Over 330 million people live in India’s cities; 35 cities have a population of over a million and three (Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata) of the 10 largest metropolises in the world are in India. India’s cities are large, economically important, and growing. However, neither urban infrastructure...

This paper considers the proposition that recent tax policy trends have been decisively influenced by tax research. In both the OECD countries and developing countries, the two most important changes in tax systems in recent decades have been the introduction of the VAT and the general lowering...

Over the years the number and importance of earmarked grants has at times risen and at times fallen in different countries. The conventional theory of fiscal federalism, which sees earmarking largely as a means to deal with positive spillovers in local expenditures, explains neither the level of...

Ukraine has, under difficult circumstances, managed to implement what is in form a modern VAT in a surprisingly short time. The real way fiscal institutions function changes only slowly, however, so Ukraine's VAT is still far from working as it should. Its revenue effectiveness has been...

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...

This review of public finance in developing countries covers tax advice and practice during the past half century, principles of good public finance, some key issues in development finance during the period, fiscal decentralization and some important open questions. Thinking about good tax...

We present a summary analysis of the important changes in township and village finance in China between 2000 and 2004, based on a survey of 100 villages in 50 townships in 25 counties in five provinces. The reforms included the elimination of regular fee assessments imposed on rural households...

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 paper considers several distinct but related aspects of what we are doing when we attempt to measure and evaluate the fiscal health of cities: How is the fiscal health of cities defined in the literature? How is this concept related to fiscal sustainability? How may fiscal health be...

We argue in this paper that unless China begins to tackle more systematically the serious problems that have emerged in the finances of its various levels of sub-national government the problems to which the present unsatisfactory system give rise will over time increasingly distort resource...