The Interregional Incidence of Central Budgets in Federations: Some Evidence from Canada

We review the evidence on the regional incidence of federal budgets in Canada, considering both aggregate results and some specific federal expenditure programs as well as some relevant issues (e.g., the regional effect of some regulatory programs) not captured in fiscal flows. The regional distributional pattern revealed in this analysis is both robust to various reasonable adjustments and relatively stable over time. However, although such studies may provide a useful baseline for assessing performance in some respects, they cannot be used to demonstrate that one region is paying (or receiving) “too much” or “too little” in a meaningful sense.