In the last decade, Italy has experienced a considerable decentralization of functions to the regions. This transformation has been especially relevant for the National Health System that has de facto assumed a federal system design. The federal reform aimed at disciplining public health...

The paper first develops Region-based mid-long term projections of public health care expenditure for Italy; then wonders about the most appropriate rule for financing it, distinguishing between its efficient part and the part absorbed by inefficiencies of regional governments. The first part...

How do we know whether a country suffers from vertical fiscal imbalance (VFI)? What should be done about it? Academic appreciation of these issues in general, and the nature of political behaviour in particular, both have major implications for the way federations are fiscally structured. While...

Cooperative federations are usually characterized by the existence of bailout guarantees and intergovernmental transfer schemes. This paper explores whether such features of cooperative federations lead to subnational soft budget constraints using panel data from the German States covering the...

Economic models of Fiscal Federalism, according to different settings, are generally linear and static, offering unique and deterministic solutions starting with simplifying assumptions. This paper rises from the idea to investigate how the decision-makers, abandoning their traditional economic...

This article 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...

The paper discusses moral hazard problems as a potential reason for the observed strong increase of indebtedness of German states (Länder). Indeed, financial markets do not react much to the strong differences in fiscal fundamentals of German Länder. Using a case study, the paper also shows...

In the last two decades there has been a worldwide interest in decentralization of government in all parts of the world. There are two main objectives that we tried to achieve through this study. Firstly, we tried to examine empirically the effects of decentralization on macroeconomic stability....

To promote and contribute to the discussion of fiscal federalism in Argentina, this paper presents a proposal to amend the distribution of the revenue from the Income Tax between the Nation and the provinces. The proposal is based on the need to help reinvigorate the discussion on the...

The 1999-2006 versions of the Italian Domestic Stability Pact had many shortcomings and a modest impact with respect to the aim of aligning the fiscal behaviour of sub-national government units with the national commitments under the European Stability and Growth Pact. The Domestic Pact was...