Fiscal Decentralization Improves Social Outcomes When Countries Have Good Governance
Fiscal Decentralization Improves Social Outcomes When Countries Have Good Governance
复制标题
当国家治理良好时，财政分权可以改善社会成果
DOI：
--
复制
发表时间：
2022
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Isaura Garcia Valdes
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Qianqian Zhang;Ryota Nakatani;Isaura Garcia Valdes
财政分权能改善健康和教育成果吗？这种改进是否取决于治理的质量？财政分权与财政治理如何相互作用？我们通过对跨国面板数据的工具变量Tobit分析来回答这些问题。我们发现财政分权对健康结果的负面影响，但这种影响被更好的治理所抵消。教育支出下放到地方政府可以提高教育成果。我们的结论是，只有当治理安排的质量超过一定的门槛时，国家才能从权力下放中获益。我们还发现，去中心化的顺序和阶段很重要。各国应首先提高政府效率和对腐败的控制，以最大限度地发挥财政分权的效益。除了治理质量之外，我们发现，更好的卫生基础设施与较低的婴儿死亡率有关，这并不令人感到意外。我们还发现，医疗用品越多，预期寿命越长。因此，在其他条件不变的情况下，增加医院床位或增加医生数量——从我们样本中观察到的国家的平均水平——可以在一定程度上改善健康状况。人口不断增加的低收入国家可能希望增加医院床位以降低婴儿死亡率，而人口老龄化的发达国家可能并不迫切需要医疗用品。总而言之，在治理良好的情况下，财政分权能够很好地改善社会结果。发现这种关系是非线性的。我们的研究表明，提高政府效率和控制腐败有助于改善健康和教育成果。为了从财政分权中获益，排序也很重要；各国应提高政府效率，减少腐败，使其体制质量足够强，能够从卫生/教育支出权力下放中获得积极影响。
: Does fiscal decentralization improve health and educational outcomes? Does this improvement depend on the quality of governance? How do fiscal decentralization and governance interact? We answer these questions through an instrumental variable Tobit analysis of cross-country panel data. We find negative effects of fiscal decentralization on health outcomes, which however are more than offset by better governance. Education expenditure decentralization to subnational governments enhances educational outcomes. We conclude that countries can only reap the benefits from decentralization when the quality of their governance arrangements exceeds a certain threshold. We also find that sequencing and staging of decentralization matter. Countries should improve government effectiveness and control of corruption first to maximize benefits of fiscal decentralization. Other than governance quality, we found, unsurprisingly, that better health infrastructure is associated with lower infant mortality rates. We also found more medical supplies are associated with longer life expectancy. Therefore, ceteris paribus , building hospital beds or increasing the number of physicians––from the average levels observed in countries in our sample––could improve health outcomes, up to a point. Low-income countries with increasing population may wish to increase hospital beds to reduce infant mortality, while medical supplies may not be urgently needed for advanced countries with aging population. In sum, fiscal decentralization works well to improve social outcomes when governance works well. The relationship is found to be nonlinear. Our study shows that improving government effectiveness and controlling corruption help improve both health and education outcomes. To benefit from fiscal decentralization, sequencing also matters; countries should improve government effectiveness and reduce corruption so that their institutional quality is strong enough to reap the positive effects from health/educational expenditure decentralization.
影响因子：
3.2
作者：
Kameshwara K
通讯作者：
Kameshwara K