While decentralization of fiscal responsibilities is one of the main objectives that has emerged in the agenda of national governments and international organizations, there is little empirical evidence of the potential benefits of this intervention. This paper is an attempt to fill, in part, the void of quantitative measurement. Using panel data on infant mortality rates, GDP per capita, and t...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the relation between decentralization and equity of resource allocation in Colombia and Chile. METHODS The "decision space" approach and analysis of expenditures and utilization rates were used to provide a comparative analysis of decentralization of the health systems of Colombia and Chile. FINDINGS Evidence from Colombia and Chile suggests that decentralization, u...

Does fiscal decentralization lead to more efficient governance, better public goods, and higher economic growth? This paper tests hypotheses of the theoretical literature that results of decentralization depend on features of political institutions. Using data from up to 95 countries for 25 years we show that the effect of fiscal decentralization strongly depends on two aspects of political cen...

This paper analyses the question of the complementarity between income taxation and non linear pricing of public services in a general equilibrium framework with labour heterogeneity. The public service is viewed as a screening device which is supposed to use non linear pricing. In this framework, we show that even in general equilibrium and with labour heterogeneity, it is useful to supplement...

This paper examines whether decentralization increases the responsiveness of public investment to local needs using a unique database from Bolivia. Empirical tests show that investment patterns in human capital and social services changed significantly after decentralization. These changes are strongly and positively related to objective indicators of need. Nationally, these changes were driven...

This paper asks how the benefits of municipal amalgamations compare to the costs thereof. It answers this research question by comparing the postwar experiences with such consolidation in a variety of OECD countries. First, this paper argues that nowadays upscaling local and regional government is popular. Many Western countries have plans to upscale local government or have already implemented...

Across the developing world, many governments have implemented political reforms—heavily promoted by international donors—designed to transfer greater power to subnational levels of government and to provide a more substantial policymaking and oversight role to citizens. Although economic analyses have frequently argued that such decentralization programs improve the efficiency of public expend...