The evolutional aspects of decentralization processes of local finances in Europe, approaches of some foreign and national researchers to the understanding of decentralization as extention of rights and jurisdictions of local authorities in the field of territorial development, have been considered. The essence of 'fiscal decentralization' in the context of working out of budgets of organs of local self-government, taking into account taxes and duties, and also their impact on the development of territories and overcoming of territorial disproportions, has been studied. It has been marked that works of V. Outs and hypothesis of American economist Ch. Tibu on 'feet voting' are of mportance in the sphere of fiscal decentralization. It has been proved that distribution of functions between budgets to a certain extent depends on the political system of the country.
This paper examines the direct and indirect effects of decentralization on economic growth that take place through transmission channels such as government efficiency, control of corruption, government sector size and the quality of living. A dynamic nature of growth, potential endogeneity and the distinction between short-and long-run effects are taken into account. Our findings support proactive government approach, including fiscal policy measures to stimulate demand, prevent decline of production and employment and rebuild trust in institutions. They question the current prevalent thinking about the beneficial effects of the reduction of government expenditure on economic growth.
The results in the area related to fiscal decentralization and economic growth are frequently inconsistent and somewhat ambiguous, although the fiscal federalism theory clearly promotes the fiscal decentralization gains in favour of efficiency and economic growth. The paper focuses on investigating the inverted U-shaped relationship between fiscal decentralization and economic growth using the GMM model (Generalized Method of Moments). After these results were obtained, real values of Slovakia are compared to GMM – EU-26 trend. The results of GMM estimation include a threshold value of fiscal decentralization, revealing the point at which a positive relation between fiscal decentralization and economic growth turns into negative. GMM estimation of the EU-26 countries sample confirms the inverted U-shaped relationship in case of revenue and tax decentralization. Expenditure decentralization seems to be insignificant. The case of Slovakia shows the conformity with the EU trend, what is evident in the case of tax decentralization and less in revenue decentralization.
Fiscal decentralization introduces the complicated and sensitive problems, which have impact on the function of a civil society. The foundation of a fiscal decentralization is coming out of the economic, social, political, and juridical conditions with the goal of reaching the increasing affectivity, transparency, and responsibility while granting the public goods and services. The substance of a fiscal decentralization creates a relative strengthening of a fiscal autonomy of the lower government levels and an overall improvement of harmonization of the tax and expense decisions, which respect the coordination with the macroeconomic goals. In the advanced, but also developing countries many authors started already empirical research and are analyzing the impact of a fiscal decentralization on the economic growth, budget equilibrium, macroeconomic stability, development, and the size of the public sector. This type of research has never been carried out in Slovakia because of objective reason.
Efforts to decentralize financially democratically elected local governments is a common theme across Europe because the particularities of each country determine a certain type of fiscal decentralization based on multiple criteria, including fiscal capacity. Over the last 20 years, some Western European countries have succeeded in establishing a form of balanced central government decision and fiscal decentralization that can help to reduce disparities between their own regions. Furthermore, European policies are geared towards reducing disparities both between countries and within the country, especially in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, which face major disparities, as is the case of Romania. In this paper, we analyse regional-level fiscal disparities in Romania with fiscal and economic data over the period 2004 – 2015, by using Gini index to measure the dispersion of local fiscal capacity and a panel data approach to determine the extent to which decentralization involves inequality and the impact of fiscal decentralization on income inequality. The results of the analyses show that fiscal policy does very little to reduce inequality and poverty overall, finding a certain inequality in the distribution of revenues and an alarm signal regarding the "healing" nature of transfers from the state budget.
In this paper, authors propose a unique merged index of the ethnolinguistic fragmentation of the population to examine the relationship between fiscal decentralization and ethnolinguistic fragmentation. The initial hypothesis, based on the Decentralization Theorem, assumes a positive relationship. The basic dynamic panel data model covers a sample of 35 OECD countries in period 2000 – 2017. The reduced sample covers 26 OECD countries, excluding countries with the lowest income inequalities. Here the stronger effect of ethnolinguistic fragmentation on fiscal decentralization is expected. The research involves different types of fiscal decentralization (spending, revenue and tax decentralization). Estimation results are confronted with estimations employing alternative indices of ethnic and linguistic fragmentation, previously used in researches. The findings support the initial hypothesis in the case of the spending decentralization on both samples. The confrontation with indices of ethnic or linguistic fragmentation shows significant effect of ethnic fragmentation. In the case of the reduced sample, results do not support the expectation of stronger effect of ethnolinguistic fragmentation on fiscal decentralization.
The article presents the problem of decentralization in the public sector in the context of good governance and proper architecture of the fiscal policy. We can observe discussion that has attracted attention to the growing gap between the tax systems that the policymakers of some countries might wish to have and those that global forces are forcing them to adopt. In the last decade many economies in the world have experienced currency, debt, financial and banking crises and most of the public finance had to be able to bear it by creating policy framework for reducing the moral hazard risks.
Autonomy of local governments consists also in the financial autonomy. In the SR, the municipal financial autonomy is importantly influenced by dominant position of shared tax in the municipal tax revenue. When considering only own revenues (own tax and nontax), the financial autonomy of municipalities is low. In this paper the financial autonomy of municipalities in the SR is analysed in the period 2005 – 2019. Inequalities in financial autonomy are analysed at the base of the Gini index. Higher inequalities are observed in case of the exclusion of shared tax, what confirms that the shared tax serves as a channel of horizontal fiscal equalization. Employing the panel regression, determinants of financial autonomy are analysed. The negative relationship is observed in case of the population growth, use of returnable financial resources, financial crisis and also the portion of shared tax on municipal tax revenue, when considering the financial autonomy based on own resources.
JavaScript is turned off in your web browser. Turn it on to take full advantage of this site, then refresh the page.