Peru represents a laboratory for examining the different approaches to the centralized or decentralized delivery of public services over the past quarter of a century. There is a renewed and increasing interest in decentralization in Peru as a mechanism to generate more involved decision making...

The purpose of this analysis is to describe the financial structure of the Leningrad Oblast government and its rayons, to describe the financial relations between the oblast and local governments, to identify the fiscal policy issues with which the government must deal in the next few years, and...

Many countries around the world are currently engaged in one way or another in policy debates or reforms of their system of intergovernmental fiscal relations. While the policy dynamics vary greatly from country to country, the focus of such reform efforts can generally be categorized into one...

The design of intergovernmental equalization transfer mechanisms, whether as the result of the introduction of a new transfer scheme or as part of the revision of an existing one, is a key element of local government finance reform around the world. While the basic elements and principles of...

Intergovernmental fiscal relations play a fundamental role in the economic and social development of Vietnam. As in all unitary forms of government, the central government sets national policies and assists with the financing of the activities of subnational administrative units, as well as...

Right after Romania’s change in regime in December 1989, profound changes in the structure and functioning of government and the economy started to take place. Since the early 1990s the decentralization of the public sector has been an important policy initiative in the process of transition...

In this paper, we report the current state of provincial revenue raising and analyze the potential for increased revenue mobilization. In the sections below, we document the current situation regarding local revenue capacity and mobilization in Pakistan using case studies of Punjab and...

Lao People’s Democratic Republic is a small single-party State with an already long but erratic history of decentralization. Political drives towards decentralization and re-centralization have alternated for more than thirty years. Today, provincial governments enjoy a great deal of autonomy...

With over 95% of Iraq’s government budget received from oil revenues, an agreeable inter-governmental framework for managing petroleum resources and for distributing revenues is aptly regarded as the lynchpin of federalism. Iraq has great potential to develop a fiscal framework, consistent...

Indonesia is engaged in an unprecedented major social and economic experiment in which much authority and responsibility for its governmental expenditures are being decentralized from the national government, largely to the local government level rather than the provincial government level. From...