Regional Disparities and Government Quality: Redistributive Conflict Crowds out Good Government

• Autores: Andreas P. Kyriacou, Oriol Roca i Sagalés
• Localización: XIX Encuentro de Economía Pública: Políticas Públicas para la salida de la crisis, 2012, ISBN 978-84-695-1574-7, pág. 42
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • High degrees of regional disparities are likely to be associated with distributional conflicts since relatively wealthy regions will tend to resist net outflows of resources while relatively poor ones will call for greater inter-regional redistribution of resources. In this paper, we argue and provide empirical evidence to support the claim that higher income differences across regions increase the salience of inter-regional redistribution, and as a result, crowd out policies aiming towards improvements in government quality or efficiency. Moreover, we explain and show that government quality suffers when regional disparities are combined with political decentralization or territorially segregated ethnic or linguistic groups, while the presence of shared rule, such that the central and sub-central governments jointly decide policies at the national level, tends to mitigate the negative impact of regional disparities on the quality of government.