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Publications in Scientific Journals:

J. Bröthaler, M. Getzner:
"Effects of Fiscal Decentralization on Public Sector Growth in Austria";
Public Finance and Management, 10 (2010), 1; 169 - 205.



English abstract:
The determinants of the growth of the public sector have drawn significant attention by researchers with an increasing focus on the effects of fiscal federalism. The objective of the paper is to test whether fiscal decentralization contributes to the growth of government expenditure in Austria for the period of 1955 to 2007. The empirical results of this paper suggest that the commonly hy-pothesized determinants of total government expenditure may bear some explanatory power in Austrian fiscal policies. Government expenditures seem to be determined by GDP with increases of the size of the public sector until about mid-1990s. Expenditures react to active fiscal policies influencing the unemployment rate. There is also some indication of fiscal illusion of policy makers. We find that fiscal decentralization measured by the share of sub-national expenditure to total government expenditure has a dampening effect on total government expenditure, thus corroborating the hypothesis of the efficiency of a federal system. However, decen-tralization in the Austrian system is mainly attributable to the sig-nificant growth of grants from the national to the sub-national levels of government. Our conclusions therefore cannot be general-ized in terms of an efficiency advantage of a federal over a central-ized system.

German abstract:
In dem Beitrag wird untersucht, ob bzw. in welchem Ausmaß verschiedene Indikatoren der fiskalischen Dezentralisierung zum Staatswachstum in Österreich beiträgen. Die Untersuchung erfolgt für den Zeitraum 1955 bis 2007.

Keywords:
Fiscal federalism, decentralization, growth of public sector, public finance

Created from the Publication Database of the Vienna University of Technology.