| From the beginning of the decade of the nineties, the Economic Theory about Fiscal Federalism has broadened its field of study towards new lines of investigation. More concretely, one of the main concerns of different international organisms, the World Bank amongst others, is to discover if the processes of decentralization, in which the main economies in transition find themselves inmersed, contribute, to a given degree, to the economic growth of their countries. Subsequently, and facing the reconsideration of potential gains derived from the existence of a public multilevel organization, the efforts of leading economists in this emerging field of investigation have been centered on verifying if, in the case of advanced economies, in a similar way, it is possible to find a connection between the phenomena of fiscal decentralization and economic growth. From this perspective, the benefits provided by the establishment of multilevel government structures increase. In fact, from a static perspective, the conventional argument about the decentralization of main economic functions of the Public Sector, finds its justification in the larger gains of efficiency in providing public services. Nevertheless, from a dynamic perspective, the analysis changes its focus to verifying if it is possible to find a cause-effect relationship between fiscal decentralization and economic growth.;In this scenario, (having previously reviewed the main theoretical contributions carried out in economic literature on the capacity of the sub-central governments to generate added value to their territories) we propose as the main objective of investigation, the analysis of the influence that the existent multilevel governmental structure in the Spanish State has had on the economic growth experienced by the Spanish regions in the period 1997-2001.;Therefore, in an effort to empirically verify how the growing public activity (exercised by the Autonomous Communities of Common Regime in the period 1997-2001) has allowed its governors do reallocate, as far as possible, all the available resources from less productive expenses functions towards those that generate a larger added value to their regions. |
