The design of intergovernmental fiscal relations can help to ensure that tax and spending powers are assigned in a way to promote sustainable and inclusive economic growth. Decentralisation can enable sub-central governments to provide better public services for households and firms, while it...

In some ways, a 2012 symposium on “Dilemmas of State Debt” may seem a bit behind the news curve. At the end of 2010, municipal bond markets were in a deep funk. Analysts predicted that countless municipalities and perhaps one or more of the United States might default on their debt...

This paper presents the findings of the agriculture public expenditure review (PER) for the Russian Federation. It reviews the policy instruments and historical trends in the volumes and composition of budget support and investigates their role in recent agricultural growth. The paper also...

The paper strives to determine the impact of fiscal variables on factors determining the dynamics of public debt in European Union countries. Based on the literature, the dynamics of public debt are determined by changes of three elements: the primary balance, interest-rate-growth-differential...

The transfer of responsibilities from central to local government has often been justified on the grounds of efficiency and democracy under the principle of subsidiarity. The existing models for mapping local government power in Europe, however, are often insufficiently detailed to allow...

The article provides direct empirical evidence on fiscal decentralisation and economic development in selected European countries in a period 1995-2012. The research (based on data taken from OECD Fiscal Decentralisation Database and OECD) is performed on a panel, which contains 17 unitary...

The paper analyses the European Union sub-national governments' tax revenue structures and their dynamic during the last decades. Tax composition obtained a considerable interest during the recent years, particularly after the recent global financial and economic crisis. In many European Union...

We study how policies limiting the spending capacity of local governments may reduce corruption. We exploit the extension of one such policy, the Domestic Stability Pact (DSP), to small Italian municipalities. The DSP led to a decrease in both recorded corruption rates and corruption charges per...