Suchergebnisse

Financial issues are very often behind political conflicts between or within territories. However, conflicts are not limited to the territorial allocation of resources. Three factors appear to have a decisive influence: the distribution of political power between the central and the territorial government (federal/unitary model); the economic conception of the territory prevailing in central institutions (multipolar/radial conception); and the degree of territorial diversity and the existence of «national» minorities. The analysis of the Catalan- Spanish conflict along these three dimensions allows us to reach some preliminary conclusions, which should be tested by further empirical work. The first conclusion is that - when markedly opposite preferences exist between territories concerning the issue of more or less decentralization - the only stable agreement is some kind of specific settlement with this specific territory. The second conclusion is that a federal model appears to be intrinsically incompatible with a radial, centre-based conception of the country.

The evolution of the Spanish "State of Autonomies" has been strongly marked from the outset by the problems posed by the financing of the Autonomous Communities (henceforth, ACs). To some extent, this is only to be expected. All political systems built around different levels of government, in which political power is shared between a central government and intermediate governments, inevitably generate two types of tension. On the one hand, there is the tension that exists between the central government and the whole ACs and which is generated by the distribution of this political power as it relates to all financial matters.[.]

The Great Recession has revealed serious shortcomings in the design of the monetary union, a set of shortcomings that have led to serious imbalances, above all with regards to external debt and current account balance, in the less competitive countries of the euro area (the so-called peripheral countries), as well as between these peripheral countries and the core countries of the eurozone. .

In some large European countries, in recent decades, economic globalization has gone hand in hand with a powerful trend to political decentralization (this has been the case in the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Spain). In Spain, and after years of apparent stability, the relations between Catalonia and Spain are experiencing troubled times. This paper examines particularly the main economic effects of both the staying together and the secession scenarios. Following the introduction, the second section reviews some aspects of the relations between Catalonia and Spain. The third and fourth sections analyse different scenarios with a particular focus on the main issues that the secession scenario raises. The fifth section contains a concluding remark.

The democratic Constitution of 1978 established a decentralised state in Spain. Since that year, the Autonomous Communities (the intermediate level of government) have strongly increased their role and currently represent around 25% - 30% of total public expenditure. Therefore, financing autonomous government has become a crucial issue with important financial and political consequences. The present system is based mostly on grants from central government, while tax revenues and fiscal accountability are weak. The financing system can play an important, albeit complementary, role in ensuring cohesion within a decentralised state. On the one hand, it can achieve a certain level of equalisation in providing public services all over the territory. On the other hand, it can allow all regions to obtain an appropriate level of self-government. However, it is important to stress that territorial cohesion requires as a precondition, a political consensus and the acceptance of a common project among the different regions. Financial problems can certainly become political problems, but political problems can rarely be solved through financial measures alone. Therefore, we should not demand of intergovernmental finances what they cannot do.

Este trabajo analiza la problemática que plantea la prestación de las políticas sociales propias del Estado del bienestar en un contexto de federalismo fiscal. Mientras que tanto el Estado del bienestar como los procesos de descentralización han merecido, por separado, una gran atención por parte de la literatura, las implicaciones mutuas de ambas cuestiones han recibido, en cambio, sólo un escaso interés. Sin embargo, la realidad muestra que algunos de los gastos típicos del Estado del bienestar (como la sanidad y la educación) están fuertemente descentralizados. Este trabajo aborda en primer lugar los argumentos a favor y en contra de la descentralización de estas políticas. A continuación se examina el grado de descentralización del gasto en las principales políticas sociales: sanidad, educación y seguridad y servicios sociales. Es importante destacar la confluencia de los distintos niveles de gobierno en la prestación y financiación de estas políticas. En este sentido, el grado de descentralización del gasto no tiene por qué coincidir con el grado de descentralización en la definición de las políticas públicas. Finalmente, se realiza un examen detallado de la problemática que plantea la descentralización de las principales funciones en la experiencia comparada.

The democratic Constitution of 1978 set up a decentralised state in Spain. Since then, the Autonomous Communities (intermediate level of government) have strongly increased their role and currently represent around 25-30% of total public expenditure. Thus, financing autonomous government has become a crucial issue with important financial and political consequences. The present system is mostly based on grants coming from central government, while tax revenue are weak and so it is fiscal responsibility. The financing system can play an important, albeit complementary, role in ensuring cohesion within a decentralised state. On the one hand, achieving a certain level of equalisation in providing public services all over the territory. On the other, permitting that all regions can obtain an appropriate level of self-government. However, it is important to stress that territorial cohesion requires, as previous conditions, a political consensus and the acceptation of a common project among the different regions. Financial problems can become political problems, but rarely political problems can exclusively be solved through financial measures. Hence, we should not demand to the intergovernmental finances what they cannot do.

La importancia de los procesos de descentralización política. Los aires de los tiempos muestran hoy en todas partes la fuerza vigorosa de los procesos de descentralización politica. En Europa, por ejemplo, en los últimos 20 años el panorama de la mayoría de los países ha cambiado profundamente. Los viejos estados-nación europeos han emprendido reformas políticas que suponen un cuestionamiento básico de la distribución territorial del poder politico .

This paper analyses the main determinants of the regional allocation of infrastructure investment. The estimated investment equation is derived from a general specification of the government's objective function (Berhman and Craig, Am. Econom. Rev. 77 (1987) 315), which accounts both for the equity-efficiency trade-off and for deviations from this rule that arise because of political factors. The reaction of investment to changes in the regional output provides information about the strength of the equity-efficiency trade-off. The main political factor considered is a measurement of the electoral productivity of funds invested in each region.

El trabajo constata, en primer lugar, que en la década de los noventa las disparidades regíonales se han reducido en la Unión Europea, pero en cambio se han amplíado en el interior de los principales países. En segundo lugar, se examinan los instrumentos de política regional aplicados en la UE y su efecto redistributivo. Las estímaciones realizadas demuestran que estas ayudas tienen un impacto signficativo en la reducción de las desigualdades regionales. En tercer lugar, el trabajo estudia la eventual existencia de un efecto sustitución de los fondos estructurales sobre la fínanciación de la inversión pública realizada con recursos nacionales. El artículo finaliza con unas reflexiones sobreel papel de las políticas de cohesión en la Unión Europea ante la ampliación a los paises del centro y Este de Europa.

En el trabajo se presenta una propuesta metodológica de estimación de las necesidades de las CCAA. .

Este trabajo presenta el cálculo de un índice de necesidades de gasto en inversión en infraestructuras de transporte y carreteras para las CCAA. A partir de modelos teóricos se definen y estiman econométricamente los determinantes de la inversión en infraestructuras realizada por los distintos niveles de gobierno (CCAA, Estado y conjunto de AAPP) con datos para el período 1987-1996. Los parámetros estimados para los determinantes de la inversión permiten calcular un índice de necesidades de inversión en infraestructuras, el cual pone de manifiesto (y cuantifica): primero, el «trade-off» existente entre eficiencia y equidad para los distintos niveles de gobierno, y segundo, la importancia de la inclusión de variables de necesidades adicionales al PIB o la población en la regla de distribución territorial de las inversiones en infraestructuras.

By means of a dynamic panel data analysis, and using a database from municipalities of the province of Barcelona (1993-99), we describe their process of fiscal adjustment to a shock in tax capacity. About 25% of the shock is internalized through an increase in tax effort, 35% through a reduction in public expenditure (mainly investment), while the rest is covered by an increase in the level of debt (i.e., the adjustment is delayed). However, this process of adjustment is very much influenced by the political situation of the municipality. Coalition and minority governments ("weak" governments) tend to delay the (unavoidable) adjustment, and 70% of their shock is covered by an increase in the level of debt, while the rest of municipalities ("strong" governments) adjust immediately. Leftist governments mostly react through increases in tax effort, while rightist governments reduce public expenditure to a greater extent. Finally, we find that municipalities are relatively reluctant to decrease taxes, that is, they react differently to a negative (28%) and a positive (26%) shock with regard to the level of tax effort.

We analyse the redistributive power of the Spanish central government budget to diminish regional disparities in per capita income in the 1991-1996 period. It firstly makes a brief overview of the most relevant empirical studies carried out on this subject, analysing their methodologies and results. Secondly, it estimates the redistributive power of the budgetary policies of the Spanish central government. Its principal interest lies in the fact that the data base used allows the redistributive effect of the main items of revenue and expenditure to be analysed, whereas the majority of studies carried out limit the categories of expenditure to the case of transfers. The results obtained are in line with those from other studies. The redistributive power of the central budget is around 40%, expenditure being much more redistributive than revenue, with the exception of individual income tax.