Should fiscal equalisation and regional policy goals and tools be disentangled?
利用西班牙区域资助体系中政策目标和工具混合的特点，检验均等化转移支付是否影响区域收敛，发现财政均等化和区域转移支付均有显著的凹形收敛促进效应，但工具和目标重叠导致的资金过剩或不足与区域收敛无显著关系。
We exploit the mixture of policy goals and instruments of the Spanish regional funding system (RFS) to test whether equalisation transfers impact regional convergence. Using fixed effects and two-stage least squared estimation with instrumental variables (2SLS-IV) models and data for 15 regions for the period 2002–18, we find that both fiscal equalisation and regional transfers show a significant concave convergence-promoting effect, which is larger for regional transfers. However, funding excess/deficit caused by overlapping tools and objectives in the RFS does not have a significant relationship with regional convergence. These results are in line with the Tinbergen rule, since it is more cost-effective to promote regional convergence through regional policy funds.