The Function of Redistribution Between Crisis and Inclusion

In and of itself, public debt produces no redistribution to the detriment of future generations. In point of fact, it is the way pertinent resources are spent that brings about such effects. Indeed, under certain conditions, public debt allows the sacrifices imposed on each generation to coincide with the benefits accrued to the generation itself.

Territorial redistribution policies are in existence whenever the allocation of resources—in terms of funding on the part of decentralized institutions or direct interventions on the part of the central authority—does not correspond to the contribution of resources provided by the single communities. The phenomenon is present in different forms and to different degrees at the national and European Union level. Depending on its direction, it is a tool of cohesion policies or of accentuation of existing territorial imbalances. With regard to the national situation, such problems are dealt with in the context of the financial autonomy recognized by the Constitution to Regions and Local Authorities. The territorial allocation of public spending does not come into prominence; rather, the system of equalization of the different fiscal capacities of the regional and local communities is highlighted. With regard to the European situation, the existence of redistributive processes and the direction thereof is instead sought for in the regulation of the EU budget and of the structural funds, and in the way in which quantitative easing has been conceived.

The essay further examines the problems of redistribution that emerge in the matter of indemnification, of town planning and of public contracts. In recent decades, jurisprudence and legislation have devoted more and more attention thereto and have extended the hypotheses in which an indemnification is awarded.