This paper deals with Russia's federal budget

The paper investigates the intertemporal spending behavior of Scandinavian local governments with particular attention to liquidity constraints imposed by balanced-budget-rules and other regulations. The main finding is that Danish local governments are more able to smooth current expenditures...

In this paper we investigate the determinants of municipal labour demand in Sweden 1988-1995. Utilising a major grant reform in 1993, through which a switch from mainly targeted to mainly general central government grants occurred, we are able to identify which type of grants that have the...

In this paper, we develop an empirical framework for detecting the existence and estimating the magnitude of the softness of a budget constraint. The defining feature of a soft budget constraint is a subordinate organization’s expectations of being bailed out by a superior organization in case...

In their role as agenda setters and implementers of political decisions, bureaucrats potentially have the power to influence decisions in their own favor. It is however difficult to empirically test whether bureaucrats actually are involved in such actions. In this paper we suggest and apply a...

Sweden has undertaken major national reforms of its school sector which, consequently, has been classified as one of the most decentralized ones in the OECD. This paper investigates whether school resources became more unequally distributed across municipalities in connection with the reforms...

This paper aims to understand how corruption responds to financial incentives and, in particular, it is an attempt to identify the causal impact of a wage loss on the prevalence of corruption in the education sector. Specifically, we exploit the unexpected wage cut in May 2010 that affected all...

Present work contains municipal reform implmentation results for 2007. The authors analyzed modifications in the federal legislation regarding local selfgovernance, regional legislation which regulates issues relatyed to newly created settlements in transition period. The authors analyzed...

The paper considers territorial models of local selfgovernance that had emerged in Russian regions prior to the reform and their impact on various aspects of municipal establishments' activities. The authors evaluate the regional law in the area of local selfgovernance and interbudgetary...

Within the framework of this study, we have been monitoring the development of municipal reform from the moment of the enactment of Federal Law No. 131-FZ, “On general principles of the organization of local selfgovernment in the Russian Federation”, until mid-year 2006. This paper describes...