This thesis contributes to the fields of Public Economics and Development Economics by studying human capital formation under three scenarios. Each scenario is represented in an individual paper between Chapters 2 to 4 of this thesis. Chapter 2 examines the effect of child care financing, through human capital formation, on growth and welfare. There is an extensive literature on the benefits of child care affordability on labour market participation. The overall inference that can be drawn is that the availability and affordability of appropriate child care may enhance parental time spent outside the home in furthering their economic opportunities. In another front, the endogenous growth literature exemplifies the merits of subsidizing human capital in generating growth. Again, other contributions demonstrate the negative implications of taxes on the returns from human capital on long run growth and welfare. This paper assesses the long run welfare implications of child care subsidies financed by proportional income taxes when human capital serves as the engine of growth. More specifically, using an overlapping-generations framework (OLG) with endogenous labour choice, we study the implications of a distortionary wage income tax on growth and welfare. When the revenues from proportional income taxes are channelled towards improving economic opportunities for both work and schooling investments in the form of child care subsidies, long run physical and human capital stock may increase. A higher level of growth may ensue leading to higher welfare. Chapter 3 answers the question of how child care subsidization works in the interest of skill formation, and specifically, whether child care subsidization policies can work to the effect of human capital subsidies. Ample studies have highlighted the significance of early childhood learning through child care in determining the child’s longer-term outcomes. The general conclusion has been that the quality of life for a child, higher earnings during later life, as well as the contributions the child makes to society as an adult can be traced back to exposures during the first few years of life. Early childhood education obtained through child care has been found to play a pivotal role in the human capital base amongst children that can benefit them in the long run. Based on this premise, the paper develops a simple Overlapping Generations Model (OLG) to find out the implications of early learning on future investments in human capital. It is shown that higher costs of child care will reduce skill investments of parents. Also, for some positive child care cost, higher human capital obtained through early childhood education can induce further skill investments amongst individuals with a higher willingness to substitute consumption intertemporally. Finally, intervention that can internalize the intra-generational human capital externalities arising from parental time spent outside the home - for which care/early learning is required to be purchased for the child - can unambiguously lead to higher skill investments by all individuals. Chapter 3 therefore proposes policy intervention, such as child care subsidization, as the effect of such will be akin to a human capital subsidy. The objective of Chapter 4 is to understand the implications of inter-regional mobility on higher educational investments of individuals and to study in detail the impact of mobility on government spending for education under two particular scenarios – one in which human capital externalities are non-localized and spill over to other regions (e.g. in the form of R&D), and another in which the externalities are localized and remain within the region. It is shown that mobility enhances private investments in education, and all else equal, welfare should be higher with increased migration. The impacts on government educational expenditures are studied and some policy implications are drawn. In general, with non-localized externalities, all public expenditures decline under full-migration. Finally under localized externalities, the paper finds that governments will increase their financing of education to increasingly mobile individuals only when agglomeration benefits outweigh congestion costs from increases in regional population.

The ad hoc Offshore Accords signed between the Martin Government, and each Newfoundland and Nova Scotia have fundamentally altered the landscape of regional redistribution in Canada. The fallout from the Accords has had an immediate impact on the functioning of the Equalization Program and the political factors that inform debate over future reforms. This thesis examines the factors that led to the February 2005 Offshore Accords. It also examines the case of Saskatchewan's treatment under the Equalization Program

The budget of the European Union has accomplished a significant role for European integration in the history of the Union. However, it has not resulted into anticipated developments compatible with the Union&rsquo / s institutional policy reform process in the last decades. The budget has emerged as a consequence of path dependent developments in its historical progress, which has dragged the European Union to a critical stage. It is rather challenging for the Union now to sustain the current structure of the budget, since it exposes some disadvantages to continue with this structure in an enlarging and deepening Union. In spite of various reform proposals, there is no appropriate theoretical ground for the budgetary politics of the European Union to be channelled through strengthening the link between the Union and European citizens. This thesis attempts to approach the existing problems associated with expenditures and revenues of the current budget from the social constructive policy perspective, in line with the major question of &ldquo / how the budget can be made more socially constructive by utilizing expenditures and revenues?&rdquo / The study has three major objectives. Firstly, it presents a historical evolution of the European Union budget in order to explore path dependent developments inherent to its historical progress. Secondly, it offers a critical analysis on the expenditure and revenue sides of the budget. Thirdly, it introduces a social constructivist policy approach on this subject as an alternative to the most prevalent approach of fiscal federalism.

Il fine di questa tesi e’ offrire un contributo per la compresione di due problemi presenti nella letteratura di political economy, il primo dal punto di vista teoretico, il secondo attraverso un’analisi econometrica. Questi due temi sono come i sistemi politici reagiscono rispetto alla scarsita’ di offerta di “buoni” politici, e se i trasferimenti intergovernativi sono influenzati dai fini politici ed elettorali del governo centrale. L’analisi teorica fornisce alcune intuizioni relative alle ragioni per cui osserviamo politici di bravura molto variabile, e quali meccanismi potrebbero invece migliorare la qualita’ della classe politica. L’analisi empirica invece si concentra su un altro problema conseguente all’interazione tra le sfere politica ed economica. I trasferimenti intergovernativi tra Stato centrale e amministrazioni locali e’ stato oggetto di grande attenzione nella letteratura economica. Le ragioni di efficienza ed equita’ che rendono ragione dei trasferimenti intergovernativi sono state esplorate a lungo. Questa tesi si focalizza invece sulle cause di “political economy” di questi finanziamenti. Si e’ infatti tentato di verificare se l’allineamento politico tra sindaci e primo ministro determini o meno la quantita’ di fondi afferenti ad un comune. / This thesis aims to offer a contribution to the understanding of two problems present in the literature on political economy, one from a game theoretical perspective, and the other through an econometric analysis. These two issues are how polities cope with the scarce supply of ‘good’ politicians, and whether intergovernmental grants are affected by the political and electoral goals of politicians in central government. The theoretical analysis attempts to give some insights into the reasons why we observe politicians of very different valence in office, and what are the mechanism that could enhance the quality of the political class. The empirical analysis instead focuses on another problem found in the interaction between the political and the economic spheres. Economic literature extensively described the rationale behind intergovernmental grants, how for example they can help solving externalities between local governments, or contribute to a more equitable distribution of resources among areas of the same country. The political economy literature focuses instead on establishing and testing the less noble sources of intergovernmental grants and the political and electoral strategic reasons that might drive the decisions of the central government regarding the allocation of resources between localities. The first and primary aim of my analysis in that chapter is to verify if political alignment between mayors and prime ministers over time determines the size of grants received by municipalities.

This thesis contributes to the fields of Public Economics and Development Economics by studying human capital formation under three scenarios. Each scenario is represented in an individual paper between Chapters 2 to 4 of this thesis. Chapter 2 examines the effect of child care financing, through human capital formation, on growth and welfare. There is an extensive literature on the benefits of child care affordability on labour market participation. The overall inference that can be drawn is that the availability and affordability of appropriate child care may enhance parental time spent outside the home in furthering their economic opportunities. In another front, the endogenous growth literature exemplifies the merits of subsidizing human capital in generating growth. Again, other contributions demonstrate the negative implications of taxes on the returns from human capital on long run growth and welfare. This paper assesses the long run welfare implications of child care subsidies financed by proportional income taxes when human capital serves as the engine of growth. More specifically, using an overlapping-generations framework (OLG) with endogenous labour choice, we study the implications of a distortionary wage income tax on growth and welfare. When the revenues from proportional income taxes are channelled towards improving economic opportunities for both work and schooling investments in the form of child care subsidies, long run physical and human capital stock may increase. A higher level of growth may ensue leading to higher welfare. Chapter 3 answers the question of how child care subsidization works in the interest of skill formation, and specifically, whether child care subsidization policies can work to the effect of human capital subsidies. Ample studies have highlighted the significance of early childhood learning through child care in determining the child’s longer-term outcomes. The general conclusion has been that the quality of life for a child, higher earnings during later life, as well as the contributions the child makes to society as an adult can be traced back to exposures during the first few years of life. Early childhood education obtained through child care has been found to play a pivotal role in the human capital base amongst children that can benefit them in the long run. Based on this premise, the paper develops a simple Overlapping Generations Model (OLG) to find out the implications of early learning on future investments in human capital. It is shown that higher costs of child care will reduce skill investments of parents. Also, for some positive child care cost, higher human capital obtained through early childhood education can induce further skill investments amongst individuals with a higher willingness to substitute consumption intertemporally. Finally, intervention that can internalize the intra-generational human capital externalities arising from parental time spent outside the home - for which care/early learning is required to be purchased for the child - can unambiguously lead to higher skill investments by all individuals. Chapter 3 therefore proposes policy intervention, such as child care subsidization, as the effect of such will be akin to a human capital subsidy. The objective of Chapter 4 is to understand the implications of inter-regional mobility on higher educational investments of individuals and to study in detail the impact of mobility on government spending for education under two particular scenarios – one in which human capital externalities are non-localized and spill over to other regions (e.g. in the form of R&D), and another in which the externalities are localized and remain within the region. It is shown that mobility enhances private investments in education, and all else equal, welfare should be higher with increased migration. The impacts on government educational expenditures are studied and some policy implications are drawn. In general, with non-localized externalities, all public expenditures decline under full-migration. Finally under localized externalities, the paper finds that governments will increase their financing of education to increasingly mobile individuals only when agglomeration benefits outweigh congestion costs from increases in regional population.

The topic of this diploma thesis is Intraregional differences in fiscal positions of communities. The goal of the thesis was to analyze incomes and expences of communities of the chosen region, to find differences in these incomes and expences, and to specify the cause of their origin. The introductory part cosists of the theory of fiscal federalism, decentralization and position, incomes and expences of communities and horizontal and vertical imbalances. The main part talks about fiscal capacity and fiscal need of individual communities and factors that cause differences in fiscal positions..

This thesis deals with the impacts of the financial crisis on the local government, specifically on the regions and municipalities, in the Czech Republic. The first part describes the causes of the financial crisis and the particular impacts on the US. The thesis starts in the source of the crisis ? in the US, continues to the impact on the EU, but first of all it concentrates on the macroeconomic influences on the Czech Republic. The data from the information systems of Ministry of Finance, state final accounts and current legislative regulations are used to analyse the impacts on the local governments. The changes in the local budgets caused by the economic downturn are analyzed using the revenues and expenditures, which are further classified.

The diploma thesis on the Status and Importance of Local Taxes is focused on a part of tax revenues of municipalities, which are called local taxes according to the budget structure. These revenues are the returns of the municipalities and are of an optional nature. Despite their nature, Act No. 565/1990 Coll., On Local Taxes, limits the tax jurisdiction for setting the charging rate. The aim of the thesis is to analyse the local taxes of a selected region of the Czech Republic on the basis of theoretical knowledge and legislation related to local taxes. For this work, the Vysočina Region was selected. At the beginning, development of taxes in the Czech Republic in 2006 2016 is described. Subsequently, the work goes to the development of Vysočina Region, where local taxes are broken down by particular types. The next chapters are devoted to local charges according to their division in the budget structure in terms of their share on revenues in municipalities in 2016 and the frequency of utilization of the respective taxes in the same year. Based on the calculations, it was found out that the average share of revenues from local taxes on tax revenues in 2006-2011 was around 1.80 %. By introducing a local tax for municipal waste, the share increased and was around 3 % in 2012-2016. This difference was due to the fact that the tax for municipal waste is the major part of the revenue from local taxes, approximately 88 %. The analysis also shows that the most common tax is the one for owning dogs. However, its share on total revenues of local taxes accounted for only 4.3 %. A smaller share (3.78 %) is recorded only by the revenue from the tax for use of the public area, the other taxes got minor contribution.

Submitted by Raphael Guilherme Araujo Torrezan null (raphatorrezan@hotmail.com) on 2017-12-05T12:35:39Z No. of bitstreams: 1 versao final dissertacao (1).pdf: 1527836 bytes, checksum: 79827f848f3b4c4f4b6d4b1d9163e8ca (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Carolina Lourenco null (carolinalourenco@fclar.unesp.br) on 2017-12-05T13:19:45Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 torrezan_rga_me_arafcl.pdf: 1527836 bytes, checksum: 79827f848f3b4c4f4b6d4b1d9163e8ca (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-12-05T13:19:45Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 torrezan_rga_me_arafcl.pdf: 1527836 bytes, checksum: 79827f848f3b4c4f4b6d4b1d9163e8ca (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-09-21 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / Os Estados brasileiros passam por um processo de enfraquecimento fiscal-financeiro com reflexos no investimento, na dívida pública e no desenvolvimento social. A literatura acerca desta problemática se encontra difusa e incompleta, tratando este cenário como resultado de problemas conjunturais momentâneos, marginalizando do debate possíveis causas estruturais, dentre elas, o modelo federativo vigente. Dada a carência de estudos sob essa perspectiva, esta dissertação busca analisar se o atual arranjo federativo tem onerando e enfraquecido os estados brasileiros, levando a um processo de desconstrução deste ente federativo. / Brazilian states go through a fiscal and financial crisis that impact on investment, public debt and social development. The literature about this issue is diffuse and incomplete, which explains this scenario because of momentary economic problems and marginalizes of the debate some structural causes, such as the current federative model. This project evaluates if this overloads and weakened of the Brazilian States are results of the actual federalism model.

A federação é uma forma de Estado adotada modernamente por mais de trinta Países, e consiste numa divisão territorial do poder entre um governo central e governos locais. No Brasil, esta divisão contempla um poder local-estadual e um poder local-municipal. A federação é assimétrica quando aos entes de mesmo nível (local-estadual ou local-municipal) são atribuídos diferentes regimes jurídicos, para compensar ou equilibrar suas diversidades. O chamado federalismo fiscal estuda as receitas e despesas dos entes que integram um Estado federal. No Brasil, sempre se adotou a simetria entre os municípios. Após a análise da posição do município brasileiro na questão fiscal (receitas, encargos e formas de redistribuição de recursos), identificam-se quatro pontos passíveis de mudança normativa, para seu aperfeiçoamento: brecha vertical, guerra fiscal, critérios para criação de municípios e regiões metropolitanas. As propostas formuladas na tese são: a mudança do paradigma da simetria, instituindo-se um regime especial para os municípios com população inferior a dez mil habitantes; a proibição de que sejam criados novos municípios com este porte; novos critérios e procedimentos para criação de municípios; instituição de um conselho de municípios, junto ao Senado Federal; nova forma de rateio do fundo de participação dos municípios, com a criação do fundo de participação das regiões metropolitanas; a serem criadas pela União e geridas através de conselhos formados pelos municípios e Estados-membros participantes, na proporção de sua população, área e economia. / The federation is a form of state, nowadays adopted for more than thirty countries, and consists of a territorial division of power between central government and local governments. In Brazil, this division includes a local-state power and a local-municipal power. The federation is asymmetric when the peer entities (local or municipal) are assigned different legal regimes to offset or balance their diversity. The so-called "fiscal federalism" studies the income and expenses of entities that make up a federal state. In Brazil, where it adopted the symmetry between the municipalities. After analyzing the position of the municipality in question in tax (income, expenses and forms of redistribution of resources), it identifies four points that could change rules for its improvement: vertical gap, the fiscal war, criteria for founding new municipalities and metropolitan regions. The proposals made in the thesis are: a paradigm shift symmetry, by introducing a special scheme for municipalities with populations of less than ten thousand inhabitants that the prohibition of new municipalities are created with this size, new criteria and procedures for creating municipalities, establishment of a municipal council, by the Senate; new apportionment fund participation of municipalities, with the creation of metropolitan regions fund, to be created by the Union and managed by councils of the municipalities and participating States, in proportion to its population, area and economy.