Urbanisation in China has long been held back by various restrictions on land and internal migration but has taken off since the 1990s, as these impediments started to be gradually relaxed. People have moved in large numbers to richer cities, where productivity is higher and has increased...

The paper is devoted to problems of ensuring balanced and sustainable development of a very specific and important metropolitan region of the Russian Federation - the region of St Petersburg and surrounding it Leningrad Oblast. St.Petersburg (City) and Leningrad Oblast (Region) are both...

In the literature on urban studies, the size distribution of cities has been attributed to a random growth process where transportation externalities, congestion costs, and capital formation all play a crucial role. However, the classic economics models do not fully capture the impact of...

Using a nationwide county-level panel dataset for the years 1995-2009, this paper conducts the first analysis in the literature to examine the impacts of fiscal decentralization and fiscal equalization, both measured at the sub-provincial level, on intra-provincial inequality in China. While...

This paper analyses the case of a local secession, i.e. the birth of a new local jurisdiction by separation from an existing one. We present a stylized model in which society is composed of heterogeneous groups and individuals have an homophily bias. The model predicts that: i) separations, such...

In Deutschland bestehen regional große Unterschiede. Neben dem Ost-West-Gefälle ist auch ein Nord-Süd-Gefälle zu beobachten. Das Grundgesetz fordert von der Politik, gleichwertige Lebensverhältnisse herzustellen. Im Koalitionsvertrag für die 19. Legislaturperiode wird dieses Ziel sowie die...

Local expenditures in neighbouring municipalities can be spatially interdependent due to spillovers, cooperation effects, competition effects or mimicking. In this paper, we aim to test the spatial interdependence of local public expenditures using data on 205 Czech municipalities. We found...

Within the framework of spatial tax competition with cross-border shopping, we examine the choice of tax method between ad valorem tax and unit (specific) tax. The paper shows that governments endogenously choose ad valorem tax not because of a classic welfare reason, but because it is a good...

Ecological Fiscal Transfers (EFT) have recently gained attention as a promising instrument to provide incentives for nature conservation addressing public authorities. In parallel, both the EU and different European countries are exploring new mechanisms to mobilise funding to support...

Benefits of federation are in more flexible use of the social and economic potential of its subjects at wide inter-regional competition. The federal system allows to use effects of either greater economic space or more complete considering of local conditions and interests. Specificity of modern...