Fiscal Federalism and Legislative Malapportionment: Causal Evidence from Independent but Related Natural Experiments

44 Pages Posted: 17 Mar 2014 Last revised: 20 Mar 2015

See all articles by Sebastian Galiani

Sebastian Galiani

University of Maryland - Department of Economics

Ivan Torre

Sciences Po - Department of Economics

Gustavo Torrens

Indiana university

Multiple version iconThere are 2 versions of this paper

Date Written: March 2015

Abstract

We exploit three natural experiments in Argentina in order to determine if legislative malapportionment is the cause of the biases existing in the country’s federal tax sharing scheme. We find that legislative malapportionment has had no significant effect on the federal tax sharing scheme during periods when democratic governments were in place; nor did we find any evidence that the tax sharing distribution pattern became less biased under centralized military governments. We argue that these results are attributable to two of Argentina’s institutional characteristics: first, the predominance of the executive branch over the legislature; and, second, the lack of any significant difference in the pattern of geographic representation in the executive branch under democratic and autocratic governments. Thus, the observed biases in the distribution of tax revenues among the Argentine provinces are not caused by legislative malapportionment, but are instead the result of a more structural political equilibrium that transcends the geographic distribution of legislative representation and even the nature of the political regime.

Keywords: Malapportionment; Fiscal Federalism and Natural Experiments

JEL Classification: D72; D78; H3

Suggested Citation

Galiani, Sebastian and Torre, Iván and Torrens, Gustavo, Fiscal Federalism and Legislative Malapportionment: Causal Evidence from Independent but Related Natural Experiments (March 2015). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2409725 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2409725

Sebastian Galiani (Contact Author)

University of Maryland - Department of Economics ( email )

College Park, MD 20742
United States

Iván Torre

Sciences Po - Department of Economics ( email )

28, rue des Saints peres
Paris, 75007
France

Gustavo Torrens

Indiana university ( email )

Wylie Hall, 100 S Woodland Ave
Bloomington, IN 47405-7104
United States
8128568131 (Phone)
47405-7104 (Fax)

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