IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ieb/wpaper/doc2006-7.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

(When) Are Intergovernmental Transfers Used to Bail Out Regional Governments? Evidence from Spain 1986-2001

Author

Listed:
  • Pilar Sorribas-Navarro

    (Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB); Universitat de Barcelona (UB))

Abstract

This paper analyses the main determinants of a central government’s decision to use grants to bail out regional governments (i.e., the determinants of additional grants assigned by a central government to regions due to an increase in their issue of debt). The estimated grant equation is derived from a model of a federation, based on Goodspeed (2002), where regions are Stakelberg leaders and the central government’s objective is to maximize a weighted sum of the welfare of the representative consumers from all the regions. The specified equation is estimated separately with a panel data set of discretionary and non-discretionary grants for 15 Spanish regions during the period 1986-2001, using the within and the GMM estimators (Arellano and Bond, 1991), respectively. The results show that the Spanish central government uses grants to partially bailout regions. Such fiscal rescue operations are more intense when: i) the region is responsible for providing health care; ii) debt limits exist (and they have not been properly designed); iii) regional voters are relatively indifferent between the incumbent and the challenger (i.e., there is a high proportion of swing voters).

Suggested Citation

  • Pilar Sorribas-Navarro, 2006. "(When) Are Intergovernmental Transfers Used to Bail Out Regional Governments? Evidence from Spain 1986-2001," Working Papers 2006/7, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    • Handle: RePEc:ieb:wpaper:doc2006-7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://ieb.ub.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/2006-IEB-WorkingPaper-07.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Martin Besfamille & Ben Lockwood, 2008. "Bailouts In Federations: Is A Hard Budget Constraint Always Best?," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 49(2), pages 577-593, May.
    2. Assar Lindbeck & Jörgen Weibull, 1987. "Balanced-budget redistribution as the outcome of political competition," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 52(3), pages 273-297, January.
    3. Timothy Goodspeed, 2002. "Bailouts in a Federation," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 9(4), pages 409-421, August.
    4. Dahlberg, Matz & Johansson, Eva, 2002. "On the Vote-Purchasing Behavior of Incumbent Governments," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 96(1), pages 27-40, March.
    5. J. Kornai & E. Maskin & G. Roland, 2004. "Understanding the Soft Budget Constraint," Voprosy Ekonomiki, NP Voprosy Ekonomiki, issue 11.
    6. von Hagen, Jurgen & Eichengreen, Barry, 1996. "Federalism, Fiscal Restraints, and European Monetary Union," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(2), pages 134-138, May.
    7. Milesi-Ferretti, Gian Maria, 2004. "Good, bad or ugly? On the effects of fiscal rules with creative accounting," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(1-2), pages 377-394, January.
    8. Castells, Antoni & Sole-Olle, Albert, 2005. "The regional allocation of infrastructure investment: The role of equity, efficiency and political factors," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 49(5), pages 1165-1205, July.
    9. Wildasin, David E., 1997. "Externalities and bailouts : hard and soft budget constraints in intergovernmental fiscal relations," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1843, The World Bank.
    10. Fredrik Carlsen, 1998. "Central Regulation of Local Authorities," Public Finance Review, , vol. 26(4), pages 304-326, July.
    11. Case, Anne, 2001. "Election goals and income redistribution: Recent evidence from Albania," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 45(3), pages 405-423, March.
    12. Santiago Lago-Peñas, 2005. "Evolving Federations and Regional Public Deficits: Testing the Bailout Hypothesis in the Spanish Case," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 23(3), pages 437-453, June.
    13. John L. Mikesell, 2002. "Subnational Government Bankruptcy, Defaul, and Fiscal Crisis in the United States," International Center for Public Policy Working Paper Series, at AYSPS, GSU paper0221, International Center for Public Policy, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University.
    14. Manuel Arellano & Stephen Bond, 1991. "Some Tests of Specification for Panel Data: Monte Carlo Evidence and an Application to Employment Equations," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 58(2), pages 277-297.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Pilar Sorribas-Navarro, 2006. "(When) Are Intergovernmental Transfers Used to Bail Out Regional Governments? Evidence from Spain 1986-2001," Working Papers 2006/7, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    2. Sorribas-Navarro, Pilar, 2011. "Bailouts in a fiscal federal system: Evidence from Spain," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 154-170, March.
    3. Karolina Kaiser & Emmanuelle Taugourdeau, 2013. "The timing of elections in federations: a disciplining device against soft budget constraints?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 154(3), pages 197-215, March.
    4. Padovano, Fabio, 2012. "The drivers of interregional policy choices: Evidence from Italy," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 324-340.
    5. Elena Jarocińska, 2010. "Intergovernmental grants in Russia," The Economics of Transition, The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, vol. 18(2), pages 405-427, April.
    6. Foremny, Dirk, 2014. "Sub-national deficits in European countries: The impact of fiscal rules and tax autonomy," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 86-110.
    7. Alejandro Esteller & Albert Solé, 2005. "Does decentralization improve the efficiency in the allocation of public investment? Evidence from Spain," Working Papers 2005/5, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    8. Elena Jarocinska, 2022. "Discretionary Grants and Distributive Politics: Evidence from Spain," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 64(4), pages 681-709, December.
    9. Akai, Nobuo & Sato, Motohiro, 2008. "Too big or too small? A synthetic view of the commitment problem of interregional transfers," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(3), pages 551-559, November.
    10. Thushyanthan Baskaran, 2013. "Do bailouts buy votes? Evidence from a panel of Hessian municipalities," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 14(3), pages 257-278, August.
    11. Solé-Ollé, Albert & Sorribas-Navarro, Pilar, 2008. "The effects of partisan alignment on the allocation of intergovernmental transfers. Differences-in-differences estimates for Spain," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(12), pages 2302-2319, December.
    12. Maria EL KHDARI, 2015. "Déterminants des transferts intergouvernementaux : le cas des communes Marocaines," Working Papers 201531, CERDI.
    13. Markus Reischmann, 2016. "Empirical Studies on Public Debt and Fiscal Transfers," ifo Beiträge zur Wirtschaftsforschung, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, number 63.
    14. Marta Curto-Grau (Universitat de Barcelona) & Albert Sole-Olle (Universitat de Barcelona) & Pilar Sorribas-Navarro(Universitat de Barcelona), 2012. "Partisan targeting of inter-governmental transfers & state interference in local elections: evidence from Spain," Working Papers in Economics 288, Universitat de Barcelona. Espai de Recerca en Economia.
    15. Paola Azar Dufrechou, 2018. "Electoral politics and the diffusion of primary schooling: evidence from Uruguay, 1914-1954," Working Papers wpdea1801, Department of Applied Economics at Universitat Autonoma of Barcelona.
    16. Jorge Martinez-Vazquez & Violeta Vulovic, 2017. "How well do subnational borrowing regulations work?," Chapters, in: Naoyuki Yoshino & Peter J. Morgan (ed.), Central and Local Government Relations in Asia, chapter 5, pages 161-220, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    17. Picci, Lucio & Golden, Miriam, 2007. "Pork Barrel Politics in Postwar Italy, 1953–1994," MPRA Paper 5626, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. Ananya Kotia & Victor Duarte Lledo, 2016. "Do Subnational Fiscal Rules Foster Fiscal Discipline? New Empirical Evidence from Europe," IMF Working Papers 2016/084, International Monetary Fund.
    19. Levoshko, Tamila, 2017. ""Pork-Barrel"-Politik und das regionale Wirtschaftswachstum. Empirische Evidenz für die Ukraine und Polen," Working Papers 0642, University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics.
    20. Thushyanthan Baskaran, 2017. "Local fiscal policy after a bailout: austerity or soft budget constraints?," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 18(3), pages 209-238, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Intergovernmental grants; bailouts; political economy.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H1 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government
    • H77 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - Intergovernmental Relations; Federalism
    • O4 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity

    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:ieb:wpaper:doc2006-7. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iebubes.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.