By spending more than they are able to raise, sub-central governments typically depend heavily upon central transfers to meet their expenditure responsibilities. While grants remain the most popular method of transfer, the possible use of tax sharing arrangements as an alternative method of finance has received increased attention in recent years. In nearly all tax sharing systems that we are aware of, central governments play a dominant role in determining the amount of revenue each sub-central unit receives from the shared source. It has therefore, become common in the academic literature to interpret grants and tax sharing as equivalent tools of central fiscal control over sub-central tiers. However, we caution against this. In our paper, we demonstrate that only in a particular special case is it correct to conclude that the level of central control of sub-central finances is the same under a system of grants as it is under tax sharing.
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 European Regional Science Association in its series ERSA conference papers with number
ersa06p74.
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.: