To carry out the analysis required for monetary policy, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the European System of Central Banks (ESCB) need comprehensive and reliable government finance statistics. The focus of government finance statistics has traditionally been the government as a whole...

Russia is a federation of more than 80 regions spanning across a huge territory. Natural resource endowment, inherited industrial specialization, remoteness and climate conditions contribute to large regional disparities. This paper presents an empirical framework model for assessing...

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...

This paper investigates the causal effect of public administration efficiency on firm-level productivity. To this purpose, we combine newly available data from Italy on public administration efficiency of subnational governments with geo-localised firm-level data for the years 2004-2014. Italy...

This paper considers the decentralized funding of public universities in a federation when students and graduates are mobile. In particular, I discuss whether local governments should be given the right to differentiate tuition fees between in-state and out-of-state students. I develop a model...

The main features of China’s current sub-national finance arrangements date back to the 1994 tax reform. China has a multi-level government structure that shares national tax revenues through a system of tax sharing and transfers, and divides spending assignments and responsibilities. Local...

Finnish municipalities enjoy ample fiscal autonomy and provide or arrange the provision of a large share of public services. In recent years, their spending and debt has been increasing steadily, especially because of population ageing and increases in the cost of health care and social...

Despite being one of the smallest countries in the OECD, Israel is marked by significant socio-economic disparities, which have a clear spatial dimension. Ethnic and religious groups with weak socio-economic outcomes are not benefitting from the thriving high-tech sector in the centre of the...

There is considerable regional variation in incomes and poverty in the Czech Republic and gaps have grown over time. With the highest number of municipalities per head in the OECD, subnational government is very fragmented and the resulting lack of capacity at the local level reduces the quality...

Spending on public administration itself is relatively low and so are indicators of its performance. Challenges include wastage in public procurement, insufficient management of the investment cycle and high levels of staff turnover. This paper considers ways of building on recent reforms,...