Are countries characterized by more decentralized fiscal and spending powers less corrupt? Or is a higher degree of government fragmentation a more effective way to deter corruption? Is there any evidence that these alternative ways to enhance government accountability reinforce each other? This...

The paper categorizes different types of intergovernmental transfers, discusses the funding rule of grants, and outlines some principles for setting up transfer allocation mechanisms that respect hard budget constraints at the macroeconomic level. The mechanics of a neutral transfer scheme...

The practice of decentralization in Nepal is almost four decades old. This makes it perhaps the oldest decentralization process in South Asia. The statutory local government institutions were created as early as 1962 immediately after the replacement of the multi-party democratic system with the...

This paper is divided into nine sections. The first section discusses the context within which intergovernmental transfers occurs. The second section discusses the framework of the paper that tries to look at the bigger picture suggesting that the system of intergovernmental transfers occurs...

Decentralized countries around the world use different institutional set-ups to assure that the system of local government finances achieves the objectives sought by the public sector through the decentralized delivery of public services. In many centralized countries, the Ministry of Local...

This paper reviews the literature on the effects of fiscal decentralization on the magnitude and composition of expenditures. There is consistent evidence that vertical imbalance leads to larger general government. The evidence on the effects of balanced decentralization is mixed, depending a...

Summarizing twenty five years of Spanish local public finance is not an easy task. In 1978, the new democratic Constitution completely changed the face of public administration in Spain . Until then, and apart from some minor, unsuccessful attempts at decentralization during the Second Republic...

The paper uses China's recent experience to investigate the potential tradeoff between economic growth and regional equity in the design of fiscal decentralization policy. Although present in other countries, this policy tradeoff has been particularly relevant to China over the last two decades....