The processes of the region until now are oriented fundamentally to ensure the accomplishment of national social policies. How to make to orient them also to harness the local autonomy –and mainly to do it in conditions of equality– in order to make the local and regional development...

La descentralización en Colombia fue concebida para mejorar el acceso de la población a los servicios sociales, reducir la pobreza y proveer bienestar en todo el territorio. Sin embargo, después de más de 20 años persiste una gran brecha social entre los municipios. Este trabajo examina los...

China’s actual fiscal decentralization is one-sided: while public expenditures are largely decentralized, fiscal revenues are recentralized after 1994. One critical consequence of the actual system is the creation of significant fiscal imbalances at sub-national level. This paper investigates...

Over 330 million people live in Indias cities; 35 cities have a population of over a million and three (Mumbai, Delhi, and Kolkata) of the 10 largest metropolises in the world are in India. Indias cities are large, economically important, and growing. However, neither urban infrastructure nor...

The paper investigates the intertemporal spending behavior of Scandinavian local governments with particular attention to liquidity constraints imposed by balanced-budget-rules and other regulations. The main finding is that Danish local governments are more able to smooth current expenditures...

This paper lays a foundation by reviewing the issues and the comparative dimensions of fiscal decentralisation in four subject countries - Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, and Romania. It is divided into the following components. First, it briefly reviews the issues: the main points of the economic...

Redistributive grants schemes, such as fiscal equalization, are a common characteristic of local public finance in several countries. However, large and small jurisdictions are treated differently by the respective fiscal equalization schemes that often tend to favour larger jurisdictions. This...

Recently many commentators have expressed concern about the fiscal health of Toronto and, more generally, the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). Such concern is puzzling because most of the available evidence suggests that municipalities in the GTA are fiscally healthy. Over the past decade, for...

This paper, part of a larger project on governance and growth in Russia, examines regional financial resilience in Russia in the period following the global financial crisis. The level of risk is rising, as government emergency finance is withdrawn and regions face rising debt to cover even...

This paper, part of a larger project on governance and growth in Russia. It deals with the problems and priorities of the future development of primary producer regions of Russia. We design a regional strategy for socioeconomic development to 2025-2030. The analysis concerns growth and...