Recent crises and national consolidation packages affected sub-national finances. In many OECD countries, central governments introduced reductions in transfers to sub-national governments, and established expenditure and/or deficit objectives to be met by local or regional authorities. Such...

Public investment is one of the fiscal tools with the strongest impacts on growth over the long term. However, public investment is in decline compared to the period prior to the 2008 global financial crisis in many OECD countries, and particularly in the EU. The main explanation for the...

This paper describes and analyses the fiscal rules for subnational governments (SNGs) in OECD countries immediately prior to the COVID-19 crisis. It is based on information from the 2019 survey of fiscal rules for SNGs by the OECD Network on Fiscal Relations across Levels of Government. The...