Ralf Hepp

Regional Risksharing and Redistribution in the German Federation

We provide empirical estimates of the risksharing and redistributive properties of fiscal equalization among the states of the German federation. Fiscal equalization serves as a mechanism to insure state budgets against asymmetric revenue shocks, but provides almost no insurance against regional income shocks. Equalization responds only weakly to income differentials but strongly to tax revenue differentials across states. A further result is that the correlation of state tax revenues with state GDPs has declined over time. This may reflect a weakening in state tax efforts in response to the adverse incentive effects of fiscal equalization.

Can Debt Relief Buy Growth

The purpose of the paper is twofold. First, I investigate whether numerous debt initiatives during the 1980s and 1990s have had a significant effect on economic growth rates in developing countries in general. The major initiatives during that time period were negotiated as bilateral agreements under the guidance of the Paris Club of Creditors. These agreements were complemented later on by the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) debt relief initiative in 1996 and its “enhanced” version in 1999. I find that, on average, debt relief has no effect on growth rates of developing countries. The second question I address in this paper is whether the effect on growth rates was different for different subsets of developing countries. I find that countries that are not classified as HIPC have benefited significantly from debt relief, whereas the growth rates of HIPC countries have been unaffected.