This paper discusses how decentralized countries can achieve sound fiscal relations between the central government and lower government levels. The concepts of 'vertical gap' and 'vertical balance' provide an analytical framework for identifying and addressing key challenges. These concepts can...

Using a novel municipality-level panel dataset, this paper investigates the empirical characteristics of vertical fiscal imbalances (VFIs) in Moldova over the period 2005–2013. The results show that the extent of variation in VFIs across 898 municipalities can be explained by the level of per...

We advance the literature on political budget cycles by testing separately for cycles in expenditures for elections in the legislative and the executive. Using municipal data, we can separately identify these cycles and account for general year effects. For the executive branch, we show that it...

We advance the literature on political budget cycles by testing separately for cycles in expenditures for elections in the legislative and the executive. Using municipal data, we can separately identify these cycles and account for general year effects. For the executive branch, we show that it...

We advance the literature on political budget cycles by testing separately for cycles in expenditures for elections in the legislative and the executive. Using municipal data, we can separately identify these cycles and account for general year effects. For the executive branch, we show that it...

Like a number of other states, Oregon has been hampered in its pension reform efforts since 1996 by its state supreme court's embrace of the “California Rule,” a doctrine arising, in Oregon's case, from a misunderstanding of federal Contract Clause precedent. Under the misreading, states...

We study the impact of fiscal revenue shocks on local fiscal policy. We focus on the very volatile revenues from the immovable property gains tax in the canton of Zurich, Switzerland, and analyze fiscal behavior following large and rare positive and negative revenue shocks. We apply causal...

A city establishes a garbage collection company in order to generate revenue, but destroys the business of an existing private garbage collection company in the process by supplanting the private company's customer base. As a general proposition, the private company has no right to complain...

The paper investigates effects of fiscal decentralization on non-oil sector development in case of Azerbaijan for the quarterly period of 2002 through 2013. Results obtained from Auto-regressive Distributed Lag Bounds Testing approach show that share of local expenditures and revenues in total,...

We study the impact of fiscal revenue shocks on local fiscal policy. We focus on the very volatile revenues from the immovable property gains tax in the canton of Zurich, Switzerland, and analyze fiscal behavior following large and rare positive and negative revenue shocks. We apply causal...