In shifting to decentralized public finances, a country's central government faces certain fiscal management problems. First, during and soon after the transition, unless it reduces pending or increases its own tax resources, the central government tends to have higher deficits as it shifts...

May 1999 - Argentina and Brazil-two of the most decentralized public sectors in Latin America and (along with Colombia and India) among the most decentralized democracies in the developing world-faced similar problems in the 1980s: excessive public deficits and high inflation exacerbated by...