Does decentralization matter for regional disparities? A cross-country analysis

This article looks at the relationship between fiscal and political decentralization and the evolution of regional inequalities in a panel of 26 countries—19 developed and 7 developing—for the period between 1990 and 2006. Using an instrumental variables method, it finds that whereas for the whole sample decentralization is completely dissociated from the evolution of regional disparities, the results are highly contingent on the level of...