IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wpa/wuwppe/0511013.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Tragedy of the Commons or the Curse of Federalism

Author

Listed:
  • Laurent Bouton

    (ECARES, Université Libre de Bruxelles)

  • Marjorie Gassner

    (ECARES, Université Libre de Bruxelles)

  • Vincenzo Verardi

    (ECARES, Université Libre de Bruxelles)

Abstract

It has been suggested that …scal federalism is a good way to induce decentralized entities to behave parsimoniously, but this has been largely criticized in the literature, in particular because of the Common-Pool problem. In this paper, we present an extra facet of the latter problem. We present a simple theoretical model con…rmed by empirical evidence suggesting that vertical imbalance induces govenments to substitute redistributive spending for non-distributive expenditures. This drives …scal policies to be less efficient in reducing income inequality.

Suggested Citation

  • Laurent Bouton & Marjorie Gassner & Vincenzo Verardi, 2005. "The Tragedy of the Commons or the Curse of Federalism," Public Economics 0511013, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:wpa:wuwppe:0511013
    Note: Type of Document - pdf; pages: 29
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de/econ-wp/pe/papers/0511/0511013.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Daron Acemoglu, 2003. "Cross-Country Inequality Trends," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 113(485), pages 121-149, February.
    2. Wildasin, David E., 1989. "Interjurisdictional capital mobility: Fiscal externality and a corrective subsidy," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(2), pages 193-212, March.
    3. Ernesto Stein, 1999. "Fiscal Decentralization and Government Size in Latin America," Journal of Applied Economics, Universidad del CEMA, vol. 2, pages 357-391, November.
    4. Wildasin, David E., 1998. "Fiscal aspect of evolving federations : issues for policy and research," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1884, The World Bank.
    5. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 1999. "Political economics and macroeconomic policy," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 22, pages 1397-1482, Elsevier.
    6. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 1999. "The size and scope of government:: Comparative politics with rational politicians," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 43(4-6), pages 699-735, April.
    7. J. Kornai & E. Maskin & G. Roland, 2004. "Understanding the Soft Budget Constraint," Voprosy Ekonomiki, NP Voprosy Ekonomiki, issue 11.
    8. Alan T. Peacock & Jack Wiseman, 1961. "The Growth of Public Expenditure in the United Kingdom," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number peac61-1.
    9. Rodden, Jonathan, 2003. "Reviving Leviathan: Fiscal Federalism and the Growth of Government," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 57(4), pages 695-729, October.
    10. Peter Gottschalk & Timothy M. Smeeding, 1997. "Cross-National Comparisons of Earnings and Income Inequality," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 35(2), pages 633-687, June.
    11. Deaton, Angus & Paxson, Christina, 1994. "Intertemporal Choice and Inequality," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 102(3), pages 437-467, June.
    12. Gian Maria Milesi-Ferretti & Roberto Perotti & Massimo Rostagno, 2002. "Electoral Systems and Public Spending," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(2), pages 609-657.
    13. 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.
    14. Li, Hongyi & Squire, Lyn & Zou, Heng-fu, 1998. "Explaining International and Intertemporal Variations in Income Inequality," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 108(446), pages 26-43, January.
    15. Charles M. Tiebout, 1956. "A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 64(5), pages 416-416.
    16. Oates, Wallace E. & Schwab, Robert M., 1988. "Economic competition among jurisdictions: efficiency enhancing or distortion inducing?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 333-354, April.
    17. Michael J. Keen & Christos Kotsogiannis, 2002. "Does Federalism Lead to Excessively High Taxes?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(1), pages 363-370, March.
    18. Piketty, Thomas, 2000. "Theories of persistent inequality and intergenerational mobility," Handbook of Income Distribution, in: A.B. Atkinson & F. Bourguignon (ed.), Handbook of Income Distribution, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 8, pages 429-476, Elsevier.
    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. Division of Policy and Practice,UNICEF, 2010. "Advancing the Rights of Children, Women and Poor Families through Better Public Finance Policies," Working papers 1001, UNICEF,Division of Policy and Strategy.

    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. Marjorie Gassner & Laurent Bouton & Vincenzo Verardi, 2007. "Redistributing Income Under Fiscal Vertical Imbalance," LIS Working papers 420, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    2. Laurent Bouton, 2009. "Essays in game theory applied to political and market institutions," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/210325, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    3. Bouton, Laurent & Gassner, Marjorie & Verardi, Vincenzo, 2008. "Redistributing income under fiscal vertical imbalance," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 317-328, June.
    4. Eggert, Wolfgang & Sørensen, Peter Birch, 2008. "The effects of tax competition when politicians create rents to buy political support," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(5-6), pages 1142-1163, June.
    5. Koethenbuerger, Marko, 2008. "Federal tax-transfer policy and intergovernmental pre-commitment," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 16-31, January.
    6. Stefan Voigt, 2011. "Positive constitutional economics II—a survey of recent developments," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 146(1), pages 205-256, January.
    7. Thushyanthan Baskaran, 2010. "On the link between fiscal decentralization and public debt in OECD countries," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 145(3), pages 351-378, December.
    8. Stephanie Armbruster & Beat Hintermann, 2020. "Decentralization with porous borders: public production in a federation with tax competition and spillovers," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 27(3), pages 606-642, June.
    9. Zhu, Z. & Krug, B., 2005. "Is China a Leviathan?," ERIM Report Series Research in Management ERS-2004-103-ORG, Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM), ERIM is the joint research institute of the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and the Erasmus School of Economics (ESE) at Erasmus University Rotterdam.
    10. Nadia Fiorino & Emma Galli & Fabio Padovano, 2013. "Do fiscal decentralization and government fragmentation affect corruption in different ways? Evidence from a panel data analysis," Chapters, in: Santiago Lago-Peñas & Jorge Martinez-Vazquez (ed.), The Challenge of Local Government Size, chapter 5, pages 121-147, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    11. Leonzio Rizzo, 2006. "Le inefficienze della competizione fiscale: una rassegna dei principali modelli teorici," Economia politica, Società editrice il Mulino, issue 1, pages 89-120.
    12. 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.
    13. 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.
    14. Silvia Fedeli, 2012. "The impact of GDP on health care expenditure: the case of Italy (1982-2009)," Working Papers in Public Economics 153, Department of Economics and Law, Sapienza University of Roma.
    15. Niklas Potrafke, 2006. "Political Effects on the Allocation of Public Expenditures: Empirical Evidence from OECD Countries," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 653, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    16. Wallace Oates, 2005. "Toward A Second-Generation Theory of Fiscal Federalism," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 12(4), pages 349-373, August.
    17. Krzysztof Beck & Michał Możdżeń, 2020. "Institutional Determinants of Budgetary Expenditures. A BMA-Based Re-Evaluation of Contemporary Theories for OECD Countries," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(10), pages 1-31, May.
    18. Bruno Amable & Donatella Gatti & Jan Schumacher, 2006. "Welfare-State Retrenchment: The Partisan Effect Revisited," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 22(3), pages 426-444, Autumn.
    19. Teresa Garcia-Milà & Therese J. McGuire, 2001. "Tax incentives and the city," Economics Working Papers 631, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Dec 2001.
    20. George R. Zodrow, 2019. "Intrajurisdictional Capitalization and the Incidence of the Property Tax," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: George R Zodrow (ed.), TAXATION IN THEORY AND PRACTICE Selected Essays of George R. Zodrow, chapter 16, pages 489-522, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Federalism; Income Inequality; Common Pool; Redistribution;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D6 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics
    • D7 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making
    • H - Public Economics

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:wpa:wuwppe:0511013. 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: EconWPA (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de .

    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.