Since China's Tax-Sharing System Reform in 1994, the so-called “Chinese-Style Fiscal Federalism” has been formed, and the issues of conditional grants and unfunded mandates have become essential elements in China's central-subnational governments' relation. The defects of legislations in...

The 1994 reforms in China were remarkably successful in stabilizing the economy and raising revenues for the benefit of sustainable growth and permitting the central government to redistribute resources to poorer regions through an equalization framework. However, the rise of informal local...

The success of economic reforms in China is often attributed to favourable starting conditions. Yet structural characteristics and the effects of fiscal decentralisation differ significantly between the prosperous coast and the laggard interior. We argue that the process of income convergence...

This paper analyzes consumption risk sharing among provinces in the People's Republic of China (PRC) during 1980 - 2007. The analysis finds that 9.4% of shocks to gross provincial product are smoothed by the interprovincial fiscal transfer system. This system also cushions a relatively large...