Bailouts in a Federation
Bailouts in a Federation
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联邦救助
DOI：
10.1023/a:1016563902580
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发表时间：
2002
影响因子：
1
通讯作者：
Timothy J. Goodspeed
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Timothy J. Goodspeed
近年来，西班牙、匈牙利和南非等国的权力下放，以及阿根廷、巴西和印度等国中央政府在处理地方政府财政不负责任方面遇到的困难，使得转移支付制度的研究成为当今联邦制研究的最重要领域之一。一个联邦的模型中，区域政府作为纳什竞争对手与对方，但在与中央政府的Stackelberg游戏的先行者。中央政府发现，它将通过增加地方借贷的转移支付来最大化其预期投票。地方政府的这种救助造成了区域性的软预算约束，并产生了两种激励效应，即对纳税的共同池效应和机会成本效应。软预算限制降低了该区域借贷的机会成本，但也增加了税收成本，因为部分借贷必须通过增加税收来支付。与纳税相关的共同财产问题意味着，除非中央政府在实施救助时增加对其他地区的赠款，否则增加的税收成本必须小于机会成本的减少（导致过度借贷）。有些令人惊讶的是，在后一种情况下，额外增加的税收可能会增加成本，足以抵消救助带来的较低机会成本，从而导致在硬预算约束的情况下有效的借贷决策。研究结果也有助于理解软预算约束的经验估计。
The recent move towards decentralization in countries such as Spain, Hungary, and South Africa and the difficulties that central governments have had in dealing with fiscal irresponsibility on the part of regional governments in countries such as Argentina, Brazil, and India has made the study of transfer systems one of the most important areas of research in federalism today. A model of a federation is developed in which regional governments act as Nash competitors with each other but are first-movers in a Stackelberg game with the central government. The central government finds that it will maximize its expected votes by increasing transfers as regions borrow. This bail out of regional governments creates a regional soft budget constraint and results in two incentive effects, a common pool effect on tax payments and an opportunity cost effect. The soft budget constraint lowers the opportunity cost of borrowing for the region, but also increases the tax-cost since a portion of the borrowing must be paid for through increased taxes. The common property problem associated with tax payments implies that the increased tax cost must be less than the decrease in the opportunity cost (leading to excessive borrowing) unless the central government increases grants to other regions when it institutes a bailout. Somewhat surprisingly, in the latter case the additional increased taxes may increase costs enough to offset the lower opportunity cost resulting from the bailout, leading to efficient borrowing decisions as in the case of a hard budget constraint. The results are also useful for understanding the empirical estimation of soft budget constraints.