Intergovernmental transfers can be either conditional or unconditional with regard to the autonomy of local governments in spending such financial means. Although fiscal decentralisation has recently been quite pronounced in Eastern European transition countries, the dominance of a purpose- and...

Die vorliegende Arbeit wurde von Christian Kelders in der Zeit seiner Tätigkeit als Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeit des Center for Economic Studies (CES) erstellt und im September 2005 abgeschlossen. Gegenstand der Arbeit sind die Besteuerungsanreize im System der deutschen Kommunalfinanzen....

Sub-national governments often finance substantial parts of their budgets via taxes on capital or other mobile factors - despite having access to alternative, less distortionary, revenue sources. This paper develops three hypotheses to explain this pattern and tests them in a natural experiment...