This paper provides a comparative assessment of fiscal decentralization in China and India, including the standard components of expenditure and revenue assignments and institutions for intergovernmental transfers, as well as the nature of sub-national authorities over general economic activity. In particular, the case of China, where town and village enterprises have been very active, is contr...

In this paper we test the Leviathan hypothesis, focusing on the joint impact of fiscal decentralization and legislative monopoly power in the growth of the public sector. Two proxies of legislative monopoly power are considered: the control of all relevant houses by the executive party and the margin of majority. Using a dynamic panel-based error correction model on OECD member countries, we fi...

This paper provides a comparative assessment of fiscal decentralization in China and India, including the standard components of expenditure and revenue assignments and institutions for intergovernmental transfers, as well as the nature of subnational authorities over general economic activity. In particular, the case of China, where town and village enterprises have been very active, is contra...

This paper contributes to the existing literature on the determinants of fiscal decentralization by motivating theoretically and exploring in depth the empirical relevance that geography has as determinant of fiscal decentralization. The relationship between decentralization and geography is based on the logic that more geographically diverse countries show greater heterogeneity among their cit...

Fiscal decentralization is not a new phenomenon for developing countries. Since the 1990s, most developing countries initiated the process of decentralization, combining political, administrative and fiscal aspects. It is a long-term gradual process of devolving revenue sources and expenditures functions from the central government to provincial and local levels. The benefits of engaging with t...

This paper explores the link between fiscal decentralization and government size in Latin America. While most related work attempts to test Brennan and Buchannan's "Liviathan" hypothesis, here the emphasis is placed on a different channel: the potential for decentralization to aggravate the common pool problem. In addition to the degree of expenditure decentralization, we consider the importanc...

We study the effect of decentralization on corruption in a political agency model from the perspective of a region. In a model where corruption opportunities are lower under centralization at each period of time, decentralization makes easier for citizens to detect corrupt incumbents. As a consequence, the relationship between fiscal decentralization and corruption is conditional on political c...

China has performed under its new inter-governmental Fiscal System (so called “tax-sharing system”) for about seven years since 1994. The main contents of the system are the reallocation of governmental responsibilities and sharing of taxes between the central and provincial level. Theoretically, one of the main purposes is to realize equalization of public service all over the country. In fact...