The book assesses the current state of Russia's regional and local fiscal relations, and self-government, and analyzes the related reforms undertaken over the past decade. The analysis is based on the kind of first-hand experience and in-depth knowledge of Russian intergovernmental reforms that...

Recent socio-spatial studies point out a number of ongoing trends in the quot;scale division of labor of the state,quot; including among others, quot;destatization,quot; quot;denationalization,quot; and quot;internationalization.quot; We draw on the literature in public economics to review...

This technical note evaluates the methodology proposed by the Ministry of Finance for the allocation of transfers to subnational governments and suggest a number of alternative options for various grant design elements Overall, the framework laid out in the Budget Code and the implementation...

This paper takes stock of the last 80 years of theoretical and policy literature on the issue of capital grants. In addition, we provide empirical evidence on changes in the relative importance of capital grants, and their impact on fiscal outcomes for a large number of countries. In particular,...

All in all, in this paper we argue that disparities in the availability of and need for capital infrastructure matters for fiscal equity. However, we believe that a proper discussion of this topic should be framed in terms of the incidence of outputs and outcomes of public services produced with...

Belarus is the last command economy left standing in Europe. Because it still has an option of a gradual transition ("Chinese style'"), the study of Belarus’ case can present insights on the counterfactual to the "shock therapy" approach undertaken by the rest of the Central and Eastern...

The fundamental questions addressed in this paper are the following: what is the most appropriate approach to organizing the vertical structure of tax administration, and what are the determinant factors that may make an approach more or less optimal in any particular country. We consider the...