Francois Vaillancourt (Departement de sciences ecomiques, Universite de Montreal) Richard M. Bird () (Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto)
Additional information is available for the following
registered author(s):
In this paper, we examine the issue of the incidence of central government budgets in federal countries. In Section 1, we discuss a number of reasons why the picture painted of reality by even the best fiscal flow analysis is inevitably partial and hence inherently flawed to an unknowable extent. Despite these cautions, in Section 2 we review the evidence on the regional incidence of federal budgets in Canada, considering both aggregate results and some specific federal expenditure programs (e.g. equalization and employment insurance), as well as some relevant issues (e.g. the regional effect of some regulatory programs) not depicted in fiscal flows. We find that the regional distributional patterns revealed in this analysis are both robust to various reasonable adjustments and relatively stable over time. Nonetheless, we conclude in Section 3 that, while such studies are potentially useful in terms of providing a base-line for assessing performance in some respects, they cannot be used to demonstrate that e.g. one region is paying (or receiving) 'too much' or 'too little', let alone that there is a 'fiscal imbalance' that needs to be corrected. Numbers are necessary, and good numbers are better than bad ones; but they have to be interpreted carefully and in context before drawing any policy conclusions.
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
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by International Tax Program, Institute for International Business, Joseph L. Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto in its series International Tax Program Papers with number
0510.
Find related papers by JEL classification: H19 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - Other R51 - Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics - - Regional Government Analysis - - - Finance in Urban and Rural Economies P43 - Economic Systems - - Other Economic Systems - - - Finance; Public Finance
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
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.)