Income Inequality, Fiscal Decentralization and Transfer Dependency

Zur Vereinbarkeit der Politikziele Haushaltskonsolidierung, Klimaschutz, Wachstum und hoher Beschäftigungsstand

Tobias Kronenberg

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Generationengerecht und handlungsfähig bei leistungsfähiger Infrastruktur

Ansatzpunkte für eine nachhaltige Finanzplanung im Konzern Stadt - Das Beispiel der Stadt Köln. Ergebnisse einer Vorstudie

Stefan Schneider, Caroline-Antonia Goerl, Michael Thöne

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Tragfähigkeit der öffentlichen Finanzen

eine Bestandsaufnahme national und international praktizierter Methoden der langfristigen Budgetanalyse : Forschungsauftrag 03/10 des Bundesministeriums der Finanzen

Eva Gerhards, Caroline-Antonia Goerl, Michael Thöne

Im Kontext einer stark alternden Gesellschaft sowie hoher akkumulierter staatlicher Schuldenstände ist die Sorge um die Nachhaltigkeit der öffentlichen Finanzen nicht mehr aus der politischen und wissenschaftlichen Diskussion in den entwickelten Volkswirtschaften wegzudenken. Politische Entscheidungsträger haben ein grundlegendes Interesse daran, künftige finanzpolitische Spielräume durch aussagekräftige und verlässliche Analysen der langfristigen Tragfähigkeit der öffentlichen Finanzen so gut wie möglich abschätzen zu können. Vor diesem Hintergrund haben viele Staaten insbesondere innerhalb des letzten Jahrzehnts begonnen, regelmäßig Tragfähigkeitsberichte sowie vereinzelt Generationenbilanzen vorzulegen. Ergänzt werden derartige Bemühungen durch zahlreiche akademische Arbeiten. Die dabei zu beobachtenden Divergenzen in Bezug auf die angewandte Terminologie und Methodik schränken die Vergleichbarkeit der Ergebnisse erheblich ein und stiften zuweilen Verwirrung. Bei aller Vielfalt lässt sich jedoch auch feststellen, dass die Grenzen der oft zitierten Dichotomie von Generationenbilanzierung einerseits und "OECD"-Ansatz andererseits dank methodischer Annäherungen sowie ihres gemeinsamen theoretischen Kerns immer mehr verwischen. Ziel ist es daher, die Methoden national und international durchgeführter Tragfähigkeitsanalysen anhand einiger zentraler Beispiele transparent zu machen. Dabei sollen Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschiede der verschiedenen Ansätze zur Berechnung fiskalischer Nachhaltigkeit sowie ihre jeweiligen Vor- und Nachteile herausgestellt werden. Auf dieser Basis sollen Empfehlungen für die Auswahl viel versprechender methodischer Elemente formuliert werden.

Schwerpunkte kommunaler Ausgabenlasten im Ländervergleich

Michael Thöne, Caroline-Antonia Goerl, Anna Rauch

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Tragfähigkeit der öffentlichen Finanzen: Eine Bestandsaufnahme national und international praktizierter Methoden der langfristigen Budgetanalyse

Michael Thöne, Eva Gerhards, Caroline-Antonia Goerl

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The Socialist System

The Political Economy of Communism

János Kornai

This book presents a comprehensive analysis of socialist economics. It addresses the reasons for the early successes of socialist systems, and the reasons for their gradual breakdown.

Raising Consumers

Children and the American Mass Market in the Early Twentieth Century

Lisa Jacobson

In the present electronic torrent of MTV and teen flicks, Nintendo and Air Jordan advertisements, consumer culture is an unmistakably important--and controversial--dimension of modern childhood. Historians and social commentators have typically assumed that the child consumer became significant during the postwar television age. But the child consumer was already an important phenomenon in the early twentieth century. The family, traditionally the primary institution of child socialization, began to face an array of new competitors who sought to put their own imprint on children's acculturation to consumer capitalism. Advertisers, children's magazine publishers, public schools, child experts, and children's peer groups alternately collaborated with, and competed against, the family in their quest to define children's identities. At stake in these conflicts and collaborations was no less than the direction of American consumer society--would children's consumer training rein in hedonistic excesses or contribute to the spread of hollow, commercial values? Not simply a new player in the economy, the child consumer became a lightning rod for broader concerns about the sanctity of the family and the authority of the market in modern capitalist culture. Lisa Jacobson reveals how changing conceptions of masculinity and femininity shaped the ways Americans understood the virtues and vices of boy and girl consumers--and why boys in particular emerged as the heroes of the new consumer age. She also analyzes how children's own behavior, peer culture, and emotional investment in goods influenced the dynamics of the new consumer culture. Raising Consumers is a provocative examination of the social, economic, and cultural forces that produced and ultimately legitimized a distinctive children's consumer culture in the early twentieth century.

The Economy of Modern Israel

Malaise and Promise

Assaf Razin, Efraim Sadka

In this up-to-date study of the Israeli economy, Assaf Razin and Efraim Sadka cover the entire economic history of the state, focusing on links between Israel's economic growth, its integration into world markets, its tax and welfare systems, and the political conflicts in the Middle East. The authors present the first detailed economic analysis of the Palestinian uprising, showing how the unrest has led to a fall in Arab employment in Israel and serious economic loss to the occupied territories with some loss to Israel. They also examine how the uprising has affected Israel's financial standing internationally and the inflow of foreign aid. Razin and Sadka see promise for Israel's economy in the waves of immigration from the former Soviet Union, despite the current difficulties in absorbing the immigrants; in the coexistence of a flourishing and highly competitive private sector with a relatively large public sector, which is undergoing privatization; and in a tax structure that encourages long-term saving and business growth. By examining the interplay between the exchange rate, interest rates, and monetary and anti-inflation policies, the authors investigate the possibilities for renewed growth and conclude that the future of Israel's economy crucially depends on serious efforts to secure peace in the Middle East.

Affluence and Poverty in the Middle East

Mohamad Riad El Ghonemy

Focuses on the causes and consequences of poverty and inequality in the Middle East region, and examines how particular governments and NGOs have responded to inequalities in the distribution of wealth.

The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

John Maynard Keynes

In 1936 Keynes published the most provocative book written by any economist of his generation. Arguments about the book continued until his death in 1946 and still continue today. This new edition, published 70 years after the original, features a new introduction by Paul Krugman which discusses the significance and continued relevance of The General Theory.

Lead Us Into Temptation

The Triumph of American Materialism

James B. Twitchell

Twitchell challenges the self-help movement, the recycling craze, Yuppie Guilt, and Oprah to reveal the heart of consumerism and what it tells us about ourselves. 36 illustrations.

The Great Divide: Regional Inequality and Fiscal Policy

William Gbohoui, W. Raphael Lam, Victor Duarte Lledo

Growing regional inequality within countries has raised the perception that “some places and people” are left behind. This has prompted a shift toward inward-looking policies and away from pro-growth reforms. This paper presents novel stylized facts on regional inequality for OECD countries. It shows that regional disparity in per-capita GDP is large (even after adjusting for regional price differences), persistent, and widening over time. The paper also finds that rising nationwide income inequality is associated with both rising within-region income inequality and widening average income across regions. The rise in inequality is related to declining incentives for interregional labor mobility, especially for poor households in lagging regions, which are estimated to reduce by as much as one-third in the United States. Against these facts, the paper proposes a framework to identify whether, how and by whom fiscal policies can be used to tackle regional inequality. It outlines conditions under which those policies should be spatially-targeted and illustrates how they can be complementary to conventional means-testing methods in mitigating income inequality.

Income Inequality, Regional Disparities, and Fiscal Decentralization in Industrialized Countries

Agnese Sacchi, Simone Salotti, National University of Ireland, Galway. Department of Economics

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Fiscal Decentralization and the Poor

Christopher Farouk Hussain

In recent years, many governments in developed and developing economies have implemented reforms to decentralize tax raising powers, the supply of public services, and other functions previously delivered by central governments, with the aim of achieving greater government accountability and more efficient and effective public services. In this thesis, I examine empirically the effects of fiscal decentralization on several key areas of public policy, including: poverty and income distribution (chapter 3), public healthcare and public education (chapter 4), and citizen trust in government (chapter 5). In order to examine the effects of fiscal decentralization I produce a fiscal decentralization dataset comprising of a range of indicators for tax and spending decentralization; subnational government autonomy; local government accountability and local government size (land area and population). Using this dataset, I produce the following findings. First, in chapter 3 tax and spending decentralization can help reduce income inequality in high income countries, and increase absolute poverty in low and middle income countries. Furthermore, fiscal decentralization appears to be more beneficial for the poor when the average size of local jurisdictions is smaller. Second, in chapter 4 I find that there is no clear relationship between fiscal decentralization and the level of public healthcare and public education provided. Instead, fiscal decentralization appears to improve vaccination coverage over time, when subnational governments have autonomy over expenditure, and when there is a higher level of public spending on healthcare. Third, in chapter 5 I find that fiscal decentralization has no clear effect on citizen trust in government; however, tax and spending decentralization has contrasting effects depending on the number of tiers of government (government structure) and the average population size of local jurisdictions. The main conclusion is that fiscal decentralization can have an impact on the key areas of public policy examined in my research, however these effects are often not observed through tax and spending decentralization, but rather other aspects of fiscal decentralization, including the closeness of local government to local citizens, local government autonomy and accountability.

Inequality and Fiscal Policy

Mr.Benedict J. Clements, Ruud A. de Mooij, Mr.Sanjeev Gupta, Mr.Michael Keen

The sizeable increase in income inequality experienced in advanced economies and many parts of the world since the 1990s and the severe consequences of the global economic and financial crisis have brought distributional issues to the top of the policy agenda. The challenge for many governments is to address concerns over rising inequality while simultaneously promoting economic efficiency and more robust economic growth. The book delves into this discussion by analyzing fiscal policy and its link with inequality. Fiscal policy is the government’s most powerful tool for addressing inequality. It affects households ‘consumption directly (through taxes and transfers) and indirectly (via incentives for work and production and the provision of public goods and individual services such as education and health). An important message of the book is that growth and equity are not necessarily at odds; with the appropriate mix of policy instruments and careful policy design, countries can in many cases achieve better distributional outcomes and improve economic efficiency. Country studies (on the Netherlands, China, India, Republic of Congo, and Brazil) demonstrate the diversity of challenges across countries and their differing capacity to use fiscal policy for redistribution. The analysis presented in the book builds on and extends work done at the IMF, and also includes contributions from leading academics.

OECD Fiscal Federalism Studies Fiscal Decentralisation and Inclusive Growth in Asia

OECD, Korea Institute of Public Finance

This report looks at the challenges faced by Asian countries in addressing inclusive growth and fiscal decentralisation. A series of studies examines how policies in the region have evolved in accordance with changes in demography and the economic environment, reflecting country characteristics, history and political economy forces.

Decentralization, Interactive Governance and Income Inequality in Europe

Yasemin Irepoglu Carreras

This book examines the extent to which decentralization and interactive governance impact income inequality. Based on in-depth case studies of four European countries – France, Germany, Sweden, and Spain – it assesses how and why higher decentralization leads to higher national and regional income inequality. It will appeal to scholars and students of public policy, comparative political economy, governance, and inequality studies.