Jorgez Martínez-Vázquez
Biographic Data
| ID | 4253705 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jorgez Martínez-Vázquez |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jorgez |
| FAMILY NAME | Martínez-Vázquez |
| SIGNATURE | MARTÍNEZ-VÁZQUEZ J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Georgia State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2230-9204 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 34 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 188 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 34 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1986 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Decentralisation and the governance of extreme events
Las preferencias ciudadanas hacia alternativas de política fiscal en Estados descentralizados: Armonización tributaria y competencia fiscal en España
La eventual desconexión entre las preferencias de los votantes y las políticas concretas es de especial interés en Estados descentralizados, donde cualquier iniciativa política también puede verse como una erosión o un refuerzo del autogobierno. El objetivo de este artículo es aplicar este marco conceptual a la armonización del Impuesto sobre Sucesiones y Donaciones español (ISD), contrastando econométricamente si los ciudadanos que viven en comu…
Puede el borrador mejorar el cumplimiento tributario? los efectos del programa Renta Web desde una perspectiva de sociología tributaria
A partir de los datos contenidos en la oleada de 2016 del Barómetro Fiscal del Instituto de Estudios Fiscales, este trabajo explora si los datos fiscales que la Agencia Tributaria proporciona a los contribuyentes del IRPF influyen en la moral fiscal y en el modo en el que los contribuyentes cumplimentan su declaración. Mediante modelos probit contrastamos si los datos fiscales aumentan la moral fiscal. En segundo lugar, contrastamos si los datos …
Fiscal decentralization and structural versus cyclical unemployment levels
The literature on fiscal federalism has long debated whether fiscally decentralized countries are inherently more economically and fiscally unstable. This paper contributes to this literature by analyzing the impact of fiscal decentralization on one of the most important dimensions of macroeconomic stability, the unemployment level. This is the first study in the literature to address the relationship between fiscal decentralization and unemploym…
Evidence on economies of scale in local public service provision: A meta‐analysis
The standard theory of optimal jurisdictional size hinges on the existence of economies of scale in the provision of local public goods and services. However, despite its relevance for forced local amalgamation programs and related policies, the empirical evidence on the existence of such economies of scale remains elusive. The main goal of this paper is to produce an updated and comprehensive quantitative review of the existence of economies of …
The Role of Historical Malaria in Institutions and Contemporary Economic Development
Extreme events and the resilience of decentralised governance
Extreme events, such as economic crises, natural disasters or military conflicts, can affect the balance between centralisation and decentralisation forces across countries and transform, temporarily or more permanently, the design of multilevel governance. Using a panel of 91 developing and developed countries from 1960 to 2018, and another for Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries between 1995 and 2018, we exam…
The Long and Winding Road to Local Fiscal Equity in the United States: A Fifty-Year Retrospective
Unlike many other countries, the United States does not have a comprehensive federal transfer scheme for explicit fiscal equalization but rather employs an array of categorical and block grants, some of which are formula-based while others are project-driven. However, the allocation of many of these grants has equalization effects resulting in the narrowing of fiscal disparities among jurisdictions. Few studies have attempted to quantify the exte…
When does foreign direct investment lead to inclusive growth
Foreign direct investment (FDI) is widely considered among the most effective instruments for the promotion of economic development. However, not all FDI leads to inclusive economic growth, lifting the welfare of the poorest groups. This paper examines the conditions under which FDI can effectively lead to inclusive growth. By using a fixed effects regression with annual data for 67 countries from 1990 to 2015, we find that FDI has a positive eff…
Devolution in the U.S. Welfare Reform: Divergence and Degradation in State Benefits
The passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) in 1996 devolved responsibility for the design of welfare programs from the federal to state governments in the U.S. The strategies implemented to achieve some of the main goals of the reform might have had the effects of reducing the protection received by the most vulnerable households and increasing differences in benefit levels across states. We estima…
Vertical fiscal imbalance and local fiscal indiscipline: Empirical evidence from China
Fiscal decentralization and interregional Capital misallocation: Evidence from China
Misallocation of factors of production has been recently viewed as a promising explanation accounting for the large difference in total factor productivity (TFP) across countries. This article differs from previous studies by concentrating on interregional capital misallocation and by focusing on the role of fiscal decentralization in shaping misallocation. Using a city level panel data set, we measure intra-provincial and inter-city capital misa…
Welfare benefits in highly decentralized fiscal systems: Evidence on interregional mimicking
A Theoretical Rationale for the Fiscal-Gap Model of Equalization Transfers
This paper develops a formal framework to explain the rationale of the model of the fiscal gap (the difference between a jurisdiction's expenditure needs and fiscal capacity), arguably the most popular model used by countries globally, recommended by applied economists for equalization transfer program design. The framework addresses the problem of accountability and follows a normative approach to derive the conventional fiscal-gap formula and t…
Decentralization after the Great Recession: Fine-tuning or paradigm change
The general question addressed in this special issue of Regional Studies is whether the Great Recession of 2008 affected the political consensus about decentralization and the conventional wisdom about its impact on economic, political and social outcomes. The present introduction emphasizes the two main lines of enquiry that cut across all the papers in this issue. First, the effects of the Great Recession on the relations between national and s…
Fiscal Decentralization and Public Investment in Innovation: A Country Panel Analysis
This article presents a first analysis of the potential link between the level of fiscal decentralization of a country and its public investment in innovation. We present a theoretical model where a “benevolent government” invests in research and development (R&D) aiming at maximizing net income, and R&D results are subject to interregional knowledge spillovers. The model predicts that decentralization leads to a lower level of public spending on…
The politics of fiscal federalism: Building a stronger decentralization theorem
We explore how party structures can condition the benefits of decentralization in modern democracies. In particular, we study the interaction of two political institutions: democratic (de)centralization (whether a country has fiscally autonomous and elected local governments) and party (non)integration (whether power over local party leaders flows upwards through party institutions, which we model using control over candidate selection). We incor…
Identifying and disentangling the impact of fiscal decentralization on economic growth
A problem with observational equivalence: Disentangling the renter illusion hypothesis
The renter illusion hypothesis argues that renters are more likely to support local public expenditures than homeowners because of a misperception about the actual costs and benefits they face. Numerous empirical studies have produced mixed results which are difficult to interpret because of the lack of micro foundations for the renter illusion hypothesis. This paper helps fill that gap by introducing in a theoretical model the concept of renter …
Fiscal stability during the Great Recession: Putting decentralization design to the test
This paper provides an empirical analysis aimed at disentangling the roles played by decentralization level and design as well as the extended decentralized framework provided by subnational borrowing rules and fiscal responsibility laws on a country’s fiscal stability. Using Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries’ data from the period 1995–2014, strong regularities are found regarding the effects of decentralizat…
Rethinking the Political Economy of Decentralization: How Elections and Parties Shape the Provision of Local Public Goods
Decentralization is among the most important global trends of the new century, yet there is still no consensus on how to design political institutions to realize its benefits. In this paper, we investigate the political conditions under which decentralization will improve the delivery of public goods. We begin by incorporating insights from political science and economics into a rigorous and formal extension of the “decentralization theorem”. Our…
The Impact of Fiscal Decentralization: A Survey
In this paper, we offer a comprehensive and updated review of the impact of fiscal decentralization on the economy, society and politics. Our first target is the examination of two crucial and yet unsolved issues in the empirical literature on decentralization: the proper measurement of decentralization itself and its potential endogeneity in econometric estimates. Then, we discuss the main existing findings on the effects of decentralization on …
Reexamining the determinants of fiscal decentralization: What is the role of geography
This paper contributes to the existing literature on the determinants of fiscal decentralization by exploring in depth the empirical relevance of physical geography as a determinant of fiscal decentralization; more geographically diverse countries show greater heterogeneity among their citizens. The theoretical framework imbeds geography into the concept of spatial decay in the provision of public services and our empirical estimation employs a p…
The Challenge of Designing Capital Equalization Transfers: An Application to Spanish Regions
This article analyzes the main design issues of capital transfers with an equalization objective within a system of sub-national finance. Although there is a vast literature and ample policy practice with the design of recurrent equalization grants, there is a dearth in the fiscal federalism literature at both the theoretical design and actual practice levels on how to use capital transfers with an interregional equalization objective. The main a…
Tax morale affects tax compliance: Evidence from surveys and an artefactual field experiment
Fiscal Decentralization and Economic Growth
The tradeoff between growth and equity in decentralization policy: China's experience
Identifying and disentangling the impact of fiscal decentralization on economic growth
Rethinking the Political Economy of Decentralization: How Elections and Parties Shape the Provision of Local Public Goods
Decentralization is among the most important global trends of the new century, yet there is still no consensus on how to design political institutions to realize its benefits. In this paper, we investigate the political conditions under which decentralization will improve the delivery of public goods. We begin by incorporating insights from political science and economics into a rigorous and formal extension of the “decentralization theorem”. Our…
Alternative value estimates of owner-occupied housing: Evidence on sample selection bias and systematic errors
Fiscal stability during the Great Recession: Putting decentralization design to the test
This paper provides an empirical analysis aimed at disentangling the roles played by decentralization level and design as well as the extended decentralized framework provided by subnational borrowing rules and fiscal responsibility laws on a country’s fiscal stability. Using Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries’ data from the period 1995–2014, strong regularities are found regarding the effects of decentralizat…
Myth and Reality of Flat Tax Reform: Micro Estimates of Tax Evasion Response and Welfare Effects in Russia
We examine the effects of Russia's 2001 flat rate income tax reform on consumption, income, and tax evasion. We use the gap between household expenditures and reported earnings as a proxy for tax evasion with data from a household panel for 1998-2004. We associate large and significant changes in tax evasion following the flat tax reform with changes in voluntary compliance. We develop a consumption-based framework to assess the deadweight loss f…
A fiscal perspective of state rescaling
Recent socio-spatial studies point out a number of ongoing trends in the ‘scale division of labour of the state’, including among others, ‘destatization’, ‘denationalization ’ and ‘inter-nationalization’. We draw on the literature in public economics to review several approaches to measuring state rescaling. We employ these measures to produce empirical evidence on the extent of state rescaling and its determinants. We find that over the last two…
Extreme events and the resilience of decentralised governance
Extreme events, such as economic crises, natural disasters or military conflicts, can affect the balance between centralisation and decentralisation forces across countries and transform, temporarily or more permanently, the design of multilevel governance. Using a panel of 91 developing and developed countries from 1960 to 2018, and another for Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries between 1995 and 2018, we exam…
Decentralization after the Great Recession: Fine-tuning or paradigm change
The general question addressed in this special issue of Regional Studies is whether the Great Recession of 2008 affected the political consensus about decentralization and the conventional wisdom about its impact on economic, political and social outcomes. The present introduction emphasizes the two main lines of enquiry that cut across all the papers in this issue. First, the effects of the Great Recession on the relations between national and s…
The Challenge of Designing Capital Equalization Transfers: An Application to Spanish Regions
This article analyzes the main design issues of capital transfers with an equalization objective within a system of sub-national finance. Although there is a vast literature and ample policy practice with the design of recurrent equalization grants, there is a dearth in the fiscal federalism literature at both the theoretical design and actual practice levels on how to use capital transfers with an interregional equalization objective. The main a…
City Finances and the National Economy
City governments were better prepared to face the 1990–1992 recession than were state governments, and they adjusted their budgets with relatively less fanfare. The absence of widespread bankruptcy notwithstanding, the fiscal position of cities has deterioratedandsome ofthe necessary adjustments were painful. Services were reduced as real per capita expenditure growth declined, taxes were increased, and the entire local government sector remained…
Fiscal Decentralization and Public Investment in Innovation: A Country Panel Analysis
This article presents a first analysis of the potential link between the level of fiscal decentralization of a country and its public investment in innovation. We present a theoretical model where a “benevolent government” invests in research and development (R&D) aiming at maximizing net income, and R&D results are subject to interregional knowledge spillovers. The model predicts that decentralization leads to a lower level of public spending on…
The politics of fiscal federalism: Building a stronger decentralization theorem
We explore how party structures can condition the benefits of decentralization in modern democracies. In particular, we study the interaction of two political institutions: democratic (de)centralization (whether a country has fiscally autonomous and elected local governments) and party (non)integration (whether power over local party leaders flows upwards through party institutions, which we model using control over candidate selection). We incor…
Reexamining the determinants of fiscal decentralization: What is the role of geography
This paper contributes to the existing literature on the determinants of fiscal decentralization by exploring in depth the empirical relevance of physical geography as a determinant of fiscal decentralization; more geographically diverse countries show greater heterogeneity among their citizens. The theoretical framework imbeds geography into the concept of spatial decay in the provision of public services and our empirical estimation employs a p…
Race and the Structure of School Districts in the United States
Welfare benefits in highly decentralized fiscal systems: Evidence on interregional mimicking
IMF Conditionality and Objections: The Russian Case
Emerging economies in crisis typically request assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). After evaluating the situation, the IMF makes a loan available to the country, conditional on certain policy reforms. Governments usually resist many of these measures and negotiation ensues. This paper analyzes the most contentious measures of IMF conditionality in the context of Russia after the August 1998 crisis. The most discussed measures i…
Alternative value estimates of owner-occupied housing: Evidence on sample selection bias and systematic errors
Municipal Capital Maintenance and Fiscal Distress
This paper formalizes and empirically tests the hypothesis that the deficient maintenance of public infrastructure is caused by fiscal distress. We utilize a production-decision framework in which public officials combine maintenance and new capital to produce a desired level of capital services. The behavior implied in the fiscal distress hypothesis is treated as perverse deviations from the optimal production path. The empirical findings from c…
City Finances and the National Economy
City governments were better prepared to face the 1990–1992 recession than were state governments, and they adjusted their budgets with relatively less fanfare. The absence of widespread bankruptcy notwithstanding, the fiscal position of cities has deterioratedandsome ofthe necessary adjustments were painful. Services were reduced as real per capita expenditure growth declined, taxes were increased, and the entire local government sector remained…
Race and the Structure of School Districts in the United States
IMF Conditionality and Objections: The Russian Case
Emerging economies in crisis typically request assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). After evaluating the situation, the IMF makes a loan available to the country, conditional on certain policy reforms. Governments usually resist many of these measures and negotiation ensues. This paper analyzes the most contentious measures of IMF conditionality in the context of Russia after the August 1998 crisis. The most discussed measures i…
Fiscal Decentralization and Economic Growth
The tradeoff between growth and equity in decentralization policy: China's experience
Tax morale affects tax compliance: Evidence from surveys and an artefactual field experiment
A fiscal perspective of state rescaling
Recent socio-spatial studies point out a number of ongoing trends in the ‘scale division of labour of the state’, including among others, ‘destatization’, ‘denationalization ’ and ‘inter-nationalization’. We draw on the literature in public economics to review several approaches to measuring state rescaling. We employ these measures to produce empirical evidence on the extent of state rescaling and its determinants. We find that over the last two…
Myth and Reality of Flat Tax Reform: Micro Estimates of Tax Evasion Response and Welfare Effects in Russia
We examine the effects of Russia's 2001 flat rate income tax reform on consumption, income, and tax evasion. We use the gap between household expenditures and reported earnings as a proxy for tax evasion with data from a household panel for 1998-2004. We associate large and significant changes in tax evasion following the flat tax reform with changes in voluntary compliance. We develop a consumption-based framework to assess the deadweight loss f…
The Challenge of Designing Capital Equalization Transfers: An Application to Spanish Regions
This article analyzes the main design issues of capital transfers with an equalization objective within a system of sub-national finance. Although there is a vast literature and ample policy practice with the design of recurrent equalization grants, there is a dearth in the fiscal federalism literature at both the theoretical design and actual practice levels on how to use capital transfers with an interregional equalization objective. The main a…
Reexamining the determinants of fiscal decentralization: What is the role of geography
This paper contributes to the existing literature on the determinants of fiscal decentralization by exploring in depth the empirical relevance of physical geography as a determinant of fiscal decentralization; more geographically diverse countries show greater heterogeneity among their citizens. The theoretical framework imbeds geography into the concept of spatial decay in the provision of public services and our empirical estimation employs a p…
The Impact of Fiscal Decentralization: A Survey
In this paper, we offer a comprehensive and updated review of the impact of fiscal decentralization on the economy, society and politics. Our first target is the examination of two crucial and yet unsolved issues in the empirical literature on decentralization: the proper measurement of decentralization itself and its potential endogeneity in econometric estimates. Then, we discuss the main existing findings on the effects of decentralization on …
Rethinking the Political Economy of Decentralization: How Elections and Parties Shape the Provision of Local Public Goods
Decentralization is among the most important global trends of the new century, yet there is still no consensus on how to design political institutions to realize its benefits. In this paper, we investigate the political conditions under which decentralization will improve the delivery of public goods. We begin by incorporating insights from political science and economics into a rigorous and formal extension of the “decentralization theorem”. Our…
Identifying and disentangling the impact of fiscal decentralization on economic growth
A problem with observational equivalence: Disentangling the renter illusion hypothesis
The renter illusion hypothesis argues that renters are more likely to support local public expenditures than homeowners because of a misperception about the actual costs and benefits they face. Numerous empirical studies have produced mixed results which are difficult to interpret because of the lack of micro foundations for the renter illusion hypothesis. This paper helps fill that gap by introducing in a theoretical model the concept of renter …
Fiscal stability during the Great Recession: Putting decentralization design to the test
This paper provides an empirical analysis aimed at disentangling the roles played by decentralization level and design as well as the extended decentralized framework provided by subnational borrowing rules and fiscal responsibility laws on a country’s fiscal stability. Using Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries’ data from the period 1995–2014, strong regularities are found regarding the effects of decentralizat…
A Theoretical Rationale for the Fiscal-Gap Model of Equalization Transfers
This paper develops a formal framework to explain the rationale of the model of the fiscal gap (the difference between a jurisdiction's expenditure needs and fiscal capacity), arguably the most popular model used by countries globally, recommended by applied economists for equalization transfer program design. The framework addresses the problem of accountability and follows a normative approach to derive the conventional fiscal-gap formula and t…
Decentralization after the Great Recession: Fine-tuning or paradigm change
The general question addressed in this special issue of Regional Studies is whether the Great Recession of 2008 affected the political consensus about decentralization and the conventional wisdom about its impact on economic, political and social outcomes. The present introduction emphasizes the two main lines of enquiry that cut across all the papers in this issue. First, the effects of the Great Recession on the relations between national and s…
Fiscal Decentralization and Public Investment in Innovation: A Country Panel Analysis
This article presents a first analysis of the potential link between the level of fiscal decentralization of a country and its public investment in innovation. We present a theoretical model where a “benevolent government” invests in research and development (R&D) aiming at maximizing net income, and R&D results are subject to interregional knowledge spillovers. The model predicts that decentralization leads to a lower level of public spending on…
The politics of fiscal federalism: Building a stronger decentralization theorem
We explore how party structures can condition the benefits of decentralization in modern democracies. In particular, we study the interaction of two political institutions: democratic (de)centralization (whether a country has fiscally autonomous and elected local governments) and party (non)integration (whether power over local party leaders flows upwards through party institutions, which we model using control over candidate selection). We incor…
Vertical fiscal imbalance and local fiscal indiscipline: Empirical evidence from China
Fiscal decentralization and interregional Capital misallocation: Evidence from China
Misallocation of factors of production has been recently viewed as a promising explanation accounting for the large difference in total factor productivity (TFP) across countries. This article differs from previous studies by concentrating on interregional capital misallocation and by focusing on the role of fiscal decentralization in shaping misallocation. Using a city level panel data set, we measure intra-provincial and inter-city capital misa…
Welfare benefits in highly decentralized fiscal systems: Evidence on interregional mimicking
The Long and Winding Road to Local Fiscal Equity in the United States: A Fifty-Year Retrospective
Unlike many other countries, the United States does not have a comprehensive federal transfer scheme for explicit fiscal equalization but rather employs an array of categorical and block grants, some of which are formula-based while others are project-driven. However, the allocation of many of these grants has equalization effects resulting in the narrowing of fiscal disparities among jurisdictions. Few studies have attempted to quantify the exte…
Economics (32 works) · Fiscal Policy and Economic Growth (25 works) · Local Government Finance and Decentralization (24 works) · Political science (20 works) · Decentralization (17 works) · Macroeconomics (16 works) · Market economy (15 works) · Public economics (13 works) · Econometrics (10 works) · Fiscal Policies and Political Economy (10 works)