The volume collects the essays presented at the 15th Workshop on Public Finance organised by Banca d'Italia in Perugia from 4 to 6 April 2013. The workshop focused on the link between fiscal policy and macroeconomic imbalances and comprised four sessions. The first session concentrated on the...

This article examines the scope for expenditure of each German federal state (including local governments) to achieve a balanced budget in 2020 when the debt brake fully enters into force. After deducting interest and pension burden, a major group of states could afford marked annual increases...

Despite strongly equalized per capita revenue and similar budgetary institutions, fiscal performance is increasingly diverging across German federal states. Given that state and local governments are endowed with expenditure autonomy, this paper investigates whether the composition of...

This paper examines the impact of economic and political integration on the vertical government structure. It argues that, by increasing the market size and the benefits of decentralized provision of public goods, integration triggered the recent process of decentralization in OECD countries. A...

This paper deals with the problems encountered in defining and meas-uring the degree of fiscal decentralisation. Drawing on a recent ana-lytical framework of the OECD, different measures of tax autonomy and revenue decentralisation are presented which consider the tax-raising powers of...