IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/pal/compes/v38y1996i2p21-44.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Federal Transfers in Russia: Their Impact on Regional Revenues and Incomes

Author

Listed:
  • Philippe Le Houerou

    (The World Bank)

  • Michal Rutkowski

    (The World Bank and Warsaw School of Economics)

Abstract

Since 1991, the Russian system of federal intergovernmental transfers has moved from equalizing to counter-equalizing, both in the case of regional revenue equalization and in the case of regional personal income equalization. This change happened despite increasing revenue and income differentials and despite an introduction of a special equalization fund in 1994. The counter-equalizing effect has been weaker in real terms than in nominal terms indicating that regional price differentials have impicitly been taken into account. The main reasons for increasing counter-equalization seem to be: (i) a relatively small share of transfers in the budget and GDP; (ii) flaws in the equalization formula resulting in the lack of sufficient focus on the poorest regions; and (iii) a non-transparent character of other transfers redistributing often to the most politically powerful regions. The major recommendations for the future are (i) to increase (dramatically) the transparency of expenditure assignment, and (ii) to keep the system simple.

Suggested Citation

  • Philippe Le Houerou & Michal Rutkowski, 1996. "Federal Transfers in Russia: Their Impact on Regional Revenues and Incomes," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 38(2-3), pages 21-44, September.
  • Handle: RePEc:pal:compes:v:38:y:1996:i:2:p:21-44
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ces/journal/v38/n2/pdf/ces199611a.pdf
    File Function: Link to full text PDF
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ces/journal/v38/n2/full/ces199611a.html
    File Function: Link to full text HTML
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Michael Paul Sacks, 1999. "Regional Inequality and Branch Employment in Russia Between 1990 and 1995," Post-Communist Economies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(2), pages 149-159.
    2. Ms. Era Dabla-Norris & Mr. Shlomo Weber, 2001. "Regional Disparities and Transfer Policies in Russia: Theory and Evidence," IMF Working Papers 2001/199, International Monetary Fund.
    3. Guanchun Liu & Jianbo Song & Chengsi Zhang, 2022. "Fiscal transfers and economic convergence: Evidence from China," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(9), pages 2924-2949, September.
    4. Jorge Martinez-Vasquez & Jameson Boex, 2001. "Russia's Transition to a New Federalism," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 15248.
    5. Freinkman, Lev & Haney, Michael, 1997. "What affects the Russian regional governments'propensity to subsidize?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1818, The World Bank.
    6. Thornton Matheson, 2005. "Does fiscal redistribution discourage local public investment?," The Economics of Transition, The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, vol. 13(1), pages 139-162, January.

    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:pal:compes:v:38:y:1996:i:2:p:21-44. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ .

    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.