In Colombia, the 1991 Constitution established a multi-jurisdictional finance system, with the decentralization of spending to three levels of government (national, departmental, and municipal). Since then, the provision of public bines is the responsibility of the regional leaders; this presupposes, at the same time, the transfer of revenues from higher-ranking governments to lower levels of government, in order to concretize the expenditure. With these conditions, the theory of fiscal federalism contemplates the existence of the Flypaper phenomenon, as the dependence of the territorial governments to finance the expenditure, in greater proportion with national resources than with own resources, which results in a progressive reduction in fiscal effort. For this reason, this article studies the existence of the Flypaper phenomenon in the 123 municipalities of the department of Boyacá in Colombia.
