The recent process of political and economic transformation in eastern European countries has not only contributed to the decentralisation of political structure but also significantly enhanced the fiscal autonomy of municipalities belonging to these countries. Although the degree of...

Intergovernmental transfers can be either conditional or unconditional with regard to the autonomy of local governments in spending such financial means. Although fiscal decentralisation has recently been quite pronounced in Eastern European transition countries, the dominance of a purpose-and...

Apart from the countries in transition, a large number of developing (and also developed) countries have also established free economic and trade areas(FETA) with the aim of attracting foreign capital by providing tax incentives, creating employment opportunities and promoting exports and...

Local innovation networks have been considered to be particularly important to innovation and technological change and to the growth prospects of regions and cities in Germany. Accordingly, innovation is a process that results from various (economic and social) interactions of different...

This study identifies the shadow market area of air pollutants based on the Gaussian plume model. Since pollutants are dispersed by wind, transport costs are irrelevant in its formation. Pollutant distribution on the ground level has an asymmetric bell-shape in the wind direction. Apart from the...

At the end of June 1999 the intra-EU duty free shopping was abolished among the fifteen member nations. The opponents of this resolution argued that such a tax-free sales sector created jobs EU-wide and hardly reduced the value added and excise tax revenue of individual countries. In their...

Not only transition countries but also a large number of developing (and developed) countries have established free economic zones (FEZs) with the aim of attracting for-eign capital by providing tax incentives, creating employment opportunities and pro-moting exports as well as regional...

The idea of fiscal decentralisation has become increasingly fashionable world-wide. In some developed countries the systems of intergovernmental finance have evolved gradually and each country has unique features. Transition countries on different continents have had differing reasons and...