This book analyzes recent local government finance reforms in Tanzania, including the introduction of a formula-based system of intergovernmental grants. Due to the scope and speed of Tanzania's local government finance reforms, the country is becoming one of the best-practice examples of fiscal...

The book assesses the current state of Russia's regional and local fiscal relations, and self-government, and analyzes the related reforms undertaken over the past decade. The analysis is based on the kind of first-hand experience and in-depth knowledge of Russian intergovernmental reforms that...

The main objective of the paper is to propose a framework in which fiscal health conditions can be assessed and the main determinants affecting fiscal health can be identified, inspite of severe data constraints. The paper draws on big urban agglomerations in India as well as smaller cities as a...

Although corruption and tax evasion are distinct and separate problems, they can easily become intertwined and reinforcing. A society that is more corrupt may enable more tax evasion as corrupt officials seek more income via bribes; conversely, higher levels of tax evasion may drive corruption...

The most important tax development of the last half century has undoubtedly been the rise to prominence of the value-added tax (VAT).2 This tax has taken center stage almost everywhere (with the significant exception of the United States) and has become a revenue mainstay for many countries. The...

There is a large literature documenting that high host-country corporate taxes deter foreign direct investment. However, some recent papers have questioned the robustness of this result in developing countries. In this paper we investigate one possible reason: the presence of a trade-off between...

Decentralization is among the most important global trends of the new century, yet there is still no consensus on how to design political institutions to realize its benefits. In this paper, we investigate the political conditions under which decentralization will improve the delivery of public...

This paper takes stock of the last 80 years of theoretical and policy literature on the issue of capital grants. In addition, we provide empirical evidence on changes in the relative importance of capital grants, and their impact on fiscal outcomes for a large number of countries. In particular,...

In this paper we examine the Stackelberg equilibrium in a public input competition model. We demonstrate that the issue of over-provision of public inputs raised in the standard fiscal competition literature may be less strong than predicted, provided that competing jurisdictions are more likely...