This paper describes the institutional changes that have induced a decline in the vertical fiscal imbalance (VFI) - defined as the share of sub-national own spending not financed through own revenues - in four European countries: Belgium, Italy, Norway, and Spain. The decline in VFI was achieved...

This paper investigates one of the most important financial issues arising from a secession or a country partitioning namely the sharing of the national public debt. Extending Dreze's distributive neutrality condition, we use the generational accounting technique and propose a dynamic...

The paper discusses the current state of fiscal relations across levels of government in Belgium and how it has developed over time. As the current system of fiscal federalism is creating imbalances between the federal and the sub-federal governments (vertical imbalance), and between sub-federal...

This paper investigates the role of political representation in explaining regional variation in fiscal transfers in Belgium. Using Eurostat data for the years 1995 to 2008, we find that on average per capita cash fiscal transfers – consisting of the net amount of federal income taxes and...

Fiscal decentralization in Belgium progressed substantially in 2015-19. However, as decentralization of expenditure responsibilities continued to outpace decentralization of revenue authority, vertical fiscal gaps and greater reliance on transfers from shared resources may have reduced spending...