The 1991 Local Government Code devolved substantial spending, taxing, and borrowing powers to local government units. Moving governance closer to the people can generate a welfare gain but local governments must have adequate revenues to finance local development. The paper examines the current...

The 1991 Local Government Code devolved substantial spending, taxing, and borrowing powers to local government units (LGUs). Moving governance closer to the people can generate a welfare gain, but local governments must have adequate revenues to finance local development. The paper examines the...

In many countries the decentralization of spending responsibilities has outpaced the decentralization of revenue powers. Sub-national governments have then to rely on transfers from the center and borrowing to finance their spending. When this occurs, we find that the overall fiscal deficit...

The paper examines the progress being made in local finance reforms and indicates pathways to advance those reforms. A summary of the effects of decentralization is given as a contextual background for the discussion of local finance reforms. The inefficient tax assignment has constrained the...

This paper examines the factors determining vertical government structures. An empirical analysis for a panel of OECD countries indicates that apart from preferences, economies of scale, and other factors, institutions explain cross-national differences in the degree of fiscal decentralization....

The “Decentralization Theorem” (Oates, 1972) is central to the discussion of fiscal federalism. We revisit the role of consumption spillovers in evaluating the merits of (de)centralization. Unlike the general prediction, a higher degree of spillovers may reduce the difference in utility of...

We examine a symmetric two-district setting with spillovers of local public spending where a spill-in from the foreign spending is not a substitute, but a complement to domestic spending. Specifically, we assume production of two district-specific public goods out of two complementary...

Das ifo Insitut hat im Sommer 1991 eine Umfrage bei westdeutschen Kommunen zu den Herstellungskosten- und Folgelasten kommunaler Investitionen durchgeführt.Der Aufsatz faßt die wichtigsten Ergebnisse der Studie zusammen: Herstellungs- und Folgelasten eines Kindergartens, einer Turn- und...

Die Bevölkerung des Freistaates wird bis zum Jahr 2020 um etwa acht Prozent zurückgehen, wobei diese landesweite demographische Entwicklung in den Teilregionen Sachsens jedoch durchaus heterogen verläuft. Der demographische Wandel hat tiefgreifende Konsequenzen für die Einnahmen- wie auch...