Governments arguably exist in part to cope with such weaknesses of their citizens as those arising from infirmity, ignorance, and irrationality. At the same time, however, governments themselves partly subsist on the strength of such other popular ‘weaknesses’ as smoking, drinking, gambling,...

Municipal amalgamation is often seen as one way to ensure that municipalities are large enough to be financially and technically capable of providing the extensive array of services with which they are charged. The idea is presumably that municipalities will be able not only to reap economies of...

Canada is not a country with a reputation for bold experimentation. However, Canadian experience demonstrates conclusively that an invoice-credit, destination-based value-added tax (VAT) is workable at the subnational level, with both federal and provincial governments retaining full control...

The degree of fiscal decentralization in Colombia is impressive. In some respects, however, Colombian decentralization has hardly changed since the process first began over 40 years ago. This review of the experience of the last few decades and the challenges now facing the country shows that...

The biggest tax story of the last third of the 20 th century was the value-added tax (VAT). From its tentative beginnings in the reform of the French production tax in the early 1950s, by August 2000 some form of VAT existed in at least 123 countries. Few fiscal innovations have been adopted so...

China is the world’s most populous country. For some years, China has sustained a remarkably fast rate of economic growth. Despite the forests of construction cranes so often noted by visiting foreigners, however, China remains to a surprising extent a rural country, with only about one-third...

The GCT and SCT are critically important revenue sources in Jamaica, accounting for 37.4 percent of total revenues in fiscal year 2003/04 (27.7 percent for GCT alone) and an estimated 11.2 percent of GDP (8.3 percent for GCT alone). In this paper we set out in some detail the present structure...

We have learned a great deal about taxation and development over the last half-century. However, we still have much to learn. Even the best research answers to particular questions have usually turned out to be extremely difficult to apply in practice. Over the past fifty years what might be...

Over 330 million people live in India’s 5,165 cities, with 35 cities having a population of over a million. Three (Mumbai, Delhi, and Kolkata) of the 10 largest metropolises in the world are in India. Over two-thirds of GDP originates in urban agglomerations in the country. However, urban...

There is little evidence of regional, let alone worldwide, trends in local finances, although trends within particular countries certainly exist. Given the path-dependent and context-specific nature of country experiences, one must be very careful both in categorizing the local finance systems...