"The Government of China has placed strong emphasis on addressing problems related to agriculture, farmers, and rural society, with the development of a "new socialist countryside" designated as a top priority for the Eleventh Five-Year Plan (2006-2010). The financing of public services in rural...

"This paper presents a methodology to evaluate fiscal decentralization focusing on the potential mis-targeting of intergovernmental fiscal equalization transfers. The approach builds on an explicit comparison and the summary measurement of different (horizontal) allocation distributions across...

"Empowerment of local governments and citizens is a primary object of decentralization. Using the analytic lens of empowerment, the author explores the nature of decentralized governance and how this type of structure is likely to be more or less empowering. His primary concern is fiscal...

The aim of this note is to present and analyze subnational fiscal trends in Russia in the context of overall slowing economic growth and falling oil prices over the last few years. In particular, in 2015, GDP fell by 3.7 percent. Despite efforts to cut expenditures, the federal deficit increased...

"Keefer proposes a new approach to explain why the costs of crisis are greater in some countries than in others. He begins with the premise that many crises result from the willingness of politicians to cater to special interests at the expense of broad social interests. A parsimonious model...