Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 19th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview Fiscal Policy Author(s) Agnieszka Kopanska University of Warsaw Warsaw Poland Andrzej Porretta-Tomaszewski Title Influence of EU grants on local government spending behaviours. Case study for Polish rural municipalities. File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Abstract Poland is great beneficent of EU grants policy. Important part of this help goes to local governments for their investment expenditure. Specific grants are especially for environmental and transport projects. Grants influenced local government spending or more generally financial policy via income and substitution effects, but also “public choice” problems. There are at least 3 results of grants: • New projects are financed, which otherwise not occurred, • Spending upon local government services other than the supported are growing • Additional service expenditures is used instead to finance reduction in current or future levels of local taxation (Bailey S., 1999; p. 184) In my paper I would like to analysed that affects for Polish municipalities. The expenditure determinants model (using panel data for years 2004-2010) will be construct to find how EU grants changed investment policy of Polish municipalities. The most important questions, I want to answer is “How investments financed from grants influence future financial situation of local units?” New assets bought or built from grants would forced operational spending of local governments. Also the debt issued for that projects, which was in 2009 about 10% of whole new local governments debt imposed operational expenditure. The importance of this change for years 2004-2010 will be analysed in my paper. It will be study structure and level of operational spending and its influence on operational balance of local budgets.
