Local budget institutions and fiscal rules effectiveness: a comparative study on European countries

权力下放的趋势使地方当局的公共财政变得更加重要，因为在大多数欧洲国家，地方当局在总预算中的份额，特别是在公共投资中的份额正在增加。这个项目旨在更好地了解是什么决定了地方政府公共财政的演变、结构和后果。第一步是清点以下国家的地方财政限制，这些国家构成了现有规则集的良好图景：法国、德国、意大利、西班牙和芬兰。比较分析如下：预算形成的规则是什么？用于预算执行(是否处理了意外收入或支出冲击？)最后，监管地方债务问题的规则是什么？第二步深化了这个话题：这些规则是执行的还是规避的？就地方债务和地方政府的规模而言，它们是否有效？这一阶段旨在定义最有效的规则。所有这些分析都是通过将可能影响地方财政规则的有效性和执行力的背景或主导约束的政治经济特征整合到图景中来进行的。因此，该项目的一项重要成果是为欧洲地方当局创建了一个新的财政规则比较数据库，将选举数据合并在一起。从这一点开始，我们的目标是从债务水平和预算结构方面估计财政规则对地方当局及其当选的政客的影响，同时考虑到地方当局的政治经济特征(最显著的是：地方地区内部的政治竞争，以及司法管辖区之间的战略互动)。

The trend towards decentralization makes all the more important local authorities public finance, as their part in total budget and especially in public investment is increasing in most of the European countries. This project aims at a better understanding of what determines the evolutions, structure, and consequence of local authorities public finance.The first step is an inventory of local fiscal restraints for the following countries that compose a good picture of existing sets of rules: France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Finland. A comparative analysis follows: what are the rules for budget formation? For budget implementation (and is it dealt with unexpected revenue or spending shocks?)? And, finally, what rules regulate local debt issues?The second step deepens the topic: are the rules enforced or circumvented? Are they efficient in terms of local debt, of the size of local governments? By extension, this phase aims at defining the most efficient rules.All these analyses are conducted by integrating into the picture political economy features that may influence, as a background or a leading constraint, the effectiveness and enforcement of local fiscal rules. An important achievement of the project is thus the creation of a new comparative database of fiscal rules for European local authorities, integrating in parallel electoral data.Starting from this point, we aim at obtaining an estimate of the impact of fiscal rules on local authorities and their elected politicians, in terms of debt levels and budget structure, while taking into account local authorities Political Economy features (most notably: political competition inside the local area, and strategic interactions between jurisdictions).