Economic stability plays a crucial role in any fiscal and political decentralization process. In the face of financial and economic shocks, when revenues and expenditures are reduced, countries may decide to gather resources at the central level creating a re-centralization scenario or may take away devolved powers and centralize political institutions. Using data from 75 countries, we examine the effects of the economic crisis on fiscal and political decentralization. We find that several types of crises lead to fiscal re-centralization. However, in the case of domestic borrowing crises, the effect is further revenue decentralization, probably reflecting the central government's willingness to empower sub-national governments to avoid similar crises. In addition, we explore the impact of the economic crisis on political decentralization and find that they are concordant with the fiscal decentralization effects, suggesting an alignment of the impact along political and fiscal dimensions of subnational autonomy. We also explore whether the economic crises trigger more permanent rather than just transitory changes in the level of decentralization, and we generally find more long-lasting effects in the case of fiscal decentralization measured from the expenditure side. This pattern is apparent in the cases of inflation and banking crises and is less precise but still present in the cases of currency and external debt crises. The main results are robust to different specifications, estimation methods, and the measurement of decentralization.

中文翻译：

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危机对财政和政治重新集权的影响

经济稳定在任何财政和政治分权进程中都发挥着至关重要的作用。面对金融和经济冲击，当收入和支出减少时，各国可能决定在中央一级聚集资源，创造重新集权的局面，或者可能取消下放权力并集中政治机构。我们利用来自 75 个国家的数据，研究了经济危机对财政和政治分权的影响。我们发现几种类型的危机会导致财政重新集权。然而，在国内借贷危机的情况下，其效果是收入进一步分散，这可能反映出中央政府愿意授权地方政府避免类似危机。此外，我们探讨了经济危机对政治分权的影响，发现它们与财政分权的影响是一致的，这表明影响在地方自治的政治和财政层面上是一致的。我们还探讨了经济危机是否会引发权力下放程度的更持久而非暂时的变化，并且我们通常会发现从支出方面衡量的财政权力下放会产生更持久的影响。这种模式在通货膨胀和银行危机的情况下很明显，虽然不太精确，但在货币和外债危机的情况下仍然存在。主要结果对于不同的规范、估计方法和去中心化的测量是稳健的。