Decentralization and the Productive Efficiency of Government: Evidence from Swiss Cantons
31 Pages Posted: 12 Dec 2006
There are 2 versions of this paper
Decentralization and the Productive Efficiency of Government: Evidence from Swiss Cantons
Decentralization and the Productive Efficiency of Government: Evidence from Swiss Cantons
Date Written: December 2006
Abstract
Advocates of fiscal decentralization argue that amongst other benefits, it can increase the efficiency of delivery of government services. This paper is one of the first to evaluate this claim empirically by looking at the association between expenditure decentralization and the productive efficiency of government using a data-set of Swiss cantons. We first provide careful evidence that expenditure decentralization is a powerful proxy for legal local autonomy. Further panel regressions of Swiss cantons provide robust evidence that more decentralization is associated with higher educational attainment. We also show that these gains lead to no adverse effects across education types but that male students benefited more from educational decentralization closing, for the Swiss case, the gender education gap.
Keywords: decentralization, productive efficiency, local public goods
JEL Classification: H40, H52, H70, I20
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?
Recommended Papers
-
Endogenous Policy Decentralization: Testing the Central Tenet of Economic Federalism
-
Decentralization and the Productive Efficiency of Government: Evidence from Swiss Cantons
By Ben Lockwood and Iwan Barankay
-
Decentralization and Electoral Accountability: Incentives, Separation, and Voter Welfare
By Jean Hindriks and Ben Lockwood
-
Fiscal Federalism and Endogenous Lobbies' Formation
By Massimo Bordignon, Luca Colombo, ...
-
Voting, Lobbying, and the Decentralization Theorem
By Ben Lockwood
-
Centralization and Political Accountability
By Jean Hindriks and Ben Lockwood