 toward authentic tax reform prospects and prescriptions epilogue notes selected bibliography index

asymmetric tax competition abstract the paper analyzes nash equilibrium when two jurisdictions set tax rates on a tax base which is mobile between them population differences imply tax differences the smaller jurisdiction levies a lower tax rate in equilibrium and its residents are better off than those in the larger jurisdiction the nash equilibrium is inefficient if the two jurisdictions merged the resulting allocation would be efficient however if differences in population are great enough residents of the small jurisdiction would be made worse off by such a merger

government accountability and fiscal discipline a panel analysis using swiss data government accountability through electoral engagement involvement and participation in the political debate can affect government performance using data for the full sample of swiss cantons over the 1981 2001 period this paper provides empirical evidence that government accountability is crucial for fiscal discipline specifically in cantons with high levels of government accountability the level of indebtedness is significantly lower indicating that accountability supports fiscal discipline to obtain a useful approximation for government accountability between citizens and their representatives we use information from direct voter participation in political decisions initiatives and public referenda in swiss state cantonal governments electoral support of government proposals reveals an important aspect of accountability in a real world setting

pigou tiebout property taxation and the underprovision of local public goods abstract pigou s proposition that the use of distorting taxes rather than neutral head taxes reduces public service levels is examined in this paper a simple model with a national system of competing local governments is utilized to demonstrate that the use of a distorting property tax on mobile capital decreases the level of residential public services the case where public services are an intermediate producer good is also considered

central bank independence revisited the case for central bank independence cbi while not a new one has been strengthened by a growing body of empirical evidence by recent developments in economic theory and by the temper of the times the case is a strong one 1 which is becoming part of the washington orthodoxy the purposes of this paper are both to make more precise the type of cbi that is likely to enhance economic performance and to point to some remaining open issues and anomalies i start with the two theoretical approaches to cbi

a critique of tiebout s theory of local public expenditures the last section of this paper presents a rigorous version of tiebout s theory of local public goods it is shown that equilibria exist and are pareto optimal this rigorous theory follows closely the more rigorous part of tiebout s work this rigorous theory makes a number of very special assumptions which make local public goods essentially private the body of this paper presents a series of examples which show that if one tries to generalize the rigorous version of tiebout s theory in a number of interesting directions then equilibria may no longer exist or may not be pareto optimal the conclusion is that tiebout s idea does not lead to a satisfactory general theory of local public goods the goal of this paper is to point out that tiebout s notion of equilibrium with local governments does not have the nice properties of general competitive equilibrium except under very restrictive assumptions tiebout 39 suggested that there are competitive forces which tend to make local governments allocate resources in a pareto optimal fashion consumers choose to live in those towns with the mix of taxes and public goods they prefer local governments choose this mix so as to attract inhabitants this idea may seem intriguing for it suggests that the invisible hand solves an important part of samuelson s perplexing public goods problem 32 tiebout in fact makes an argument which is nearly rigorous i give a rigorous version of his argument at the end of the paper however in this rigorous version so many restrictive assumptions are made that public goods become essentially private in the body of the paper i give a series of examples with which i try to convince the reader that one is forced to adopt tiebout s restrictive assumptions the idea is that if one changes any of his assumptions then either equilibria may not exist or may not be pareto optimal my examples are presented in the context of a general class of tiebout models i consider several subclasses one of which is the special case considered by tiebout in each of the subclasses except that considered by tiebout i give a counterexample either to the existence of equilibrium or to its pareto optimality the subclasses are so chosen that the difficulties they reveal would be shared by any reasonable tiebout model which differed from his special case i believe that my examples controvert tiebout s suggestion 39 last paragraph that his theory compares favorably with competitive equilibrium theory most of the examples in this paper have already appeared in the literature i cite related work as i go along what is new here is that i assemble the examples in a unified argument

commodity tax competition under destination and origin principles abstract this paper studies the effect of switching from the destination to the origin principle of taxation on non cooperative commodity tax equilibrium when taxes are constrained to be uniform across commodities the switch has no effect when differentiated taxes are allowed the effects of the switch depend on whether countries are small or large in both cases the switch imposes the requirement that taxes must be uniform across commodities within each country in the second case there are two further effects of the switch i negative spillover effects from tax policy are introduced ii incentives to manipulate the terms of trade are changed the switch does not necessarily lead to a fall in all tax rates

an optimal taxation approach to fiscal federalism in a federal system of government each unit of government decides independently how much of each type of public good to provide and what types of taxes and which tax rates to use in funding the public goods in this paper we explore what types of problems can arise from this decentralized form of decision making in particular we describe systematically the types of externalities that one unit of government can create for nonresidents through both its public goods decisions and its taxation decisions the paper also explores briefly what the central government might do to lessen the costs of decentralized decision making

corporate lobbying and commitment failure in capital taxation this paper investigates the effects of lobbying by corporations when investments are irreversible and government cannot commit to tax policies we show that industries which rely more heavily on sunk capital lobby more vigorously and are generally more successful in obtaining tax breaks thus lobbying can mitigate the capital levy problem nevertheless these industries invest less in long run equilibrium than more flexible ones we then consider the effects of relaxing legal restrictions on corporate lobbying when the deadweight costs of lobbying fall taxes on sunk capital tend to fall but political contributions may rise as lobbyists compete more intensively for political favors on balance a ban of lobbying may therefore cause investment to rise or fall this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

estimating the value of proposal power this paper investigates the role of proposal power in the allocation of transportation projects across u s congressional districts in 1991 and 1998 the evidence supports the key qualitative prediction of legislative bargaining models members with proposal power those sitting on the transportation authorization committee secure more project spending for their districts than do other representatives support for the quantitative restrictions on the value of proposal power is more mixed i then empirically address several alternative models of legislative behavior including partisan models informational roles for committees models with appropriations committees and theories of committees as preference outliers

jeux sans frontieres tax competition and tax coordination when countries differ in size closer international integration is putting increasing pressure on existing national tax structures this paper uses a simple two country model to address a range of consequent policy concerns focusing particularly on the role of country size differences in size exacerbate the inefficiency from noncooperative behavior harming both countries the smaller country loses from harmonization to any tax rate between those set in the noncooperative equilibrium but both countries gain from the imposition of a minimum tax anywhere in that range the fully optimal response to freer cross border trade however may be to do nothing jel h20 h77

does decentralization increase government responsiveness to local needs evidence from bolivia this paper examines whether decentralization increases the responsiveness of public investment to local needs using a unique database from bolivia empirical tests show that investment patterns in human capital and social services changed significantly after decentralization these changes are strongly and positively related to objective indicators of need nationally these changes were driven by the smallest poorest municipalities investing devolved funds in their highest priority projects the findings contradict common claims that local government is too corrupt institutionally weak or prone to interest group capture to improve upon central government s allocation of public resources d 2002 published by elsevier b v

tax competition rent seeking and fiscal decentralization abstract the present paper provides a basis for evaluating fiscal decentralization of expenditure and tax responsibilities by encompassing the literature on tax competition and rent seeking both tax and rent seeking competitions are conceived of as being wasteful and self defeating we find that rent seeking activities account for political distortions which may be mitigated in the process of fiscal decentralization while tax competition results in economic distortions associated with decentralization welfare evaluation should be based on the balance of the political gain and the economic cost

fiscal competition and the pattern of public spending much attention has been given to the impact of fiscal competition on the level of public expenditure but relatively little to the impact on its composition using a broadly familiar and reasonably rich model of fiscal competition in the presence of mobile capital this paper establishes a systematic bias in public spending patterns starting from the non cooperative equilibrium and holding tax rates constant welfare would be improved by a coordinated reduction in the provision of local public inputs and a corresponding increase in the public provision of local public goods benefiting immobile consumers c 1997 elsevier science s a