Advancement to Candidacy Presentation: “Decentralization and Governmental Transfers in Developing Countries. The Case of Paraguay”, Camilo Abbate Granada

Speaker

Camilo Abbate Granada, University of California, Santa Barbara

Biography

Camilo is a PhD student in Economics at UC Santa Barbara. Prior to coming to UCSB he earned his undergraduate degree in Economics at Universidad de Asuncion - Paraguay.

Camilo research focuses broadly on Development and Political Economy. His primary interest is in the decentralization of government in developing countries and the key role that intergovernmental transfers play. After doing his MA at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in Argentina, Camilo became passionate about Causal Inference and taught several statistics and economic classes both at the Undergraduate and Graduate levels in Argentina and Paraguay before pursuing his Ph.D. at UCSB.

Event Details

Camilo will be presenting his Advancement to Candidacy paper, “Decentralization and Governmental Transfers in Developing Countries. The Case of Paraguay”. To access the Advancement paper, you must have an active UCSB NetID and password.

Abstract and JEL Codes

This paper presents evidence on the effects of intergovernmental transfers on financial outcomes of local governments in Paraguay. By incorporating census adjustments that affected the overall volume of transfers to Municipalities, I construct two treatment arms and a control group. Municipalities with a 15% or greater decrease in transfers increased their tax revenues by 14.17 %, whereas municipalities with a 15% or greater increase in transfers decrease their tax revenues by 26.06%. Furthermore, total expenditures in the first group increased, particularly in infrastructure, but decreased in the latter. The results are consistent with recent findings in the literature: the way local governments are being financed plays a role in the quality and quantity of their expenditures.

JEL Codes: H71, H72, I22, R51.