Abstract

In any federation where intergovernmental transfers form a major chunk of revenues for sub-national governments; determinants of allocation shares have always been a salient issue. This paper makes an empirical attempt to investigate whether there are any political motives behind the distribution of central funds among sub-national governments in case of India. We find that in aggregate terms relatively higher per capita transfers are channelled towards states inhabited by large swing voters to gain/maintain control over such states. The significance of the coefficients of interaction terms between swing; alignment and election year dummies reveals that in case of discretionary transfers; during election years; swing states are receiving disproportionately larger shares while during non-election years core states are favoured disproportionately. It gives an empirical insight into the manner whereby central political party targets both core and swing states for political returns in terms of higher votes. Normative considerations were also found relevant as states with higher rural population were found to receive higher per capita transfers. Representation and alignment were found to be insignificant determinants of allocation shares.

摘要

在政府间转移成为地方政府收入的主要部分的任何联邦中；分配份额的决定因素一直是一个突出的问题。本文对印度的中央资金在地方政府之间的分配背后是否存在任何政治动机进行了实证尝试。我们发现，总体而言，相对较高的人均转移支付被引导到有大量摇摆选民居住的州，以获得/维持对这些州的控制。挥杆间交互项系数的显着性；调整和选举年假人表明，在酌情转移的情况下；在选举年；摇摆州获得了不成比例的更大份额，而在非选举年，核心国家获得了不成比例的青睐。它对中央政党如何针对核心和摇摆州以更高的选票获得政治回报的方式提供了实证洞察。还发现规范性考虑是相关的，因为发现农村人口较多的州接受的人均转移支付较高。代表性和一致性被发现是分配份额的微不足道的决定因素。