IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/onb/oenbwp/183.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Efficient Fiscal Spending by Supranational Unions

Author

Listed:
  • Jenny Simon

    (Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics and CESifo)

  • Justin M. Valasek

    (WZB Berlin)

Abstract

We study fiscal spending by supranational unions, where participation is voluntary and countries bargain over contributions to and the allocation of a central budget. We establish and explore the link between the budget's allocation and nations' contributions that occurs since bargaining power is endogenous, and a country's outside option during budget negotiations is to withdraw its contribution and consume its full income. Generically, it follows that unstructured bargaining gives an inefficient result in the presence of income asymmetry between member nations. Interestingly, redistribution arises endogenously, despite nations being purely self-interested. However, there exists a trade-off between increasing equality and decreasing efficiency, which becomes more severe as the centralized budget increases. We also analyze partial ex-ante commitment through alternative decision-making institutions: Both majority rule and exogenous tax rules can improve efficiency.

Suggested Citation

  • Jenny Simon & Justin M. Valasek, 2013. "Efficient Fiscal Spending by Supranational Unions," Working Papers 183, Oesterreichische Nationalbank (Austrian Central Bank).
  • Handle: RePEc:onb:oenbwp:183
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.oenb.at/dam/jcr:ef9f0db0-7c1c-4ea6-b7e6-2f4ad4e0f7b3/working_paper_183_screen_tcm16-255980.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ben Lockwood, 2002. "Distributive Politics and the Costs of Centralization," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 69(2), pages 313-337.
    2. Lin Zhou, 1997. "The Nash Bargaining Theory with Non-Convex Problems," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 65(3), pages 681-686, May.
    3. Philippe Aghion & Patrick Bolton, 2003. "Incomplete Social Contracts," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 1(1), pages 38-67, March.
    4. Bodenstein, Thilo and Achim Kemmerling, 2012. "Ripples in a rising tide: Why some EU regions receive more structural funds than others," European Integration online Papers (EIoP), European Community Studies Association Austria (ECSA-A), vol. 16, January.
    5. Giovanni Maggi & Massimo Morelli, 2006. "Self-Enforcing Voting in International Organizations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(4), pages 1137-1158, September.
    6. Conley, John P. & Wilkie, Simon, 1996. "An Extension of the Nash Bargaining Solution to Nonconvex Problems," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 26-38, March.
    7. Besley, Timothy & Coate, Stephen, 2003. "Centralized versus decentralized provision of local public goods: a political economy approach," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(12), pages 2611-2637, December.
    8. Nash, John, 1950. "The Bargaining Problem," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 18(2), pages 155-162, April.
    9. Mas-Colell, Andreu & Whinston, Michael D. & Green, Jerry R., 1995. "Microeconomic Theory," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195102680.
    10. Herrero, Maria Jose, 1989. "The nash program: Non-convex bargaining problems," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 49(2), pages 266-277, December.
    11. Bård Harstad, 2007. "Harmonization and Side Payments in Political Cooperation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(3), pages 871-889, June.
    12. Bård Harstad, 2005. "Majority Rules and Incentives," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 120(4), pages 1535-1568.
    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. Jenny Simon & Justin Mattias Valasek, 2013. "Centralized Fiscal Spending by Supranational Unions," CESifo Working Paper Series 4321, CESifo.
    2. Jenny Simon & Justin Mattias Valasek, 2017. "Centralized Fiscal Spending by Supranational Unions," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 84(333), pages 78-103, January.
    3. Cheng-Zhong Qin & Shuzhong Shi & Guofu Tan, 2015. "Nash bargaining for log-convex problems," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 58(3), pages 413-440, April.
    4. Alfredo Valencia-Toledo & Juan Vidal-Puga, 2020. "A sequential bargaining protocol for land rental arrangements," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 24(1), pages 65-99, June.
    5. Yongsheng Xu & Naoki Yoshihara, 2019. "An equitable Nash solution to nonconvex bargaining problems," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 48(3), pages 769-779, September.
    6. Yongsheng Xu & Naoki Yoshihara, 2020. "Nonconvex Bargaining Problems: Some Recent Developments," Homo Oeconomicus: Journal of Behavioral and Institutional Economics, Springer, vol. 37(1), pages 7-41, November.
    7. Samuel Danthine & Noemí Navarro, 2013. "How to Add Apples and Pears: Non-Symmetric Nash Bargaining and the Generalized Joint Surplus," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 33(4), pages 2840-2850.
    8. Xu, Yongsheng & Yoshihara, Naoki, 2011. "Proportional Nash solutions - A new and procedural analysis of nonconvex bargaining problems," Discussion Paper Series 552, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University.
    9. David H. Wolpert & James Bono, 2010. "A theory of unstructured bargaining using distribution-valued solution concepts," Working Papers 2010-14, American University, Department of Economics.
    10. Baniak Andrzej & Grajzl Peter, 2011. "Interjurisdictional Linkages and the Scope for Interventionist Legal Harmonization," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 7(2), pages 405-434, December.
    11. Harstad, Bård, 2010. "Strategic delegation and voting rules," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(1-2), pages 102-113, February.
    12. Gino Gancia & Giacomo A M Ponzetto & Jaume Ventura, 2022. "Globalization and Political Structure," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 20(3), pages 1276-1310.
    13. Zambrano, Eduardo, 2016. "‘Vintage’ Nash bargaining without convexity," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 141(C), pages 32-34.
    14. Hindriks, Jean & Lockwood, Ben, 2009. "Decentralization and electoral accountability: Incentives, separation and voter welfare," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 25(3), pages 385-397, September.
    15. Grégoire Rota Graziosi, 2009. "On the Strategic Use of Representative Democracy in International Agreements," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 11(2), pages 281-296, April.
    16. Luís Carvalho, 2014. "A Constructive Proof of the Nash Bargaining Solution," Working Papers Series 2 14-01, ISCTE-IUL, Business Research Unit (BRU-IUL).
    17. Toke S. Aidt & Jayasri Dutta, 2017. "Fiscal Federalism and Electoral Accountability," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 19(1), pages 38-58, February.
    18. Toke S. Aidt & Jayasri Dutta, 2017. "Fiscal Federalism and Electoral Accountability," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 19(1), pages 38-58, February.
    19. Federico Boffa & Amedeo Piolatto & Giacomo A. M. Ponzetto, 2016. "Political Centralization and Government Accountability," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 131(1), pages 381-422.
    20. Haufler, Andreas & Lülfesmann, Christoph, 2015. "Reforming an asymmetric union: On the virtues of dual tier capital taxation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 116-127.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Supranational Unions; Efficiency; Public Goods; Redistribution; Federalism; Legislative Bargaining;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H77 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - Intergovernmental Relations; Federalism
    • H87 - Public Economics - - Miscellaneous Issues - - - International Fiscal Issues; International Public Goods
    • D71 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Social Choice; Clubs; Committees; Associations

    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:onb:oenbwp:183. 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: Markus Knell (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/oenbbat.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.