Local financial distress and fiscal regimes: Evidence from Italy

Abstract

This paper investigates how fiscal regulation may influence lower government finances by devolving greater responsibilities to local policymakers that limit free-riding behaviour and ensure fiscal sustainability. To this extent, the Italian case provides a suitable regulatory setting that has evolved over the years, as almost 600 Italian municipalities experienced financial distress from 1989 to 2018. The aim of this study is two-fold: i) to investigate the historical and geographical evolution of local government bankruptcy procedures and ii) to test whether the exogenous Italian legislation on local government defaults influenced the dynamics of the local financial distress phenomenon, identifying three different fiscal regulatory regimes. Our results show that the regulatory regimes until 2000, which prepared for the government bail-out of local defaults, encouraged municipalities to take advantage of the bankruptcy procedures and after 2001, when the legislative interventions had been updated, there is no longer such incentive. Asymmetric effects are observed when municipalities are analysed by population size, pointing to the need to go beyond a one-size-fits-all approach to fiscal policy.