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。本项目旨在更好地了解是什么决定了地方当局公共财政的演变、结构和后果。第一步是对以下国家的地方财政限制进行盘点，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？对于预算执行（以及它是否处理意外的收入或支出冲击？）最后，地方债发行有哪些监管规则？第二步深化了主题：规则是强制执行还是规避？它们在地方债务和地方政府规模方面是否有效？这一阶段的目的是确定最有效的规则，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的政治经济特征作为背景或主要制约因素纳入其中来进行的。因此，该项目的一个重要成果是为欧洲地方政府创建了一个新的财政规则比较数据库，并将并行的选举数据整合在一起。从这一点出发，我们的目标是在考虑地方政府政治经济特征的同时，从债务水平和预算结构的角度估计财政规则对地方政府及其当选政治家的影响（最明显的是：当地的政治竞争，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).