Fiscal Autonomy and Total Government Expenditure: An Austrian Case-study

Bröthaler, Johann; Getzner, Michael

doi:10.1007/s11294-011-9301-8

Cited by 11 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…This paper relates also to the literature on the political economy of fiscal decentralization (Joanis, 2014;Bröthaler and Getzner, 2011;González et al, 2013). We put forward the concept of fiscal autonomy in order to link it to budget forecast bias.…”

Section: Fiscal Autonomy and Budget Forecastsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Disentangling political and institutional determinants of budget forecast errors: A comparative approach

Boukari

Veiga

2018

Journal of Comparative Economics

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This paper provides a unique comparison between French and Portuguese local governments with respect to the nature and determinants of budget forecast errors. It starts by documenting and comparing their statistical properties. The results point at biased and inefficient budget forecasts, which seem to have been more cautious in French departments than in Portuguese municipalities. Second, we examine the political, institutional and economic determinants of forecast biases. Overall, we find that they are essentially driven by electoral motivations and by institutional differences across the two countries. In particular, opportunistic forecasting is more prevalent where governments enjoy greater margin of maneuver, and there is evidence of conservatism in French departments where fiscal autonomy is greater.

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Section: Fiscal Autonomy and Budget Forecastsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Own taxes represent the highest degree of sub-national autonomy. Shared taxes, which are distributed between the levels and units of public authorities, represent a middle degree of autonomy (Bröthaler and Getzner, 2011).…”

Section: Fiscal Autonomy and Budget Forecastsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Disentangling political and institutional determinants of budget forecast errors: A comparative approach

Boukari

Veiga

2018

Journal of Comparative Economics

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“…On average, only about 5% of the municipal revenues are decided autonomously, while another 20% of the revenues can be determined within certain limits (cf. Bröthaler & Getzner, 2011). The cultural spending of municipalities is particularly sensitive to the financial resources of the municipalities since, for instance, subsidies might easily be reduced in times of fiscal stress.…”

Section: The Determinants Of Municipal Cultural Spending: a Brief Overviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Socio-economic and spatial determinants of municipal cultural spending

Getzner

2021

J Cult Econ

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The determinants of the expenditure of Austrian municipalities for cultural affairs are ascertained in a panel time series framework. The Austrian municipalities spend about € 93 per capita a year for cultural affairs (approximately 4% of the total municipal expenditure). The econometric estimations revealed that the size of the municipality, and various socio-economic, fiscal and political variables, are the main determinants of municipal cultural spending. The results of the estimations infer a rather small but nevertheless significant spatial dependence of cultural spending. An increase of 10% of cultural spending in the neighboring regions leads to an increase of 0.6–1.5% in a representative municipality (however, the potentially overlapping and contradicting reasons for spatial correlations could not be disentangled in this paper). In comparison to the spatial effects, the size of the municipality is a more significant predictor of municipal cultural spending. The larger cities provide many cultural goods and services to the surrounding areas by utilizing economies of scale and density. It can be concluded that municipalities, in particular in rural areas, should increase their efforts for co-operation in order to improve the efficiency of cultural spending.

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“…Total receipts from Revenue Sharing System are therefore used in the current paper (sum of variables 6 to 10 of group B, see SNRSSSHARE t in Table 1). A forthcoming paper by Bröthaler and Getzner (2009) will explore in detail the influence of varying degrees of fiscal autonomy on public sector growth. and sub-national expenditure (SNY t , SNYUNC t ), both consolidated and unconsolidated.…”

Section: Empirical Development Of Fiscal Decentralization In Austriamentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of Fiscal Decentralization on Public Sector Growth in Austria

Bröthaler,

author)

2010

Public Finance and Management

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The determinants of the growth of the public sector have drawn significant attention by researchers with an increasing focus on the effects of fiscal federalism. The objective of the paper is to test whether fiscal decentralization contributes to the growth of government expenditure in Austria for the period of 1955 to 2007. The empirical results of this paper suggest that the commonly hypothesized determinants of total government expenditure may bear some explanatory power in Austrian fiscal policies. Government expenditures seem to be determined by GDP with increases of the size of the public sector until about mid-1990s. Expenditures react to active fiscal policies influencing the unemployment rate. There is also some indication of fiscal illusion of policy makers. We find that fiscal decentralization measured by the share of sub-national expenditure to total government expenditure has a dampening effect on total government expenditure, thus corroborating the hypothesis of the efficiency of a federal system. However, decentralization in the Austrian system is mainly attributable to the significant growth of grants from the national to the sub-national levels of government. Our conclusions therefore cannot be generalized in terms of an efficiency advantage of a federal over a centralized system.

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Fiscal Autonomy and Total Government Expenditure: An Austrian Case-study

Abstract: Fiscal autonomy, Decentralization, Federalism, Growth of public sector, Public expenditure, H6, E6, H7,

Cited by 11 publications

References 20 publications

Disentangling political and institutional determinants of budget forecast errors: A comparative approach

Disentangling political and institutional determinants of budget forecast errors: A comparative approach

Socio-economic and spatial determinants of municipal cultural spending

Effects of Fiscal Decentralization on Public Sector Growth in Austria

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