The Incidence of Subsidies to Residential Public Services in Argentina : The Subsidy System in 2014 and Some Alternatives
More than a decade of energy and transport subsidies have weakened Argentina’s fiscal capacity. Following the 2001 crisis, public services tariffs were frozen in an attempt to offset the negative effects on households’ real purchasing power. Howeve...
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2016
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2016/08/26698142/incidence-subsidies-residential-public-services-argentina-subsidy-system-2014-some-alternatives http://hdl.handle.net/10986/24987 |
| Summary: | More than a decade of energy and
transport subsidies have weakened Argentina’s fiscal
capacity. Following the 2001 crisis, public services tariffs
were frozen in an attempt to offset the negative effects on
households’ real purchasing power. However, these subsidies
steadily increased over the years, particularly since 2006,
becoming a significant fiscal burden. Though subsidies can
be a tool to protect the poor, in Argentina they led to
distortions and a large share have been absorbed by upper
classes and non-residential consumers. This report starts by
analyzing the incidence of the 2014 system of residential
federal subsidies to residential public services (defined as
electricity, gas, water and transport) building on the work
by Puig and Salinardi (2015). This paper consists of six
main sections. Section two presents the results on the
incidence of subsidies to public services. Section three
simulates the distributional impacts of alternative systems
for electricity, gas and transport subsidies. Section four
concludes. The methodological Appendix provides full details
of the methods and data used in this paper. |
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