Most countries, developed and developing, are fiscally decentralized with regional and local governments of varying importance. In many of these countries, some of these sub-national governments differ substantially from others in terms of wealth, ethnic, religious, or linguistic composition....

Chrystal and Mizen have done researchers and students with an interest in central banking the great service of collecting the most commonly cited papers in this area into two volumes. I have no doubt that these volumes will find their way to the reading lists of many graduate and advanced...