El sistema de transferencias federales en México: Premio o castigo para el esfuerzo fiscal de los gobiernos locales urbanos[The system of federal transfers in Mexico: a reward or punishment for the fiscal effort of urban local governments]

In the last years, Latin America has been immersed in a process of great democratic openness that generated a demand for more fiscal decentralization. Within this subject, this paper has the goal of contributing to the discussion on tax responsibilities devolution to local governments. Therefore, and for the first time in literature, the collecting effort of 155 municipalities in Mexico during 1993-200 is analyzed. It is found that, both non-conditional and conditional transfers (ramos 26 and 33) have had a negative impact in all local governments. Likewise, differences in fiscal performance are observed when they are grouped by size. The results show that the transfer policy has depleted more the tax effort of large local governments than those of the small ones, and that middle municipalities have shown a better performance. That is, there are differences in fiscal performance between equal size governments. The main lesson is that policies cannot be generalized according to the size of local government—municipalities are so diverse that, in fact, diversity must guide the design of the fiscal decentralization policy in Mexico.