We examine whether US and German state governments pursue sustainable fiscal policies taking into account fiscal transfers. Using panel data techniques we investigate whether the debt-to-GDP ratio had a positive influence on the primary surplus (Bohn-model). We show that including/excluding...

Recent theoretical research suggests that financing sub-national governments’ expenditure out of own revenue sources is linked to more responsible budgeting, because the financial implications of spending decisions then are internalized within a jurisdiction. We test this proposition...

Empirical evidence from the U.S. and the European Union suggests that regions which contribute to interregional redistribution face weaker borrowing constraints than regions which benefit from interregional redistribution. This paper presents an argument in favor of such differentiated budgetary...

The paper examines the question how fiscally strong and fiscally weak states respond to taxing autonomy at the state level, a subject that is currently under debate in Germany where states do have virtually no power to tax. We use a simple theoretical model that incorporates state surtaxes on...

This paper empirically investigates the underlying determinants of expenditure decentralization, based on the predictions of a new political economy model of partial decentralization. The analysis is based on an agency model, in which two levels of government are involved in the provision of a...

In the past several decades, many countries, among them non-democratic, chose to decentralize their governments. Building on insights provided by the “second generation” wave of research on fiscal federalism, this paper proposes a unified model to account for this. The idea is that...

Legislative bargaining theory suggests that fiscal transfers among member states of a federation are determined to a substantial degree by political bargaining powers. Malapportionment of the states' population in the legislature is claimed to lead to disproportionally higher benefits to...

We study the welfare effects of a revenue-neutral green tax reform in a federation. The reform consists of increasing a tax on a polluting input and reducing that on labor income. Households are fully mobile within the federation. Regions are unequally endowed with a nonrenewable natural...