This paper reviews the evolution and current state of subnational taxation in five large emerging countries: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and Nigeria—BRIC plus one. As these case studies show, intergovernmental fiscal relations in any country are inevitably both path-dependent and...

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...

The property tax is considered to be a good tax for local governments, mainly because of the connection between the types of services funded at the local level and the benefit to property values. Yet, property tax revenues rarely account for more than 3 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in...

Large cities and metropolitan areas differ from smaller urban or rural municipalities—they have much larger populations, higher concentrations of population, and populations that are more heterogeneous in terms of social and economic circumstances. Large cities are important generators of...

In 2012, Vietnam will celebrate 25 years of economic reform and structural readjustment from a largely centralized, subsidized economy to one based on market principles. A major component of these reforms has involved establishing land and property rights, thereby giving individuals and...

The housing crisis and the Great Recession have placed tremendous fiscal pressure on the United States’ central cities. Cuts in state government fiscal assistance to local governments, combined with shrinking property tax bases, make it hard for local governments to maintain current levels of...

The Nordic countries are small, unitary, and have largely homogeneous populations. Municipalities are the most important agents in the decentralized public sector and the middle tier (the county level) is losing importance. The expenditure of Nordic local authorities exceeds that in Canada by 10...

(1) Increasingly, compact and sustainable development has become a priority for Canadian municipalities. In order to realize these growth objectives, it is possible to look not only to conventional land use and growth management policies, but also to fiscal instruments to achieve planning goals....

This paper analyzes economies of scale for two municipal services by considering how per-household municipal costs are affected by a municipality’s size. An econometric model is used to estimate costs associated with fire and police services using data for 445 municipalities in the Province of...

After 1990, Hungary took steps toward decentralizing public administration and decision-making power. Administrative decentralization, however, was not matched by the same level of fiscal decentralization, creating tension and disparities among Hungarian municipalities. The revenue-raising...