LIBRI DI FRANCO OSCULATI

Nella provincia di Pavia erano, e sono, presenti numerosi comuni, molti dei quali di piccole e piccolissime dimensioni. L’industrializzazione del dopoguerra e la connessa immigrazione non sconvolsero il territorio; tuttavia, tra gli anni Sessanta e i primi anni Settanta si manifestava un forte fabbisogno di infrastrutture. Pur aumentando gli investimenti e gli organici, i comuni mantennero una condotta finanziaria prudente anche dopo la riforma tributaria del 1974 che abolì quasi totalmente i tributi locali. La maggioranza dei comuni era di sinistra, ma non sembra che i diversi colori politici abbiano caratterizzato significativamente i comportamenti delle giunte. Il presente saggio cerca di collocare la situazione locale nelle tendenze economiche generali di un periodo contraddistinto da inflazione e dalla formazione di un primo nucleo di debito pubblico nazionale, un lascito fastidioso ma inevitabile.

La delega per attuare l'art. 119 della Costituzione - The Italian Parliament has approved a new arrangement in regional and local financing. Due to wide economic and social differences in the country a larger decentralization entails serious problems in equalization. To cope with expenditures responsibilities of Regions, Provincial Authorities and Communes are divided in more important or fundamental functions and less important or discretionary functions. The former are equalized more generously "according to needs" and the latter only partially "according to fiscal capacities". This distinction seems not totally consistent with the Constitution as well not totally justifiable in terms of autonomy of territorial authorities and unity of their budgets. The question of revenue assignment is substantially unsolved. Regional and local taxes are not large enough and too much weak to warrant a true subnational fiscal autonomy. Last year the central state has abolished the communal tax on owner-occupied residential property. As a result accountability and fairness of municipal governments has been damaged. The new law does not remedy this error. In future regional and local authorities will extensively rely on a system of revenue-sharing.

Il volume raccoglie alcuni dei lavori presentati alla riunione annuale del 2006 della Società Italiana di Economia Pubblica sul tema dei servizi pubblici. Gli studi raccolti forniscono una panoramica articolata dei diversi temi sul tappeto, attraverso l’analisi delle tematiche generali – i problemi della liberalizzazione e della privatizzazione, la definizione dei rapporti pubblico-privato e i profili di articolazione territoriale dei servizi pubblici – e delle tematiche specifiche collegate ai diversi settori: energia, servizi idrici, mobilità e trasporti.

The Italian government has recently proposed the introduction of the so called De-Tax (or A-Tax) as a tool to fund more enerously development and anti-poverty programs in poor countries. The basic idea is simple: if the seller of a given good or service decides to devote a fraction of her proceeds to some development, humanitarian purpose, he will be supported by the government through a reduction in indirect taxation (VAT). Basically, the De-Tax adds to the already existent incentives to «virtuous» behaviours, which operate through direct taxation, a further incentive operating through indirect taxation. In the paper we analyse some of the implications associated to this new mechanism, and we try to understand whether the De-Tax could be thought of as a good substitute for the Tobin Tax, the other well-known proposal on the policy arena. It will be elucidated that the idea of the De-Tax has both advantages and disadvantages compared to the current situation. On the one hand, being a mechanism based on indirect taxation, it introduces some more distorsions in the process of resources’ allocation; on the other, it is likely to make generous behaviours a bit less costly, to make the transaction costs associated to ethical behaviours much lower than they are under the current fiscal regime. As to the comparison with the Tobin Tax, we will argue why it does not make a lot of sense. The De-Tax is intended to promote a virtuous behaviour, whereas the Tobin Tax is thought of as a way of discouraging a vicious behaviour; the De-Tax can be seen as a subsidy introduced to deal with a positive externality, whilst the Tobin Tax should be conceptualised as a tax to mitigate a (financial) market failure. In a well-designed fiscal system there may be some room for both these tools.