Bulletin n. 3/2010 | ||
January 2011 | ||
Baskaran Thushyanthan |
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Supranational integration and national reorganization: On the Maastricht treaty’s impact on fiscal decentralization in EU countries | ||
in Constitutional political economy , Volume 21, Number 4 / December 2010 , 2010 , 309-335 | ||
We explore the implications of European integration for fiscal decentralization in EU member states with a dataset on 21 OECD countries over the 1975–2000 period. The difference-in-difference methodology is used to establish causality. EU member states are classified as the treatment and non-EU OECD countries as the control group. The Maastricht treaty is interpreted as a quasi-experimental policy intervention that substantially advanced European integration. Our results suggest that tax decentralization has increased in EU countries after the signing of the Maastricht treaty. The treaty’s effect on expenditure decentralization also seems to be positive, but is less clear-cut. | ||