This paper assesses the impact of government fiscal policies on income inequality in Asia. It discusses the role and effectiveness of redistributive fiscal policies and quantifies the effects of taxation and government expenditure on income distributions. Panel estimation for 150 countries with...

The main focus of this paper is on the potential role that taxation and public expenditure policies play in general in affecting income distribution. We find that progressive personal income taxes and corporate income taxes reduce income inequality. The effect of corporate income taxes seems to...

There are many positive things associated with subnational borrowing, including additional funding or promoting intergenerational equity. But it may also endanger fiscal sustainability and macro stability due to moral hazard and soft budget constraints. Thus borrowing controls are justified and...

Despite the extensive international experience with the assignments of revenue sources to different levels of government, the public finance literature still lacks a general theory of revenue assignments. Two sets of arguments have been separately developed in the literature to explain and guide...

Decentralization is among the most important global trends of the new century, yet there is still no consensus on how to design political institutions to realize its benefits. In this paper, we investigate the political conditions under which decentralization will improve the delivery of public...

This paper analyses the problem of sub-national revenue mobilization in Peru and proposes several policy reforms to improve collection performance while maintaining a sound revenue structure. We analyze the current revenues of regional and municipal governments and identify the main priorities...

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...

Although the presence of objective formula-based grants is an important component of a stable, equitable and efficient system of intergovernmental fiscal relations, the final incidence of grants is not always according to what is stated in the formula because there are other intervening...

This paper examines the impact of fiscal decentralization on both public investment in innovation (measured as the share of research and development - R&D - spending in total government budget) and on the intensity of basic research within the public R&D bundle. We present a theoretical model...

Pakistan has consistently performed low on taxation, with revenue collection hovering around 10 percent of GDP. Tax reforms have been attempted but without significant gains in revenue collection. Due to the recalcitrance of tax revenues, the tax authority attempted to enlist voluntary...