IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/apeclt/v11y2004i11p699-705.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Fiscal decentralization, collusion and government size in China's transitional economy

Author

Listed:
  • Chien-Hsun Chen

Abstract

This paper examines the public sector in China's transitional economy, with the aim of testing the validity of a variety of hypotheses, namely the Brennan and Buchanan (1980, The Power to Tax: Analytical Foundations of a Fiscal Constitution, CUP, Cambridge); Oates-Wallis (1985, American Economic Review, 75(4) 748-57) version of the decentralization hypothesis and the Brennan and Buchanan collusion hypothesis, on the impact of fiscal decentralization at the provincial level. Pooled cross-section (province) and time-series data are employed with the period under consideration being 1986-1998. An error components technique is also used for the empirical testing. The empirical results provide evidence to support both the Oates-Wallis hypothesis and the collusion hypothesis that an increase in fiscal decentralization leads to a higher level of provincial government expenditure. The study also finds that the central and provincial governments are provided with an incentive to form collusive agreements through extra-budgetary funds.

Suggested Citation

  • Chien-Hsun Chen, 2004. "Fiscal decentralization, collusion and government size in China's transitional economy," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(11), pages 699-705.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:apeclt:v:11:y:2004:i:11:p:699-705
    DOI: 10.1080/1350485042000236557
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.informaworld.com/openurl?genre=article&doi=10.1080/1350485042000236557&magic=repec&7C&7C8674ECAB8BB840C6AD35DC6213A474B5
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/1350485042000236557?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
    ---><---

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

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Martinez-Vazquez, Jorge & McNab, Robert M., 2003. "Fiscal Decentralization and Economic Growth," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 31(9), pages 1597-1616, September.
    2. Wong, Christine P. W. (ed.), 1997. "Financing Local Government in the People's Republic of China," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195900279.
    3. Frye, Timothy & Shleifer, Andrei, 1997. "The Invisible Hand and the Grabbing Hand," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(2), pages 354-358, May.
    4. Zhang, Tao & Zou, Heng-fu, 2001. "The growth impact of intersectoral and intergovernmental allocation of public expenditure: With applications to China and India," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 58-81.
    5. Justin Yifu Lin & Zhiqiang Liu, 2000. "Fiscal Decentralization and Economic Growth in China," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 49(1), pages 1-21.
    6. Brennan,Geoffrey & Buchanan,James M., 2006. "The Power to Tax," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521027922, October.
    7. Edwin West, 1992. "Federalism and the Growth of Government Revisited," Carleton Economic Papers 92-06, Carleton University, Department of Economics, revised Apr 1994.
    8. Yingyi Qian & Barry R. Weingast, 1996. "China's transition to markets: market-preserving federalism, chinese style," Journal of Economic Policy Reform, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 1(2), pages 149-185.
    9. Wallace E. Oates & Wallace E. Oates, 2004. "An Essay on Fiscal Federalism," Chapters, in: Environmental Policy and Fiscal Federalism, chapter 22, pages 384-414, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    10. Robert P. Inman & Daniel L. Rubinfeld, 1997. "Rethinking Federalism," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 11(4), pages 43-64, Fall.
    11. Qian, Yingyi & Roland, Gerard, 1998. "Federalism and the Soft Budget Constraint," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(5), pages 1143-1162, December.
    12. Grossman, Philip J & West, Edwin G, 1994. "Federalism and the Growth of Government Revisited," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 79(1-2), pages 19-32, April.
    13. T. S. Breusch & A. R. Pagan, 1980. "The Lagrange Multiplier Test and its Applications to Model Specification in Econometrics," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 47(1), pages 239-253.
    14. Feltenstein, Andrew & Iwata, Shigeru, 2005. "Decentralization and macroeconomic performance in China: regional autonomy has its costs," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(2), pages 481-501, April.
    15. Berkowitz, Daniel & Li, Wei, 2000. "Tax rights in transition economies: a tragedy of the commons?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(3), pages 369-397, June.
    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. Yingxin Shi & Mototsugu Fukushige, 2015. "Long-Run Fiscal Multipliers for Autonomous Prefectures in China," Pacific Economic Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(5), pages 687-695, December.
    2. Mototsugu Fukushige & Yingxin Shi, 2017. "Intergovernmental fiscal relationship in China: a simple model based on the nonsymmetric Nash solution," Asia-Pacific Journal of Regional Science, Springer, vol. 1(2), pages 495-509, October.
    3. Alfred Wu & Mi Lin, 2012. "Determinants of government size: evidence from China," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 151(1), pages 255-270, April.
    4. Jia, Junxue & Guo, Qingwang & Zhang, Jing, 2014. "Fiscal decentralization and local expenditure policy in China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 28(C), pages 107-122.
    5. David Feldman & Robert Archibald, 2009. "Revealed preferences for car tax cuts: an empirical study of perceived fiscal incidence," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(12), pages 1495-1500.
    6. Philip Gunby & Yinghua Jin, 2016. "Determinants of Chinese Government Size: An Extreme Bounds Analysis," Working Papers in Economics 16/25, University of Canterbury, Department of Economics and Finance.
    7. Alice Y. Ouyang & Rui Li, 2021. "Fiscal decentralization and the default risk of Chinese local government debts," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 39(3), pages 641-667, July.
    8. Jing Wu & Hao Li & Keyang Li, 2020. "Local political chief turnover and economic growth: Evidence from China," Economics of Transition and Institutional Change, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 28(3), pages 441-466, July.
    9. Wang, Zhiguo & Ma, Liang, 2012. "New Development of Fiscal Decentralization in China," MPRA Paper 36918, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Zhiguo Wang & Liang Ma, 2014. "Fiscal Decentralization in China: A Literature Review," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 15(1), pages 51-65, May.
    11. Liangliang Liu, 2021. "Fiscal decentralization and the imbalance between consumption and investment in China," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 66(1), pages 1-17, February.

    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. Jin, Hehui & Qian, Yingyi & Weingast, Barry R., 2005. "Regional decentralization and fiscal incentives: Federalism, Chinese style," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(9-10), pages 1719-1742, September.
    2. Berthold, Norbert & Fricke, Holger, 2005. "Föderalismus und Wachstum: Eine vernachlässigte Beziehung," Discussion Paper Series 83, Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg, Chair of Economic Order and Social Policy.
    3. Thushyanthan Baskaran & Lars P. Feld & Jan Schnellenbach, 2014. "Fiscal Federalism, Decentralization and Economic Growth: Survey and Meta-Analysis," CESifo Working Paper Series 4985, CESifo.
    4. 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.
    5. Burret, Heiko T. & Feld, Lars P. & Schaltegger, Christoph A., 2022. "Fiscal federalism and economic performance new evidence from Switzerland," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    6. Aadil Ahmad Ganaie & Sajad Ahmad Bhat & Bandi Kamaiah & N. A. Khan, 2018. "Fiscal Decentralization and Economic Growth: Evidence from Indian States," South Asian Journal of Macroeconomics and Public Finance, , vol. 7(1), pages 83-108, June.
    7. Lars P. Feld & Gebhard Kirchgässner & Christoph A. Schaltegger, 2010. "Decentralized Taxation and the Size of Government: Evidence from Swiss State and Local Governments," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 77(1), pages 27-48, July.
    8. ESTEBAN, Sonia & DE FRUTOS, Pablo & PRIETO; Maria Jose, 2008. "Fiscal Decentralization And Economic Growth. Empiric Evidence From A Regional Perspective," Regional and Sectoral Economic Studies, Euro-American Association of Economic Development, vol. 8(1), pages 29-58.
    9. Stefan Voigt, 2011. "Positive constitutional economics II—a survey of recent developments," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 146(1), pages 205-256, January.
    10. Thushyanthan Baskaran & Lars P. Feld & Jan Schnellenbach, 2016. "Fiscal Federalism, Decentralization, And Economic Growth: A Meta-Analysis," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 54(3), pages 1445-1463, July.
    11. Makreshanska, Suzana & Petrevski, Goran, 2015. "Fiscal Decentralization and Inflation in Central and Eastern Europe," MPRA Paper 77596, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 16 Mar 2017.
    12. Yushkov, Andrey, 2015. "Fiscal decentralization and regional economic growth: Theory, empirics, and the Russian experience," Russian Journal of Economics, Elsevier, vol. 1(4), pages 404-418.
    13. Martinez-Vazquez, Jorge & McNab, Robert M., 2003. "Fiscal Decentralization and Economic Growth," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 31(9), pages 1597-1616, September.
    14. Ligthart, Jenny E. & van Oudheusden, Peter, 2015. "In government we trust: The role of fiscal decentralization," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 116-128.
    15. Sonin, Konstantin, 2010. "Provincial protectionism," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 111-122, June.
    16. Sidra Naeem & Rana Ejaz Ali Khan, 2021. "Fiscal Decentralization and Gender Equality in Developing Economies: Dynamics of Income Groups in Economies and Corruption," Asian Economic and Financial Review, Asian Economic and Social Society, vol. 11(9), pages 745-761, September.
    17. Andrés Rodríguez-Pose & Roberto Ezcurra, 2011. "Is fiscal decentralization harmful for economic growth? Evidence from the OECD countries," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 11(4), pages 619-643, July.
    18. David Cantarero & Patricio Perez, 2012. "Decentralization and regional government size in Spain," Portuguese Economic Journal, Springer;Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestao, vol. 11(3), pages 211-237, December.
    19. Lars P. Feld & Gebhard Kirchgässner & Christoph A. Schaltegger, 2004. "Fiscal Federalism and Economic Performance: Evidence from Swiss Cantons," Marburg Working Papers on Economics 200420, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung).
    20. Reingewertz, Yaniv, 2014. "Fiscal Decentralization - a Survey of the Empirical Literature," MPRA Paper 59889, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    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:taf:apeclt:v:11:y:2004:i:11:p:699-705. 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RAEL20 .

    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.