Fiscal policy and economic activity: new causal evidence

Tiebout sorting describes people moving to communities that most closely match people's preferences over taxes and public services. This Tiebout equilibrium is disturbed when cities vote to increase taxes and spending. We study the effect of increased taxes and public spending on population growth in growing and declining cities. Using regression discontinuity to compare otherwise similar cities, we find increasing local government taxes and spending by 15% can increase population growth rates. The increase is only evident the year after the vote. For the general sample, the increase is 0.4 percentage points, but it is 0.8 percentage points (25% of a standard deviation) for growing cities with below-median percentages of elderly residents. In cities with declining population, passing large tax levies increases population growth rates by 0.9 percentage points the year after the vote—33% of a standard deviation. Instead of cutting taxes and services, cities with declining population might instead consider providing additional public services to stem population declines. Most migration studies use a fairly large geographical unit like states, counties, and urban areas; our study contributes to the literature by studying migration at the local government level (cities, villages, and townships).

Using a panel of 268 European regions during 1990–2014, we document that the degree of local government's autonomy, measured with the “Local Autonomy Index,” has a significant positive effect on the fiscal spending multiplier. The estimated geographic cross‐sectional fiscal spending multiplier is on average close to zero in countries with the lowest degree of local autonomy, and around unity in countries with the highest degree of local autonomy. Multipliers are state‐dependent: larger when gross domestic product is below trend and when there is slack in the labor market; in those states, local autonomy has a particularly large positive effect on the multiplier. To interpret the empirical findings, we build a Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model where both local and central government spending contribute to a public good that enhances private labor productivity. Local governments are more efficient in producing the public good and the multiplier is higher in countries where local government spending has a larger share in the production of the public good.

This study aims to examine the role of previous year’s tax, revenue sharing, GRDP, population, and the dummy of district status toward the local government spending in Sumatra. Tuliskan jenis/disain peneltian yang digunakan, variable yang digunakan serta struktur data yang digunakan. The study is explanatory research. The study applies the data panel regression technique. Data used is panel data of districts/cities in Sumatra from 2008 to 2019. Results show that the role of the previous year's tax, GRDP, population toward the local government spending significantly affects the local government spending of splitting and non-splitting regions. For a dummy of district status, district's government spendings are higher than those of cities’s government spendings. For splitting regions, the previous year’s tax has the strongest impact on local government spending, followed by the dummy variable of district status. Revenue sharing does not influence local government spending. For non-splitting regions, the dummy variable of district status has the biggest impact on local government spending, followed by the previous year’s tax. Revenue sharing positively influences local government spending. The study recommends that local governments encourage the growth of the business sector and manage tax revenue by implementing intensive taxation.

The global clean water crisis is an urgent challenge. Althought the water stress level in most provinces in Indonesia remains low, the water quality index does not reach good status. Water quality index calculated through pollution index of surface water. This study examines how environmental protection spending by local governments defined as the combined spending of provincial and regency/municipality governments within each province affects the water quality index in Indonesian provinces, and compare it with central government spending and non-government spending. Government spending has three effects on water pollution: scale, composition, and technique effects. These three effects are expected to follow a quadratic pattern. Using provincial panel data from 2017 – 2022, this study estimates these with fixed effect model. Initially, the estimation uses quadratic specification on local government spending, but likelihood ratio test shows that the quadratic term does not improve model fit, so the analysis proceeds with the linear specification. The results show that local government spending and non-government spending increase the water quality index, but central government spending is not significant due to its long-term effects. Non-government spending is more effective than government spending. Therefore, the local government should enforce regulations on businesses/ local-owned enterprises that use surface water to make efforts to maintain water sources. In addition, the local government needs to consider the development of a localized wastewater management system but still considering the necessary technical matters.

How Can a Country 'Graduate' from Procyclical Fiscal Policy? Evidence from China

Government spending is expected to improve the Human Development Index (HDI) in order to increase public welfare. Theoretically, if the number of government expenditure is increasing then the Human Development Index (HDI) will be higher as well. Based on earlier research, it was found few differences about the result of influence Government spending to Human Index. The purpose of the study was to analyze the influence of government spending and Gross Domestic Product to the Human Development Index of East Java Province (during 2014-2017). The research method using descriptive quantitative approach. Local government expenditures were analyzed by direct local government spending by looking at three aspects namely employees expenditure, spending on goods and services, and capital expenditures. Whereas, for the GDP per capita income is analyzed based on three aspects: production, income, and expenditure. Then the human development index to see the effects of these two variables based on three dimensions that exist in the human development index healthiness dimensions, dimensions of knowledge, and economic dimensions. The results showed that the local government spending income and the GDP per capita income has a significant effect on the human development index. Government spending has a significant influence on the educational dimension, while GDP per capita has a significant effect on the purchasing power of people thus affecting the economic dimension. Keywords: Government spending, Gross Domestic Product, Human Development Index

The two conservative parties in Norway, the old Conservative Party and the younger Progressive Party increased their electoral support from 23 percent in 1975 to 34 percent in the election of 1987. The electoral mobilization by these conservative parties was mainly based on an ideologically inspired rhetoric of reduced government spending and corresponding tax reductions. With the benefit of hindsight, it may be argued that these were policies to which the two parties did not live up. Whatever their political strength in the local arena, they were unable to reduce local government income taxes. But when analysing other fiscal strategies available to local governments we do find differences related to political strength, even if the findings are not always as expected. Municipalities dominated by the conservatives are run on the principle of families paying the actual costs of having children in public day‐care institutions. But so are socialist‐dominated municipalities. Conservative and socialist municipalities tend to subsidize fees for home‐help services for the elderly. The main fiscal source of the conservatives is fees and charges on technical services used by every household and paid according to costs. The watershed between socialist and conservative parties appears as we analyse the use of property tax ‐ a tax used much more frequently by socialist than by conservative and centrist parties.

Regional autonomy demands a division of authority between the Center and the regions, which in turn has an impact on budgeting policies. On the one hand, central government spending is oriented towards equity, but on the other hand, the regions understand very well their respective characteristics. The government's budget is always results-oriented, so this research can later be used as a benchmark in planning budgeting. In terms of spending on Education in Indonesia, the budget is channeled through central government spending and local government spending. This research is structured to see between the Central Government or Local Government, more significant in accelerating human quality (IPM) in Indonesia. This study uses Vector Auto Regression with Bayesian Vector Auto Regression model specifications to determine the effect between the variables studied. The variables used in this study are the Central Government Expenditure budget, Regional Government Expenditure on Education through Transfers from the Center to the Regions, Adjusted Per Capita Expenditure, and the Human Development Index from 2007 – 2020. The estimation results show a tendency for local government spending to be more able to increase Human Development Index compared to the Education budget through central government spending. This finding indicates that in the end, the results of decentralization, one of which is the delegation of authority for local government spending, can accelerate the human development index higher than the expenditure issued by the central government.

State and local fiscal policy and growth at the border

Associations Between State and Local Government Spending and Pregnancy-Related Mortality in the U.S.

Intergovernmental fiscal transfer (IFT) is one of the several sources of funds of sub-national governments. There are two general types of IFT — conditional and unconditional. In many developing economies including the Philippines, the usual existing IFT is a form of unconditional fiscal transfer called revenue shares. In the Philippines, this revenue-sharing scheme is called the internal revenue allotment (IRA). Empirical literature says that unconditional IFTs are the type of fiscal transfers with the least effect on local government spending. The literature posits that the reason for this is that local governments use these transfers to substitute for own-sourced revenues such as local taxes. This explanation was formalized through a framework presented in this paper. Using panel data from Philippine provinces for the years 2001 to 2015, this paper attempted to determine the effect of revenue shares, in the form of IRA, on local government expenditures. Using different econometric methodologies, this paper arrived at several conclusions. First, IRA has a strong positive effect on total local government spending with a marginal effect slightly greater than one — much higher than what comparable studies found using data from other countries. Secondly, the effect of IRA on local government expenditures is even stronger for provinces with relatively greater ability to generate its own funds. Next, IRA and other externally sourced revenues have much stronger marginal effects on local government spending than do own-sourced revenues. Finally, IRA has widely varying effects on different components of local government expenditures.

Estimating local fiscal multipliers using political connections

There is a continuum of households of measure 1. The representative household maximizes

What Fiscal Policy is Effective at Zero Interest Rates?

This study aims to test the hypothesis that explains the relationship between tax revenue and government spending in six Indonesian regions. Furthermore, the units of analysis were districts and cities in each region from 2006 to 2017, and a Granger panel causality approach was used. The results showed five experienced bidirectional causalities between tax revenues and local government spending out of the six regions, namely Java, Sumatra, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, and the Bali & Nusa Tenggara. Also, there was fiscal synchronisation in five regions, while the tax-spend hypothesis applies in the Papua & Maluku regions. Therefore, the local governments in these regions need to be careful in deciding actions related to increasing revenue. This can be achieved through the tax sector's optimisation and expenditure increment by encouraging public spending from the administration.