Transfers and bailouts: enforcing local fiscal discipline with lessons from U.S. federalism / Robert P. Inman -- Constraining subnational fiscal behavior in Canada: different approaches, similar results? / Richard M. Bird and Almos Tassonyi -- Vertical imbalance and fiscal behavior in a welfare...

Since the early 1980s fiscal and political decentralization have spread around the world. But decentralization can encourage dangerous opportunistic behavior by state and local officials. Left unrestricted, such opportunism can undermine macroeconomic stability and other objectives. The most...