This paper analyses intergovernmental transfers in France and Italy to assess how soft budget spending behaviors may result from slacks in institutional constraints or from phenomena related to political culture, like administrative practices or implementation of rules. It innovates on the...

Value-capture approach to public investment financing envisions creation of the policy tools to adequately capture the privately accruing changes in the value of sites and/or consumption that arise from public infrastructure investments. In the present paper, we provide a comprehensive...

The present study shows that LVT satisfies the set of main criteria for reforming existent system of property taxation in Ireland, including the following considerations of tax system efficiency: Improve macroeconomic stability and support economic growth with specific focus on higher...

One of the most progressive and innovative approaches to public investment financing is known as value capture. Value-capture envisions creation of the policy tools to adequately capture the privately accruing changes in the value of sites and/or consumption that arise from public infrastructure...

Countries around the world are decentralizing in various ways. Many studies have evaluated such reforms and their effects on corruption, stability and growth as well as on the provision of such services as health and education. Decentralization is often intended in part to make government...

This article examines how obligations associated with public employment (including pensions and OPEB) and obligations associated with complex financial instruments (including derivatives) fit into the puzzle of local government fiscal health. As the recent experiences of Detroit and other...

This article argues that New York municipalities should integrate land banks into the tax enforcement process to break the unhealthy cycle perpetuated by real estate and lien speculators. By transferring all tax liens and foreclosed properties to local land banks, municipalities can generate an...

To what extent do bond market reactions to an unexpected deficit shock depend on state-specific politics? To answer this question, we calculate German state bond spreads over government benchmark paper using information from Datastream for the period 2006-2010. We test for a variety of...

Countries facing social issues related to the disabled apply various measures to solve them, including State aid. However, the application of these measures does not always enable them to achieve the goals of state policy or to improve indicators such as the integration of the disabled into the...

This paper makes five contributions to designing a new fiscal regime for Scotland:1). It provides the intellectual case for fiscal autonomy in Scotland, and examines explicitly how far autonomy should go. 2). It provides a blueprint for how the tax system could be devolved, and explains why.3)....