In China, most of the service delivery responsibilities are assigned to the subnational governments. Yet for reasons of efficiency in tax collection and administration, the central government collects revenues far in excess of its expenditure needs. In 2003 the central government collected 70...

Intergovernmental fiscal transfers are a dominant feature of subnational finance in most countries. They are used to ensure that revenues roughly match the expenditure needs of various orders (levels) of subnational governments. They are also used to advance national, regional, and local area...

This paper attempts to: (a) determine whether governments have continuously attempted to align revenues or spending to control the deficit; (b) test for causality between taxes and spending; and (c) quantify the causality effects by; (i) estimating an error correction model, and (ii) calculating...