The aim of this study is to estimate the redistributive, stabiliser and insurance effects at territorial level of the federal budget of Australia, Spain, the USA and of the European Union. This analysis is carried out for the budget as a whole through regional fiscal balances and, separately for the revenues and expenditures. The methodology used is a panel data econometric model. The main conclusion is that in all the cases considered the expenditures have higher effects, both redistributive and stabiliser/insurance, than the revenues and that the size of the European budget should increase in order to be able to develope redistributive policies.

El objetivo de este trabajo es estimar los efectos redistributivo y estabilizador del presupuesto de la Administración Pública Central española en el período 1991-1996 a nivel regional. Este análisis se lleva a cabo para el conjunto del presupuesto a través de los saldos fiscales regionales y, separadamente, para el conjunto de ingresos y gastos y sus principales categorías. La metodología empleada es un modelo econométrico de datos de panel. La principal conclusión es que el presupuesto tiene más poder redistributivo que estabilizador, presentando en ambos casos un mayor poder los gastos que los ingresos.

La teoría de la senda de desarrollo de la inversión directa, elaborada inicialmente por John Dunning en 1981, establece la existencia de una relación en forma de U o J (a través fundamentalmente de cuatro etapas), entre la posición de inversión internacional de un país (que se puede representar por la diferencia entre el stock de inversión directa al exterior y del exterior) y el nivel de desarrollo económico del mismo (representado por el PIB o PNB). En este trabajo, se estudia esta senda para el caso de España y se concluye, a través de un análisis descriptivo y de un estudio econométrico en serie temporal para el periodo 1973-1999, usando datos de Balanza de Pagos, que este país cumpliría los designios de la senda de desarrollo de la inversión directa. Actualmente se encontraría en la tercera de las etapas y transitando ya hacia la cuarta, habiendo estado en la primera etapa hasta 1986, cuando entra en la entonces Comunidad Europea, y habiendo entrado en la tercera a mediados de los noventa, a raíz del aumento que se ha producido en los flujos de inversión directa hacia el exterior. De forma complementaria, además, mediante un estudio econométrico en sección cruzada, se muestra cómo se podría considerar válida también la senda a nivel de comunidad autónoma para España.

In a decentralised tax system, the effects of tax policies enacted by one government are not confined to its own jurisdiction. First, if the tax base is mobile, tax rate increases by one regional government will raise the amount of taxes collected by other regional governments (horizontal tax externality). Second, if both the regional and the federal levels of government co-occupy the same fields of taxation, tax rate increases by one layer of government will reduce taxes collected by the other (vertical tax externality). Third, as Smart (1998) shows, if equalisation transfers are present, an increase in the standard equalisation tax rate provides incentives to raise taxes to the receiving provinces. In order to check the empirical relevance of these hypotheses, this paper estimates provincial tax setting functions with data on Canadian personal income taxation for the period 1982- 96. We find a significant positive response of provincial tax rates to changes in the federal income tax rate, the tax rates of competing provinces, and the standard equalisation rate (only for receiving provinces). We also find that the reaction to horizontal competition is stronger in the provinces that do not receive equalisation transfers.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the dynamics of the per capita GDP over the period 1961-1997 for the Spanish provinces. To avoid issues linked to the cross-sectional regression and the time series approaches, a non-parametric density estimation approach is instead used. The main goal is to show that Spanish provinces had a convergence dynamics during years, but a divergent one in the last decades. After a period of convergence during the sixties and part of the seventies, evidence in favour of intra- groups convergence (or polarization of income) is found during the eighties, and a starting process of divergence and increasing polarization among groups (clustering) is found for the last period analysed (1991-1997). Moreover, the inter-distributional dynamics are analysed for the Spanish provinces, presenting how the provinces have evolved during this period.

We present a model for measuring spillovers resulting from local expenditure policies. We identify and test for three different types of budget spillovers: (i) benefit spillovers from the production of local public goods, (ii) externalities in crowding, caused by non-resident users of public facilities, and (iii) externalities from expenditure competition effects. In order to account for these types of spillovers, we specify a demand of public goods with interactions among local governments. The model is tested for different expenditure categories with a cross-section of data from municipalities of the metropolitan area of Barcelona. We find positive benefit spillovers in spending in Cultural and Sports facilities, and in Parks and Streets maintenance. Externalities in crowding appear in spending on Police, Cultural and Sports facilities, Parks and Streets maintenance, and Street cleaning, Water delivery and Sanitation. Spending on Social services seems to be affected by competition externalities, while there is no evidence of spillovers in the expenditure on General Administration.