This paper studies the repayment of regional debt in a multi-region economy with a central authority: who pays the obligation issued by a region? With commitment, a central government will use its taxation power to smooth distortionary taxes across regions. Absent commitment, the central government may be induced to bailout the regional government in order to smooth consumption and distortionary taxes across the regions. We characterize the conditions under which bailouts occur and their welfare implications. The gains to creating a federation are higher when the (government spending) shocks across regions are negatively correlated and volatile. We use these insights to comment on actual fiscal relations in three quite different federations: the US, the European Union and Argentina.
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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
11655.
Length: Date of creation: Oct 2005 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11655
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Find related papers by JEL classification: E6 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook F4 - International Economics - - Macroeconomic Aspects of International Trade and Finance R5 - Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics - - Regional Government Analysis
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