View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Research Papers in Economics Czeranka/Odermatt//Frehner: Regulation of Intercommunal Financial Flows with Geostatistics and GIS 1 ERSA 2002 Conference August 27th – 31st in Dortmund, Germany Regulation of Intercommunal Financial Flows with Geostatistics and GIS Marion Czeranka, André Odermatt, Marcel Frehner Corresponding Address: Dr. André Odermatt Department of Geography, University of Zurich Winterthurerstr. 190, CH-8057 Zurich
[email protected] Abstract Usually, some historical, functional, and/or structural indicators are used for the characterisa- tion of municipalities. These variables are structured more or less simple, referring to inhabitant number, political importance, constellation of infrastructure like hospitals and schools, number of jobs, or the like. An application field where a quite specific and at the same time comprehensible classification for each municipality is of fundamental interest, is the local financial adjustment between mu- nicipalities. Therefore, well elaborated methods are needed to define the amount of money which has to be transferred, generally spoken, from rich municipalities to the poorer ones. It is obvious that a pure redistribution of revenues between financially strong and financially weak municipalities would lead in principle to a more or less equal financial outfit. Indeed, this is not sufficient for a fair system of financial adjustment, as such a redistribution method would not consider the specific financial loads of the budgets of different types of municipalities. This paper presents a study carried out for the Canton of Zurich, Switzerland, which made part of the cantonal revision of the system of inter-communal financial adjustment.