TY  - JOUR
AU  - Inman,Robert P.
AU  - Rubinfeld,Daniel L.
TI  - Fiscal Federalism in Europe: Lessons From the United States Experience
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 3941
PY  - 1991
Y2  - December 1991
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w3941
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w3941.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Robert P. Inman
Department of Finance
Wharton School
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA  19104-6367
Tel: 215/898-8299
Fax: 215/898-6200
E-Mail: inman@wharton.upenn.edu

Daniel L. Rubinfeld
Robert L. Bridges Professor of Law and
Professor of Economics Emeritus
788 Simon Tower, Boalt Hall
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720
Tel: 510/642-1959
Fax: 510/642-3767
E-Mail: drubinfeld@law.berkeley.edu
AB  - The existing political and legal institutions of fiscal policy-making are under challenge. As the United States and the eastern European and Soviet states experiment with policy decentralization, the states of western Europe are looking to a more centralized policy structure via the E.E.C.. This paper seeks to raise issues of importance to all such reform efforts--notably, the need to consider, and balance, the inefficiencies of fiscal policy decentralization (spillovers and wasteful fiscal competition) against the inefficiencies of fiscal policy centralization (policy cycles and localized 'pork barrel' spending and taxes). The need to develop new fiscal policy institutions emphasizing voluntary agreements and responsive 'agenda-setters' is stressed.
ER  -