In this report we highlight some of the progress that has been made in the reform of the system of intergovernmental fiscal relations in Macedonia, but we dedicate more space and attention to those areas of the system where challenges still remain. The report is structured along the main pillars...

Recent socio-spatial studies point out a number of ongoing trends in the “scale division of labor of the state,” including among others, “destatization,” "denationalization, and “internationalization.” We draw on the literature in public economics to review several approaches to...

Many countries around the world are currently engaged in one way or another in policy debates or reforms of their system of intergovernmental fiscal relations. While the policy dynamics vary greatly from country to country, the focus of such reform efforts can generally be categorized into one...

The international experience shows a variety of approaches to the organization and degree of decentralization in tax administration. It is quite common to observe, even in countries that are otherwise significantly decentralized as is the case in the Scandinavian Countries, a highly centralized...

National equalization policies often are concerned with the quality and accessibility of services delivered at the lowest level (or local) government. When these policies are implemented in a hierarchical fashion through the intermediate level governments, national equalization policies need to...

In this paper we take stock of what the current system of sub-national governments is like in Egypt and then build on this assessment to suggest the form of decentralization that may be both effective and politically feasible. Practically every aspect of intergovernmental relations in Egypt...

This paper analyzes the effect of urbanization on the poverty level. Our theoretical model suggests a U-shape relationship between the level of urbanization and poverty. Urbanization contributes to poverty reduction but at much higher levels, urbanization leads to increases in poverty....

The first goal of this paper is to develop a taxonomy of decentralization measures showing their relationship to the primary theoretical aspects of decentralization and how the different measures are related to each other. The second goal of the paper is to argue convincingly that from an...

Until 2009, the Russian economy had been enjoying above 5% annual growth since it hit bottom along with the oil prices in 1998. However, the dynamics of the economic recovery have been very uneven across Russian regions. Thus, the determinants of regional economic growth are likely to have a...

Outside the United States, fiscal equity is a common explicit objective for intergovernmental transfers at the central and regional levels, with transfers often having specific equalization targets. In contrast, the United States does not have a comprehensive federal transfer scheme for explicit...