Obviously, only those observations for which all variables had non-missing values can be
used in the empirical models. Unfortunately, this requirement reduces the number of available
observations considerably, primarily because data on net financial liabilities and the
decentralization measures is unavailable for a number of OECD countries. The final dataset
consists of 17 countries,14 and therefore includes just above half of the OECD member
states.
3.3 Bivariate relationships
For a preliminary evaluation of the relationship between fiscal decentralization and public
debt, bivariate plots between the average net financial liabilities, which is our primary measure
of government debt, and the average of each of the three decentralization measures in
the countries in our sample are provided in Figs. 2, 3 and 4.
These figures indicate that net financial liabilities are on average negatively related to
both expenditure and tax decentralization, and positively related to the grant share variable.
Therefore, both expenditure and tax decentralization seem to lead to sounder fiscal policies,
whereas vertical fiscal imbalances that are created by top-down grants seem to increase the
level of indebtedness.
12Note also that some data for Germany before 1991 are unavailable in the OECD’s Economic Outlook
No. 83 database. In these cases, we use previous versions of the Economic Outlook database to obtain the
data for Germany before 1991.
13Note that Belgium ceased to be a unitary country and became officially a federation in 1994. It is also
sometimes argued that Spain is effectively a federation even though it still is formally unitary. Based on the
variation in Belgium (and perhaps in Spain) a federation dummy could be theoretically included in models
with country fixed effects. However, we would have to base the conclusions with regard to this variable on
the within variation in at most two countries. Since this does not seem to be reasonable, we do not pursue this
approach any further.
14Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Spain, Finland, France, Great Britain, Germany, Iceland,
Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, United States.
đang được dịch, vui lòng đợi..