Based on country experiences, the paper assesses policy options to assign oil revenues to subnational governments (SNGs). The literature recommends that oil revenues be centralized. Given political economy considerations, this paper suggests that a possible alternative is to assign stable...

This paper applies to Switzerland an indicator of the sustainability of fiscal policies developed by BLANCHARD and others for the OECD. A fiscal policy is sustainable if it stabilizes the debt/GDP ratio over a certain period of time; thus, the primary surplus must cover the interest payments on...

The author develops global indexes of the progressivity and the redistributive effects of taxes and transfers, based on Lorenz curves and Gini indexes. He simulates the introduction in Switzerland of a regressive VAT with a 15% tax rate, in the context of the existing progressive federal income...

European Economic and Monetary Union does not envisage creating a central fiscal authority. Monetary and exchange rate policies will be centralized, but fiscal policy will remain a national responsibility, in line with the subsidiarity principle. This paper argues that monetary union will...

Based on country experiences, the paper assesses policy options to assign oil revenues to subnational governments (SNGs). The literature recommends that oil revenues be centralized. Given political economy considerations, this paper suggests that a possible alternative is to assign stable...