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Addis Ababa University Libraries Electronic Thesis and Dissertations: AAU-ETD! >
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http://hdl.handle.net/123456789/3223
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| Title: | THE IMPACT OF FISCAL DECENTRALIZATION ON EDUCATION AND HEALTH OUTCOMES IN ETHIOPIA: A REGIONAL PANEL DATA ANALYSIS |
| Authors: | Mesele, Weldemariam |
| Advisors: | Dr.Tassew Woldehanna |
| Copyright: | Jun-2010 |
| Date Added: | 28-Jun-2012 |
| Publisher: | AAU |
| Abstract: | Fiscal decentralization has formed an important component of recent institutional innovation,
being widely adopted in both developing and developed countries. It has become a major policy
initiative to achieve equity, efficiency, and accountability in the development efforts of many
countries. But surprisingly, there is little agreement in the empirical literature in its effects on a
number of outcomes. Accordingly, this paper aims to evaluate the effects of such kind of
decentralization on basic education and health outcomes in Ethiopia, which undertook a massive
decentralization of fiscal resources to regions in 1994/95 and to districts in 2002/03. We estimate
the impact of this policy by employing a regional panel data set collected from nine regions and
two administrative cities.
The results suggest that although the decentralization has been characterized by some kind of
vertical and horizontal fiscal imbalances, it has had a significant effect on increasing public
primary gross enrollment and completion rates; and on the selected health outcomes too. The
results are also robust to the way fiscal decentralization is measured. Moreover, fiscal
decentralization has achieved a satisfactory equity in terms of both equality of opportunity and
inter-regional equity by reducing disparity in access to basic social services between previously
underserved and better-off regions, suggesting that fiscal decentralization has been a pro-poor
policy. Thus, the study urges policy makers and development agencies to close the existing fiscal
gaps, possibly via fiscal equalization approach and/or relaxing some taxes to lower tiers of
government, for better development outcomes at the grassroots level |
| Description: | A Thesis Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies of Addis Ababa University
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in
Economics (Economic Policy Analysis) |
| URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/123456789/3223 |
| Appears in: | Thesis - Economics
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