The purpose of this paper is to study why decentralized economies often fail to achieve national objective in the presence of externalities. The paper employs a two-period, open economy framework in which the central government allocates its tax revenues among a larger number of individual decision makers (e.g., provincial authorities or managers of state enterprises). The central government has only limited monitoring capacity, which gives individual decision makers the opportunity to commit to spend more than the incomes they are officially allocated. Our analysis suggests that adverse macroeconomic shocks reduce the likelihood that decentralized decision makers will behave in a manner that limits spending and inflation to national objectives. This is demonstrated for declines in the current or expected future levels of domestic output, for a rise in foreign interest rates, and for a reduction in the quantity of external credit. We next demonstrate that debt relief can promote a shift in the composition of spending toward the types of productive investments that generate positive externalities. This is not only because debt relief that expands the availability of current resources has positive direct income effects, but also because debt relief can promote a shift from opportunistic behavior to cooperation among individual decision makers.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
file. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
3650.
Length: Date of creation: Mar 1991 Date of revision: Publication status: published as Journal of Development Economics, June 1993, pp. 95-114 Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:3650
Note: ITI IFM Contact details of provider: Postal: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A. Phone: 617-868-3900 Email: Web page: http://www.nber.org More information through EDIRC
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: ().
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)