Economía Política y Política Fiscal

The construction sector, whether privately or publicly financed, is characterized by potentially large rents and government intervention making it vulnerable to corruption. Consistent with this, both case-study and survey evidence has been provided highlighting the problem of malfeasance in this sector. In this article, we test the proposition that a bigger construction sector is likely to be inimical to clean government based on a panel of 42 countries over the period 1995–2011.

En este artículo se analiza el rol de las transferencias intergubernamentales a partir de un análisis empírico aplicado a un grupo de regiones (departamentos) del Uruguay durante el período 2006-2014.

Idioma: Inglés

Idioma: Inglés

This paper analyses the cyclical fluctuations of public social cash transfers and its components in Uruguay over 1988/Q1 to 2016/Q3. The unobservable cyclical components are extracted from the observable time series using different empirical strategies. The results show that components of public social cash transfers are procyclical and lag the macroeconomics fluctuations. This enables us to say that instead of these cash transfers contributing to stabilizing the Uruguayan economy they have thereby aggravated the business cycle, and through various expenditure items expose the vulnerable groups of society to more adverse economic conditions.

Idioma: Inglés

In this paper we consider how government quality mediates the relationship between fiscal decentralization and regional disparities. Previous work has argued that fiscal decentralization has the potential to reduce income differences across regions but that this potential may not be realized because of governance problems associated with sub-national authorities. Our empirical evidence based on a sample of 24 OECD countries over the period 1984 to 2006 lends a measure of support to this idea. We find that fiscal decentralization promotes regional convergence in high government quality settings but, worryingly, it leads to wider regional disparities in countries with poor governance.

This paper analyzes the long-term relationship between R&D, innovations and productivity in 400 Uruguayan manufacturing firms during the period 2001 to 2009 based on a modified version of the structural model of Crepon, Duguet and Mairesse (CDM).

This article analyses the redistributive efficiency of social transfers and direct taxation in a panel of 28 developed economies during the period 1995-2010. In order to explore how redistribution is achieved through these fiscal policies, a two-stage approach is applied. First, we evaluate their redistributive efficiency–the degree of redistribution attained for a given level of transfers and taxes–by using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). We find lower redistributive efficiency in Southern Europe and the United States and higher efficiency levels in the Nordic and Central European countries and Australia. Second, we use panel regression analysis to identify the determinants of efficiency differences and reveal the crucial role of government quality as well as factors affecting the redistributive profile of fiscal policies.

This article argues that existing empirical work has failed to adequately deal with this possibility. In light of this, it applies a simultaneous equation model which accounts for the joint determination of these three variables, to a sample of 23 OECD countries.

This paper analyses the cyclical fluctuations of public social cash transfers and its components in Uruguay over 1988/Q1 to 2016/Q3. The unobservable cyclical components are extracted from the observable time series using different empirical strategies. The results show that components of public social cash transfers are procyclical and lag the macroeconomics fluctuations. This enables us to say that instead of these cash transfers contributing to stabilizing the Uruguayan economy they have therebyaggravated the business cycle, and through various expenditure items expose the vulnerable groups of society to more adverse economic conditions