Pakistan’s economic development is once again threatened by macroeconomic imbalances. Broadly speaking, high growth in the 1960s was followed by low growth in the 1970s, and high growth in the 1980s by low growth in the 1990s, as macroeconomic vulnerabilities derailed development. Supported by...

Host country government officials in developing and developed countries alike would like to know the impact of their public policies on foreign investment in their countries. Unfortunately, the literature does not provide a single view, and there are likely to be differences between developing...

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the current practice of local government taxation in Pakistan and to point the way toward structural reforms that are both more rational and more in step with Pakistan’s vision for its fiscal decentralization. The analysis here is restricted to sub...

Since Yemen’s reunification in 1990, decentralization reforms periodically resurface on the national political agenda. They seem to offer a positive way to address the major political and developmental challenges that the country is facing: to build a modern State in a tribal society, to...

This paper is adapted from a recent World Bank study that examined the performance of Kenya’s five largest cities, namely Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu, Nakuru and Elodret. That study identified a host of factors that have contributed to the failure of Kenyan cities, especially Nairobi and other...

Few studies have examined the use and effects of real property transfer taxes, especially in the U.S. This paper examines the variety of transfer tax programs currently in use in the U.S. and compares them to property taxes in terms of equity, efficiency, and revenue potential and stability. The...

In this paper we take stock of what the current system of sub-national governments is like in Egypt and then build on this assessment to suggest the form of decentralization that may be both effective and politically feasible. Practically every aspect of intergovernmental relations in Egypt...

Section II briefly reviews the literature on the efficiency effects of the property tax. Section III presents the details of our model of local use of the property tax. Simulation results for the efficiency costs of local property taxation are presented in section IV for a variety of model...

With the fall of the Berlin wall, and the subsequent collapse of communism, an era of reforms was initiated in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia which has spread around the globe. A central element in this reform process has been an interest in decentralizing governmental decision...