This paper discusses possible strategies for developing countries in negotiations on trade in services in the ongoing WTO Doha Development Round (DR). The liberalization of service imports (including through direct investment) will generate benefits through higher quality, lower prices, and...

China weathered the global financial crisis better than most, thanks to a large and timely stimulus. This stimulus, however, was mainly in the form of off-budget infrastructure spending and thus not visible in the headline fiscal data. We construct a time series for the augmented fiscal deficit...

In Portugal, a new Local Finance Law was adopted in 2013. The objective was to involve the local governments in the compliance with the supranational fiscal rules imposed by the Stability and Growth Pact and with the national budgetary targets set under the Financial Assistance Program. In this...

Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) has become an established tool in comparative analyses of efficiency strategies in both the public and the private sector. The aim of this paper is to present and apply a newly developed, adjusted DEA model – emerging from a blend of a Distance Friction...

Historically, local governments in the United States have relied on the property tax as their main source of own-source revenues. With the recent collapse of housing prices and the resulting increase in foreclosures that followed the “Great Recession”, many observers have speculated that the...

This Working Paper should not be reported as representing the views of the IMF. The views expressed in this Working Paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy. Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to...

This paper provides a model where a large number of small jurisdictions compete for mobile firms and households by supplying local public goods and factors. Jurisdictions only have an incomplete set of tax instruments at their disposal to achieve an efficient allocation. We derive second-best...

Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) has become an established tool in comparative analyses of efficiency strategies in both the public and the private sector. The aim of this paper is to present and apply a newly developed, adjusted DEA model – emerging from a blend of a Distance Friction...

Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) has become an established tool in comparative analyses of efficiency strategies in both the public and the private sector. The aim of this paper is to present and apply a newly developed, adjusted DEA model – emerging from a blend of a Distance Friction...