財政分權在過去二十年間已成為一個全球性的趨勢。財政分權的經濟理論基礎為其能增進資源配置之效率。首先，一個公共政策由該政策所影響地域範圍之地方政府來制定，必定比該政策由中央政府制定更能反映出地方選民的真實需求。其次，財政分權有助於同級政府間之競爭與創新。在此情況下，世界各國地方政府於該國財政策所扮演的角色，日益重要。同時，地方政府已成為公共服務最主要的提供者。世界各國之中央政府傾向課徵絕大部分稅賦，而地方政府負有執行支出之責任。而且地方政府所負責支出的金額往往超過其自有財源。因此，財政不均現象普遍存在於世界各國。財政不均具有兩各面向：不同級政府支出與自有財源之差異稱為垂直不均，各地方政府同級間支出與自有財源之差異稱為水平不均。本研究之主要目的為： 1. 根據Bird and Tarasov (2003) 的定義，我們計算出台灣地區各級政府垂直不均及水平不均統計量。此外，我們比較台灣與OECD國家之財政不均統計量。藉此比較，我們可以對台灣地區地方財政赤字問題有更全面的瞭解。 2. 我們比較主要OECD國家政府補助款機制，並討論目前台灣中央政府對下級政府的補助方式。 3. 最後我們希望藉由主要OECD國家經驗，提出未來台灣地區政府補助款機制改革之建議。 Fiscal decentralization has been a global trend over the past two decades. An economic rationale for decentralization is that it increases allocative efficiency. First, a policy that is made by a level of government that is closer and more responsive to a local constituency is more likely to reflect the true demand for local public service than the one that is made by a remote central government. Second, decentralization leads to competition among governments and enhances innovations. Under the circumstances, the role that subnational governments (state and local governments in federal countries or province and local governments in unitary countries) play in most countries in the world has become more and more important. Meanwhile, subnational governments have become the main source that provides public service to local community. In most countries, the central government tends to collect most taxes while subnational governments are responsible for more expenditures than can be financed from their own-source revenue. Therefore, fiscal imbalance seems inevitable in most countries in the world. The difference between expenditures and own-source revenues at different levels of government is called vertical fiscal imbalance; meanwhile, the difference in the resources available to governments at the same level of government within each subnational level is called horizontal fiscal imbalance. The purposes of this study are the following: 1. Based on Bird and Tarasov (2003), we calculate several statistics to measure the vertical fiscal imbalance, as well as horizontal fiscal imbalance of Taiwanese subnational governments, municipality and county(city) governments. We further compare Taiwanese fiscal imbalance statistics to those of most OECD countries. By doing this, we can have a clear picture of the fiscal imbalance of Taiwanese subnational governments. 2. We provide a brief discussion of different types of intergovernmental transfer program that are used to deal with the fiscal imbalance in countries under our consideration. We also briefly discuss the current intergovernmental transfer system in Taiwan. 3. We draw a few lessons of intergovernmental transfer programs from OECD countries. Moreover, we provide some guidelines for the reform of the intergovernmental transfer system in Taiwan based on these OECD country experiences.
