More Than You Can Handle : Decentralization and Spending Ability of Peruvian Municipalities

Loayza, Norman V. ; Rigolini, Jamele ; Calvo-Gonzalez, Oscar

关键词: ACCOUNTABILITY;    AGGREGATE EXPENDITURES;    AGGREGATE FISCAL;    ALLOCATION;    BANK POLICY;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-5763
RP-ID  :  WPS5763

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

In the past three decades, emergingcountries have gone through extensive decentralizationreforms. Yet, there are no studies assessing quantitativelythe relative importance of various factors known to affectthe success of decentralization. This paper builds on acomprehensive dataset the authors constructed for Peru,which merges municipal fiscal accounts with informationabout municipalities' characteristics such aspopulation, poverty, education, and local politics. Thepaper then analyzes the leading factors affecting theability of municipalities to execute the allocated budgetusing complementary methodologies, from least squares toquantile regression analyses. According to the existingliterature and the Peruvian context, the analysis dividesthese factors into four categories: the budget size andallocation process; local capacity; local needs; andpolitical economy constraints. Although all four factorsaffect decentralization, the largest determinant of spendingability is the adequacy of the budget with respect to localcapacity. The results confirm the need for decentralizationto be implemented gradually over time in parallel withstrong capacity building efforts.