A system of Regionalized Public Accounts for Spain. Methodology and Results for 2005

This paper develops a methodology for the construction of a System of Regionalized Public Accounts(SRPA) using a burden-benefit approach and applies it to the year 2005. The SRPA provides a detailedpicture of the regional distribution of the tax burden and of the benefits arising from public expendi-ture and can be used to make homogeneous comparisons across regions in terms of many budgetaryaggregates. This new statistical tool allows a much richer analysis of the regional incidence of publicsector activity than the standard approach based on the calculation of regional net fiscal balances thathas been used in many previous studies.