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Determinants of Expenditure Variation in Finnish Municipalities

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  • Moisio, Antti

Abstract

This paper focuses on two separate issues. First, the expenditure response of Finnish municipalities to price and income changes during the matching grants period is examined. Second, the existence of the so-called "flypaper effect" under the formula-based grant period is tested. Two panel data sets are used: the last eight years (1985-1992) of the matching grants period and the first seven years (1993-1999) of the formula-based period. Seven expenditure categories are analysed. The results suggest that positive price elasticity parameters existed for education expenditures under the matching grants system. For the social welfare and health care sector, price elasticity was negative. One reason for positive price effects may have been the closed-ended grants in the education sector. For the formula-based grants period, the results lend support to the "flypaper effect" because the estimated grant parameters were larger than the income parameters for most of the expenditure categories studied.

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  • Moisio, Antti, 2002. "Determinants of Expenditure Variation in Finnish Municipalities," Discussion Papers 269, VATT Institute for Economic Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:fer:dpaper:269
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    Cited by:

    1. Kari Hämäläinen & Petri Böckerman, 2004. "Regional Labor Market Dynamics, Housing, and Migration," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(3), pages 543-568, August.
    2. Marcel Thum & Thomas Fester & Andreas Kappler & Helmut Seitz, 2005. "Öffentliche Infrastruktur und kommunale Finanzen : Gutachten im Auftrag des Bundesministeriums für Verkehr, Bau- und Wohnungswesen und des Bundesamtes für Bauwesen und Raumordnung," ifo Dresden Studien, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, number 37, May.
    3. Meriläinen, Jaakko, 2013. "Do Single-Party and Coalition Governments Differ in their Economic Outcomes? Evidence from Finnish Municipalities," Working Papers 51, VATT Institute for Economic Research.
    4. Sebastian Langer & Artem Korzhenevych, 2019. "Equalization Transfers and the Pattern of Municipal Spending: An Investigation of the Flypaper Effect in Germany," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 20(2), pages 737-765, November.
    5. Benoît LE MAUX & Kristýna DOSTÁLOVÁ & Antti MOISIO, 2017. "Do political parties matter? Endogenous fragmentation, partisanship, and local public expenditures in Finland," Economics Working Paper from Condorcet Center for political Economy at CREM-CNRS 2017-02-ccr, Condorcet Center for political Economy.
    6. Pettersson-Lidbom, Per, 2012. "Does the size of the legislature affect the size of government? Evidence from two natural experiments," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(3), pages 269-278.
    7. Korzhenevych, Artem & Langer, Sebastian, 2016. "The Flypaper Effect in Germany: An East-West Comparison," CEPIE Working Papers 10/16, Technische Universität Dresden, Center of Public and International Economics (CEPIE).
    8. Böckerman, Petri & Hämäläinen, Kari, 2002. "Housing, dynamics of regional labour markets and migration," ERSA conference papers ersa02p159, European Regional Science Association.

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