IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/20751.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Regional Transfers

Author

Listed:
  • Raphael Corbi
  • Elias Papaioannou
  • Paolo Surico

Abstract

We exploit a series of discontinuities, at several population thresholds, in the allocation mechanism of federal transfers to municipal governments in Brazil to identify the causal effect of municipal spending on local labor markets, using a ‘fuzzy’ regression discontinuity design. Our estimates imply a cost per job of about 8; 000 US dollars per year, mostly driven by employment in services, and a local income multiplier of around two. A currency union model with nominal rigidities and liquidity constraints implies that the stimulative effects would have been substantially smaller if local government spending was financed by local tax revenues rather than regional transfers.

Suggested Citation

  • Raphael Corbi & Elias Papaioannou & Paolo Surico, 2014. "Regional Transfers," NBER Working Papers 20751, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:20751
    Note: EFG IFM POL
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w20751.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lucie Gadenne, 2017. "Tax Me, but Spend Wisely? Sources of Public Finance and Government Accountability," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 9(1), pages 274-314, January.
    2. Fernanda Brollo & Tommaso Nannicini & Roberto Perotti & Guido Tabellini, 2013. "The Political Resource Curse," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(5), pages 1759-1796, August.
    3. Stelios Michalopoulos & Elias Papaioannou, 2013. "Pre‐Colonial Ethnic Institutions and Contemporary African Development," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 81(1), pages 113-152, January.
    4. Antonio Acconcia & Giancarlo Corsetti & Saverio Simonelli, 2014. "Mafia and Public Spending: Evidence on the Fiscal Multiplier from a Quasi-experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(7), pages 2185-2209, July.
    5. Ferraz, Claudio & Finan, Frederico S., 2008. "Motivating Politicians: The Impacts of Monetary Incentives on Quality and Performance," IZA Discussion Papers 3411, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    6. Jeffrey Clemens & Stephen Miran, 2012. "Fiscal Policy Multipliers on Subnational Government Spending," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 4(2), pages 46-68, May.
    7. Elias Papaioannou, 2014. "National Institutions and Subnational Development in Africa," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 129(1), pages 151-213.
    8. Andrew Gelman & Guido Imbens, 2019. "Why High-Order Polynomials Should Not Be Used in Regression Discontinuity Designs," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(3), pages 447-456, July.
    9. Jeffrey Clemens & Stephen Miran, 2012. "Fiscal Policy Multipliers on Subnational Government Spending," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 4(2), pages 46-68, May.
    10. Juan Serrato & Philippe Wingender, 2016. "Estimating Local Fiscal Multipliers," Working Papers id:11109, eSocialSciences.
    11. Ferreira-Filho, Joaquim Bento de Souza & Horridge, Mark, 2010. "Climate Change Impacts on Agriculture and Internal Migrations in Brazil," Conference papers 331926, Purdue University, Center for Global Trade Analysis, Global Trade Analysis Project.
    12. McCrary, Justin, 2008. "Manipulation of the running variable in the regression discontinuity design: A density test," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 698-714, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Raphael Corbi & Elias Papaioannou & Paolo Surico, 2019. "Regional Transfer Multipliers," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 86(5), pages 1901-1934.
    2. Mark J. Garmaise & Gabriel Natividad, 2024. "Fiscal windfalls and entrepreneurship: fostering entry or promoting incumbents?," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 62(1), pages 133-158, January.
    3. Prakash, Nishith & Rockmore, Marc & Uppal, Yogesh, 2019. "Do criminally accused politicians affect economic outcomes? Evidence from India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).
    4. Buchheim, Lukas & Watzinger, Martin, 2017. "The Employment Effects of Countercyclical Infrastructure Investments," Discussion Papers in Economics 34877, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    5. Kameda, Taisuke & Namba, Ryoichi & Tsuruga, Takayuki, 2021. "Decomposing local fiscal multipliers: Evidence from Japan," Japan and the World Economy, Elsevier, vol. 57(C).
    6. Andrea Cerrato & Francesco Filippucci, 2022. "The Impact of Austerity Policies on Local Income: Evidence from Italian Municipalities," PSE Working Papers halshs-03665241, HAL.
    7. Fuchs-Schündeln, N. & Hassan, T.A., 2016. "Natural Experiments in Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 923-1012, Elsevier.
    8. Räsänen, Johannes & Mäkelä, Erik, 2021. "The effect of government spending on local economies during an economic downturn," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).
    9. Lukas Buchheim, 2015. "Employment Effects of Stimulus Investments," 2015 Meeting Papers 1455, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    10. Gabriel Chodorow-Reich, 2017. "Geographic Cross-Sectional Fiscal Multipliers: What Have We Learned?," 2017 Meeting Papers 1214, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    11. Sergio Destefanis & Mario Di Serio & Matteo Fragetta, 2022. "Regional multipliers across the Italian regions," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 62(4), pages 1179-1205, September.
    12. Christopher Biolsi, 2019. "Local Effects of a Military Spending Shock: Evidence from Shipbuilding in the 1930s," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 32, pages 227-248, April.
    13. Debuque-Gonzales, Margarita, 2021. "Local fiscal multipliers and spillover effects: Evidence from Philippine regions," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 45(2).
    14. Andrea Cerrato & Francesco Filippucci, 2022. "The Impact of Austerity Policies on Local Income: Evidence from Italian Municipalities," Working Papers halshs-03665241, HAL.
    15. Buchheim, Lukas & Watzinger, Martin, 2013. "Do Public Investments Increase Employment in a Recession? Evidence from Germany," VfS Annual Conference 2013 (Duesseldorf): Competition Policy and Regulation in a Global Economic Order 79826, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    16. Li, Rong & Zhou, Yijiang, 2021. "Estimating local fiscal multipliers using political connections," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    17. Sylvain Leduc & Daniel Wilson, 2013. "Roads to Prosperity or Bridges to Nowhere? Theory and Evidence on the Impact of Public Infrastructure Investment," NBER Macroeconomics Annual, University of Chicago Press, vol. 27(1), pages 89-142.
    18. Britto, Diogo G.C. & Fiorin, Stefano, 2020. "Corruption and legislature size: Evidence from Brazil," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    19. Marcelo Castro & Enlinson Mattos & Fernanda Patriota, 2021. "The effects of health spending on the propagation of infectious diseases," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(10), pages 2323-2344, September.
    20. Matakos, Konstantinos & Savolainen, Riikka & Troumpounis, Orestis & Tukiainen, Janne & Xefteris, Dimitrios, 2018. "Electoral Institutions and Intraparty Cohesion," Working Papers 109, VATT Institute for Economic Research.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy; Modern Monetary Theory

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:20751. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.