Does Local Autonomy Breed Leviathans? An Empirical Examination of All Cities in the United States

US states grant their local units different levels of autonomy in several dimensions including fiscal, functional, structural, and legal discretion. This study uses a comprehensive, multidimensional measure of autonomy to test its association with the fiscal behavior of over 19,000 municipalities in the United States. Competing theoretical predictions range from significant increases in government size (Leviathan model), to no effect (median-voter model), and even smaller governments (institutional collective action model). Quantile regression analysis is implemented to test the association between autonomy and fiscal behavior for different city sizes. The empirical findings indicate that cities with more autonomy tend to spend less and have lower taxes and debt. The strength of this relationship, however, varies by city size.

STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF THE ECONOMETRIC INDICATORS IN THE FIELD OF TAX ADMINISTRATION IN SEVEN STATES OF EUROPEAN UNION

The mathematical analysis presented in this study identifies models of the dynamics of total tax collections and social contributions per inhabitant according to the gross domestic product per inhabitant from 2009 to 2018 for seven states in Eastern Europe by linear regression equations. The models are statistically confirmed as viable models because the required conditions for formulating this assessment are met. This study has the value and usefulness of preventive information for the correction and substantiation of individual governmental and community decisions, in order to homogenize both from the point of view of the fiscal behavior of each state and the point of view of economic development, in correlation with a financial and budgetary policy to maintain macroeconomic balances and economic stability.

Political cycles, spatial interactions and yardstick competition: evidence from Italian cities

I aim to identify the presence of spatial interactions among local governments by exploiting a novel strategy. Specifically, I take advantage of the political cycle of Italian municipalities over the period of 2001–2011 to isolate the effect of the spending decisions of one municipality on neighboring municipalities. The results of this analysis point to the presence of strategic interactions between neighboring municipalities and indicate that such fiscal behavior is more pronounced during electoral years compared to non-electoral ones, when municipalities are governed by coalitions backed by a small majority, and in cities guided by a mayor who can run for re-election. Taken together, these results suggest that the observed spatial dependence in spending decisions seems to be consistent with the yardstick competition hypothesis.

The Effects of Performance Audits on School District Financial Behavior

Performance audits are a form of weak financial oversight intended to curb inefficient spending and help alleviate financial problems. This study examines the effect of these performance audits on school district finances in Ohio, where performance audits are used on their own and within the context of the state’s fiscal stress labeling system—a strong financial oversight system. Using a difference-in-differences analysis, we find school districts do reduce expenditures as a result of these performance audits. These changes in financial behavior are found even for performance audits in nonfiscal stress districts, suggesting that weak oversight programs may be an effective means toward changing fiscal behavior. Despite the financial changes in nonfiscal stress districts that receive audits, there appears to be little impact on school district proficiency rates. These results suggest that audits may provide a useful mechanism for changing financial behavior of school districts without much associated efficiency losses.

Fiscal Sustainability in the Caribbean: An Econometric Analysis

Many countries in the Caribbean have been grappling with persistent fiscal imbalances and rising debt levels. The average debt to GDP ratio in the Caribbean in 2017 was 76.6 percent, higher than the negative debt-growth threshold of 60 percent of GDP. Also, the average fiscal deficit as a percent of GDP was 2.8 percent, but with significant heterogeneity across countries ranging from 0.5 percent to 11 percent. Using the inter-temporal budget constraint framework and various panel data econometric estimators, this article examines the issue of fiscal sustainability for a group of 10 Caribbean countries over the period 1991-2017. The evidence from panel cointegration models of government revenue and expenditure shows that past fiscal behavior is “weakly” sustainable. The “weak sustainability” finding is reinforced by evidence from an extended fiscal reaction function which showed that the primary balance improves by about 0.02 for every 1 percentage point increase in the debt ratio.

Fiscal deficits and executive planning horizons

Executive control of government is generally not a long-term job. In such cases, relatively short executive tenure should be expected to play an important role in determining the degree to which policymakers internalize the future costs associated with their current fiscal behavior. The effects of policymaker's expected planning horizons on macroeconomic outcomes, however, have been difficult to model outside of a fixed term limit context due to the unobserved likelihood of remaining in office, along with potential endogeneity problems where re-election campaigns can be enhanced with generous, deficit-financed expenditures in election years. From a globally representative sample of 79 countries over a 32-year period (1980–2012), this paper provides empirical evidence suggesting that incumbent governments who know that will not be in office in the following period with a probability of one, are found to generate significantly higher deficits in a linear discounting model, and are found to produce the least responsible fiscal outcomes where the likelihood of re-election is around fifty percent in quadratic discounting models.

Study on the fiscal behavior at an international level

Apparently, defining fiscal behavior is a relatively easy approach, but in essence, this concept requires the research of several elements, both economic and psychological. The taxpayer is the component of the tax system that reflects the fiscal policy and, implicitly, its changes. Thus, research in the field has shown that two types of behavior can be identified by combining several economic, psychological, religious or cultural factors: fiscal compliance or fiscal non-compliance. The research ideea may be motivated by the growing importance of tax behavior and compliance subject, especially in the current economic situation, when taxation has become a controversy at any time and in any society, regardless of the degree of democracy. Moreover, tax compliance does not refer only to the economic aspects, but also to the behavioral aspects that influence the process of raising public taxes. The econometric study analyzes the fiscal correlation between the public debt and tax variables such as tax revenues from direct and indirect taxes or social contributions, conected to the dynamics of the gross domestic product and the scale of payments balance. The study is conducted for two groups of countries: developed and emerging countries. The purpose of this research is to identify both the impact of tax revenues on direct, indirect taxes and social contributions, and that of the dynamics of gross domestic product and scale of payments balance on public debt, showing how fiscal behavior is influenced by the two groups of countries and what factors contribute to this.

Determinants of fiscal policy behavior in Nigeria

The study investigated the factors that determine fiscal behavior in Nigeria. The vulnerability of fiscal policy framework in Nigeria to different shocks and the attendant effects on the behavior of fiscal policy are parts of the reasons that prompted this research work. Annual data between 1980 and 2015 on core fiscal variables such as government revenue, government expenditure, fiscal balance, public debt, as well as other variables such as oil price, exchange rate, and inflation rate commodity price among others, are used. The Auto-Regressive Distributed Lag ARDL estimating technique is used to analyze both the long-run and short-run effects of these variables on fiscal behavior in Nigeria. Findings from the study show that fiscal policy in Nigeria is highly vulnerable to shocks from these variables mostly in the short run. Notwithstanding, variables like government revenue, government expenditure, regime of administration, oil price and commodity price volatilities all have sustained effects till the long-run periods. It was discovered that oil price movements is not the only external factor that has pronounced effects on fiscal behavior, but commodity prices volatility generally constitutes an important influential factor in determination of fiscal policy behavior in Nigeria.

Tax Compliance at National Level

Throughout this study, we have shown the influence factors generating a significant impact on taxpayers’ tax behavior. We also analyzed the literature in the field, and the categories of factors that have a significant influence. Consequently, we have assigned a macroeconomic indicator in Romania, in an attempt to quantify the factors of influence. In this regard, we have built an econometric model of multifactorial regression and we have determined the impact of some elements such as: poverty, labor productivity, population confidence in state authorities, gross domestic product per capita on fiscal behavior, which was estimated through the proxy variable: tax rate. The empirical results obtained as a result of the multiple regression showed that there is a negative correlation between the fiscal behavior of the taxpayer, namely the tax compliance and the financial capacity, the labor productivity and the confidence the taxpayer has in the state authorities, while the behavior of the taxpayer the gross domestic product per capita we identify a positive correlation.