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In assessing the desirability for tax decentralization reforms, a dilemma between efficiency and redistribution emerges. By limiting the ability of the central government to redistribute resources towards regions in financial needs, decentralization curbs incentives for excessive subnational spending and enhances fiscal discipline, but may also widen interregional disparities by triggering tax competition for mobile tax bases. We provide a formal treatment of this trade-off, and shed light on the optimal degree of fiscal decentralization. We find that tax decentralization can be optimal even under Rawlsian social preferences which only weight the welfare of the poorest region in the federation.

A country consists of two non-overlapping regions, each ruled by a local authority. The federal government plans to construct a facility in one of the regions. If the facility is constructed, it generates a social value in the host region and has spillover effects in the rest of the country. The federal government does not observe the local value (which can be high or low) because it is in fact the local authority's private information. To deal with this informational gap, the federal government designs an incentive-compatible mechanism, specifying if the facility should be constructed and a scheme of interregional transfers. But the federal government is constitutionally constrained to respect a given measure of both regions' welfare. The type of local misbehaviour is shown to depend crucially upon this minimum utility the central government must at least implement.

A country consists of two non-overlapping regions, each ruled by a local authority. The federal government plans to construct a facility in one of the regions. If the facility is constructed, it generates a social value in the host region and has spillover effects in the rest of the country. The federal government does not observe the local value (which can be high or low) because it is in fact the local authority's private information. To deal with this informational gap, the federal government designs an incentive-compatible mechanism, specifying if the facility should be constructed and a scheme of interregional transfers. But the federal government is constitutionally constrained to respect a given measure of both regions' welfare. The type of local misbehaviour is shown to depend crucially upon this minimum utility the central government must at least implement.

Based on the fiscal regime that prevailed in Argentina from 1988 to 2003, we estimate the effects that changes in intergovernmental transfers and hydrocarbon royalties had on provincial public consumption and debt. From a one-peso increase in intergovernmental transfers, all provinces spent 76 centavos on public consumption and decreased their debt by 22 centavos. However, when hydrocarbon-producing provinces faced a one-peso increase in royalties, they saved 95 centavos. We provide evidence that the exhaustible nature of royalties may explain this saving reaction in hydrocarbon-producing provinces.

Using the exogenous variability in intergovernmental transfers and hydrocarbon royalties, based on the fiscal regime that prevailed in Argentina from 1988 to 2003, we jointly estimate the effects that changes in these public revenues had on provincial public consumption and debt. When receiving a one-peso increase in intergovernmental transfers, provinces spent 32 centavos of each peso on public consumption and 43 on debt repayment. But when hydrocarbon-producing provinces received a one-peso increase in royalties, they used 75 centavos for debt repayment. These dissimilar reactions to revenue increases are robust to different specifications of the basic regressions. Finally, we provide two alternative explanations for them: the higher volatility of hydrocarbon royalties (relative to intergovernmental transfers) and the exhaustible nature of these revenues.