Democratization, Secessions, and Fiscal Institutions

[9414719]阿莱西纳过去十年不仅在东欧而且在发展中世界的大部分地区都出现了前所未有的民主化进程。与此同时，部分由于这种体制变化的结果，各国的边界已经重新划定，其程度在现代和平时期的历史上是相当不同寻常的。财政问题是政治管辖区边界决策的关键决定因素。事实上，边界的定义和导致财政决策的政治机制极大地影响了税收和支出的成本和收益的最终分配。例如，批准《马斯特里赫特协定》的很大困难在于人们担心较富裕和/或在财政上更“负责任”的国家和地区将承担较贫穷和/或不那么负责任的地区的一些财政负担。本研究项目研究财政政策决策与政治管辖边界界定之间的相互作用。特别是，它研究了民主化如何导致有关政治边界和财政（去）集中化的社会选择决策的变化。社会规划者的模型提出了各种支持在相对较大的政治管辖范围内集中财政决策的论点，特别是当财政政策的再分配方面很重要时。这一含义似乎与最近的分离主义倾向和在欧洲共同体内走向政治联盟的新困难不一致。我们强调个人和地区之间的多样性和异质性如何通过投票过程影响关于（去）中央集权的决定和边界的定义。与社会计划模型相比，投票的异质性产生了更丰富、更现实的结果集。该项目通过关注不同类型的财政政策（即公共产品提供、保险、再分配）、不同类型的制度（即独裁政权与民主政权）、不同的投票规则以及其他制度差异，考虑了这一一般性问题的几个方面。

9414719 Alesina The last decade has witnessed an unprecedented process of democratization, not only in Eastern Europe but also in large parts of the developing world. At the same time, and partly as a result of this institutional change, the borders of nations have been redrawn to an extent which is quite exceptional for modern peacetime history. Fiscal issues are crucial determinants of decisions concerning borders of political jurisdictions. In fact, the definition of borders and the political mechanisms which lead to fiscal decisions greatly influence the final distribution of costs and benefits of taxation and spending. For example, much of the difficulty in ratifying the Maastricht agreement lies in the fear that richer and/or more fiscally "responsible" countries and regions will bear some of the fiscal burden of poorer and/or less responsible regions. This research project studies the interaction between fiscal policy decisions and the definition of boundaries of political jurisdictions. In particular, it examines how democratization leads to changes in social choice decisions concerning both political boundaries and fiscal (de)centralization. Models with social planners have suggested various arguments in favor of centralized fiscal decisions in relatively large political jurisdictions, particularly when the redistributive aspects of fiscal policy are important. This implication appears inconsistent with the recent tendency toward secessionism and the renewed difficulties of moving toward a political union in the European community. We emphasize how diversity and heterogeneity among individuals and regions influence, through the voting process, the decision about (de)centralization and the definition of boundaries. Heterogeneity with voting gives rise to a much richer and more realistic set of results, relative to social planner models. The project considers several aspects of this general problem by focusing on different types o f fiscal policy, i.e., public good provision, insurance, redistribution, on different types of institutions, i.e., dictatorial regimes versus democratic ones, different voting rules, and other institutional differences.