Regional government access to market funding

Abstract

ResearchSpain’s regional governments (or “autonomous communities”) have regularly resorted to debt to fund themselves in recent decades. This has come about in parallel with the progress seen in the transfer of budgetary powers since the current constitutional regime was set in place.1 In turn, access to debt by regional and local authorities is part of a global trend, associated with the across-the-board increase in budgetary decentralisation in many advanced and emerging economies over this period, along with increased investor demand for sub-national public debt on international capital markets