IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jpbect/v8y2006i3p487-501.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Human Fallibility, Complementarity, and Fiscal Decentralization

Author

Listed:
  • YUKIHIRO NISHIMURA

Abstract

This paper examines economic growth properties under alternative fiscal organizations when a bureau's decisions are fallible. A country consists of J jurisdictions, which need a public service. In a centralized government, one authority decides on services in every jurisdiction. In a decentralized government, J authorities are in charge of each public service. An authority can have high ability or low ability, and an authority with high ability draws a good project with higher probability. We first show that the decentralized government provides the same average quality of public services, with lower variance, than does the centralized government. We then apply this result to an economic growth model where the value of the Solow residual is a constant elasticity of substitution (CES) function of public services. We show that there is a critical value of the degree of complementarity below which fiscal decentralization is more desirable than fiscal centralization for an expected economic growth, and the decentralized government has a lower variance of GDP growth.

Suggested Citation

  • Yukihiro Nishimura, 2006. "Human Fallibility, Complementarity, and Fiscal Decentralization," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 8(3), pages 487-501, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jpbect:v:8:y:2006:i:3:p:487-501
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9779.2006.00274.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9779.2006.00274.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1467-9779.2006.00274.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Cornes,Richard & Sandler,Todd, 1996. "The Theory of Externalities, Public Goods, and Club Goods," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521477185, September.
    2. Ebel, Robert D. & Yilmaz, Serdar, 2002. "On the measurement and impact of fiscal decentralization," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2809, The World Bank.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Nobuo Akai & Masayo Hosoi & Yukihiro Nishimura, 2009. "Fiscal Decentralization And Economic Volatility: Evidence From State‐Level Cross‐Section Data Of The Usa," The Japanese Economic Review, Japanese Economic Association, vol. 60(2), pages 223-235, June.
    2. Boriss Siliverstovs & Ulrich Thiessen & Caroline Elliott, 2015. "Incentive effects of fiscal federalism: Evidence for France," Cogent Economics & Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 3(1), pages 1017949-101, December.
    3. Furceri, Davide & Sacchi, Agnese & Salotti, Simone, 2014. "Can fiscal decentralization alleviate government consumption volatility?," MPRA Paper 54513, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Mario Jametti & Marcelin Joanis, 2020. "Elections and de facto expenditure decentralization in Canada," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 21(3), pages 275-297, September.
    5. Bo, Shiyu & Deng, Liuchun & Sun, Yufeng & Wang, Boqun, 2021. "Intergovernmental communication under decentralization," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 184(C), pages 606-652.
    6. Ignacio Lozano-Espitia & Juan Manuel Julio-Román, 2015. "Descentralización Fiscal y Crecimiento Económico: Evidencia Regional en Panel de Datos para Colombia," Borradores de Economia 865, Banco de la Republica de Colombia.
    7. Marcelin Joanis, 2008. "Intertwined Federalism: Accountability Problems under Partial Decentralization," Cahiers de recherche 08-22, Departement d'économique de l'École de gestion à l'Université de Sherbrooke.
    8. Joanis, Marcelin, 2014. "Shared accountability and partial decentralization in local public good provision," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 28-37.
    9. Julio, Juan Manuel & Lozano, Ignacio, 2016. "Descentralización fiscal y crecimiento económico en Colombia: evidencia de datos de panel a nivel regional," Revista CEPAL, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), August.
    10. Mario Jametti & Marcelin Joanis, 2010. "Determinants of fiscal decentralization: political economy aspects," Working Papers 2010/7, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    11. Mario Jametti & Marcelin Joanis, 2010. "Determinants of fiscal decentralization: political economy aspects," Working Papers 2010/7, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    12. Luis Ignacio Lozano-Espitia & Juan Manuel Julio-Román, 2015. "Fiscal Decentralization and Economic Growth: Evidence from Regional-Level Panel Data for Colombia," Borradores de Economia 12498, Banco de la Republica.
    13. Kimiko Terai, 2009. "Interregional Disparities in Productivity and the Choice of Fiscal Regime," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 11(3), pages 383-409, June.
    14. Nobuo Akai & Yukihiro Nishimura & Masayo Sakata, 2007. "Complementarity, fiscal decentralization and economic growth," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 8(4), pages 339-362, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Johan Eyckmans & Michael Finus, 2006. "New roads to international environmental agreements: the case of global warming," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 7(4), pages 391-414, December.
    2. Ingrid Ott & Stephen J. Turnovsky, 2006. "Excludable and Non‐excludable Public Inputs: Consequences for Economic Growth," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 73(292), pages 725-748, November.
    3. Cornes Richard & Sandler Todd, 2000. "Pareto-Improving Redistribution and Pure Public Goods," German Economic Review, De Gruyter, vol. 1(2), pages 169-186, May.
    4. Schakel, Arjan Hille, 2009. "A Postfunctionalist Theory of Regional Government," MPRA Paper 21596, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Wiktor Adamowicz & Mark Dickie & Shelby Gerking & Marcella Veronesi & David Zinner, 2014. "Household Decision Making and Valuation of Environmental Health Risks to Parents and Their Children," Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, University of Chicago Press, vol. 1(4), pages 481-519.
    6. Hikaru Ogawa, 2010. "Fiscal Competition among Regional Governments - Tax Competition, Expenditure Competition and Externalities -," Public Policy Review, Policy Research Institute, Ministry of Finance Japan, vol. 6(1), pages 1-30, February.
    7. Todd Sandler, 2010. "Common-property resources: privatization, centralization, and hybrid arrangements," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 143(3), pages 317-324, June.
    8. Malte Hückstädt, 2022. "Coopetition between frenemies–interrelations and effects of seven collaboration problems in research clusters," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(9), pages 5191-5224, September.
    9. Lars P. Feld & Horst Zimmermann & Thomas Döring, 2003. "Föderalismus, Dezentralität und Wirtschaftswachstum," Vierteljahrshefte zur Wirtschaftsforschung / Quarterly Journal of Economic Research, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research, vol. 72(3), pages 361-377.
    10. Morgenroth, Edgar & FitzGerald, John & FitzGerald, John, 2006. "Summary and Conclusions," Book Chapters, in: Morgenroth, Edgar (ed.),Ex-Ante Evaluation of the Investment Priorities for the National Development Plan 2007-2013, chapter 24, pages 317-333, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).
      • Baker, Terence J. & FitzGerald, John & Honohan, Patrick & FitzGerald, John & Honohan, Patrick, 1996. "Summary and Conclusions," Book Chapters, in: Baker, Terence J. (ed.),Economic Implications for Ireland of EMU, chapter 12, pages 339-352, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).
    11. Byron B. Carson, 2022. "Individuals and Externalities in Economic Epidemiology: A Tension and Synthesis," Journal of Private Enterprise, The Association of Private Enterprise Education, vol. 37(Fall 2022), pages 1-24.
    12. Laura Marsiliani & Thomas I. Renstroem, 2010. "Privately provided public goods in a dynamic economy," Working Papers 2010_02, Durham University Business School.
    13. Cecere, Grazia & Mancinelli, Susanna & Mazzanti, Massimiliano, 2014. "Waste prevention and social preferences: the role of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 163-176.
    14. Aristovnik, Aleksander, 2012. "Fiscal decentralization in Eastern Europe: a twenty-year perspective," MPRA Paper 39316, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Whitney Buser, 2011. "The impact of fiscal decentralization on economics performance in high-income OECD nations: an institutional approach," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 149(1), pages 31-48, October.
    16. Simon Schumacher & Stephan Paul, 2017. "Capital Markets Union – Promising Prospects for Corporate Financing?," Schmalenbach Business Review, Springer;Schmalenbach-Gesellschaft, vol. 18(3), pages 289-304, August.
    17. Juan González Alegre, 2010. "Fiscal decentralization and intergovernmental grants: the European regional policy and Spanish autonomous regions," Working Papers 2010/6, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    18. Gorkem Celik & Dongsoo Shin & Roland Strausz, 2021. "Public good overprovision by a manipulative provider," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 52(2), pages 314-333, June.
    19. Bandyopadhyay, Subhayu & Sandler, Todd, 2021. "Counterterrorism policy: Spillovers, regime solidity, and corner solutions," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 188(C), pages 811-827.
    20. Jin, Yu & Huffman, Wallace E., 2013. "Reduced U.S. Funding of Public Agricultural Research and Extension Risks Lowering Future Agricultural Productivity Growth Prospects," Staff General Research Papers Archive 36796, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jpbect:v:8:y:2006:i:3:p:487-501. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/apettea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.