All over the world, recent legislative reforms share the goal of increasing fiscal autonomy of lower tiers of governments. The aim of this policy is to reduce Vertical Fiscal Imbalance (VFI) and enhance the efficiency in the provision of public services, via increased accountability of local politicians. The purpose of this paper is to assess whether inefficiency of local governments is really affected by the degree of VFI, relying on a sample of Italian municipalities to study the determinants of spending performances. Consistently with modern fiscal federalism theories, our results show that more fiscally autonomous municipalities exhibit less inefficient behaviours, thus supporting the waves of reforms towards the devolution of taxing power to lower government tiers.

Decentralization and Local Governments’ Performance: How Does Fiscal Autonomy Affect Spending Efficiency?

PIACENZA, Massimiliano;TURATI, Gilberto
2012-01-01

Abstract

All over the world, recent legislative reforms share the goal of increasing fiscal autonomy of lower tiers of governments. The aim of this policy is to reduce Vertical Fiscal Imbalance (VFI) and enhance the efficiency in the provision of public services, via increased accountability of local politicians. The purpose of this paper is to assess whether inefficiency of local governments is really affected by the degree of VFI, relying on a sample of Italian municipalities to study the determinants of spending performances. Consistently with modern fiscal federalism theories, our results show that more fiscally autonomous municipalities exhibit less inefficient behaviours, thus supporting the waves of reforms towards the devolution of taxing power to lower government tiers.
2012
68
3
269
302
Municipalities; Decentralization; Fiscal autonomy; Electoral accountability; Spending efficiency
Boetti L.; Piacenza M.; Turati G.
File in questo prodotto:
File Dimensione Formato  
FinanzArchiv_BPT.pdf

Accesso riservato

Tipo di file: PDF EDITORIALE
Dimensione 456.63 kB
Formato Adobe PDF
456.63 kB Adobe PDF   Visualizza/Apri   Richiedi una copia
Open Access_FinanzArchiv_BPT_2012_postprint.pdf

Accesso aperto

Tipo di file: POSTPRINT (VERSIONE FINALE DELL’AUTORE)
Dimensione 361.92 kB
Formato Adobe PDF
361.92 kB Adobe PDF Visualizza/Apri

I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.

Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/2318/103845
Citazioni
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.pmc??? ND
  • Scopus 81
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.isi??? 73
social impact