The main objective of the paper is to propose a framework in which fiscal health conditions can be assessed and the main determinants affecting fiscal health can be identified, inspite of severe data constraints. The paper draws on big urban agglomerations in India as well as smaller cities as a...

China has been carrying out a significant fiscal decentralization policy for over three decades. However, reforms have largely concentrated on the revenue side of budgets, and generally they have not been coordinated with an explicit strategy for the decentralization of expenditure assignments....

The paper uses China's recent experience to investigate the potential tradeoff between economic growth and regional equity in the design of fiscal decentralization policy. Although present in other countries, this policy tradeoff has been particularly relevant to China over the last two decades....

In this paper, we use pooled data for central-provincial and provincial-local governments in 2000-01, overall involving over 4000 sub-provincial governments, to assess China 's sub-national fiscal equalization practices and outcomes. Our goal is to explain horizontal fiscal disparities between...

This paper presents a simple model to analyze the corrupt behavior of the delivery agency in a donor-delivery agency-recipient organization. Corrupt behavior of the delivery agency can take two forms: (i) “pocketing” or where the delivery agency distributes only a portion of the relief fund...