Intergovernmental Fiscal Relations: the Efficiency Effect of Taxes, Transfers and Fiscal Illusion
The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the efficiency cost of transfers. To this end, we develop a model of individual demand decisions about the provision of a regional public good that encompasses a continuum of tax/transfers scenarios to finance regional public expenditure. We assume that individuals have identical quasi-linear preferences defined over private consumption and the regional public good, that endowment income varies between individuals and regions and that regions have different predetermined sizes. We show that, despite its simplicity, this model is capable of discriminating the efficiency properties of the different scenarios considered, and that the substitution of transfers for own regional taxes always raises the provision of the regional public good. Our model yields the so called “flypaper effect” with no need to appeal to the existence of “fiscal illusion” by the part of the individual. We nevertheless find that “fiscal illusion” increases the elasticity of public good provision with respect to transfers, and we suggest two potentially refutable hypotheses to identify the existence of this phenomenon.
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. 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.
| Length: | 36 pages |
| Date of creation: | 19 Sep 2012 |
| Date of revision: | |
| Handle: | RePEc:ays:ispwps:paper1229 |
| Contact details of provider: | Phone: 404-413-0235 Fax: 404-413-0244 Web page: http://aysps.gsu.edu/isp/index.html
|
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.:
- Antoni Zabalza & Julio Lopez-Laborda, 2011.
"The New Spanish System of Intergovernmental Transfers,"
International Center for Public Policy Working Paper Series, at AYSPS, GSU
paper1103, International Center for Public Policy, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University.
- Antoni Zabalza & Julio López-Laborda, 2011. "The new Spanish system of intergovernmental transfers," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer, vol. 18(6), pages 750-786, December.
- Antoni Zabalza & Julio Lopez-Laborda, 2010. "The New Spanish System of Intergovernmental Transfers," International Center for Public Policy Working Paper Series, at AYSPS, GSU paper1033, International Center for Public Policy, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University.
- Bird, Richard M., 1993. "Threading the Fiscal Labyrinth: Some Issues in Fiscal Decentralization," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 46(2), pages 207-27, June.
- Bev Dahlby, 2008. "The Marginal Cost of Public Funds: Theory and Applications," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262042509, June.
- Fisher, Ronald C., 1982. "Income and grant effects on local expenditure: The flypaper effect and other difficulties," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 324-345, November.
This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.
When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ays:ispwps:paper1229. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Paul Benson)
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 references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.
If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link 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 profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.