Decentralised government – such as local government – allows for better tailoring of goods and services and hence higher levels of economic welfare. However, inequities in wealth can mean that some local governments experience difficulty trying to provide for the needs of their citizens. To try to mitigate these disparities, most systems of local government feature a program of untied equalisation grant transfers. However, proponents of equalisation grants schemes have struggled to provide a convincing moral justification for the practice: often scholars resort to rather unconvincing appeals to Pigou's famous normative dictum that equals should be treated equally. We propose that the natural law Principle of Subsidiarity is a more appropriate and robust moral justification for equalisation grant transfers. Moreover, we show how adoption of a subsidiarity justification would lead to improved grants practice that could be expected to avoid some of the serious problems that plague existing equalisation grant schemes.

中文翻译：

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向地方政府提供政府间均等化赠款的道德正当性与实践——辅助性视角

分权政府——例如地方政府——可以更好地定制商品和服务，从而提高经济福利水平。然而，财富不平等可能意味着一些地方政府在努力满足其公民的需求方面遇到困难。为了试图缩小这些差距，大多数地方政府系统都采用了不附带条件的均等拨款转移计划。然而，平等资助计划的支持者一直在努力为这种做法提供令人信服的道德理由：学者们常常诉诸于相当不令人信服的上诉，即庇古著名的规范性格言，即平等应受到平等对待。我们提出，自然法的辅助性原则是平等赠款转移的更合适和更有力的道德理由。而且，