The objective of this study is to evaluate the fiscal sustainability of Local Government Units (LGUs) in the Visegrad Group economies (Czechia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia; the V4), focusing on three key hypotheses: (1) LGUs in the V4 are involved in so-called Ponzi games; (2) the adverse...

We examine the impact of extreme hydrogeological events on local governments' fiscal responses in Italy between 2016 and 2022, with a focus on how local public finances contribute to disaster resilience. Leveraging the staggered timing of disaster declarations and employing a...

Ensuring effective governance of local budgets is critical for public service delivery and sustainable development. Public audit institutions-including internal auditors and independent supreme audit bodies-are hypothesized to enhance local budget effectiveness by promoting transparency,...

Do criminal groups which help maintain order strengthen the fiscal contract or weaken it? This paper examines how the presence of organized-crime groups shapes Mexican municipalities' ability to collect revenue, deliver public goods, and earn citizens' trust. Survey data show that residents...

The report provides a comprehensive analysis of Bulgaria's local public finances, focusing on key challenges faced by municipalities and potential reforms. The report's goal is to provide a better understanding of local fiscal capacity, the system of intergovernmental fiscal transfers, and...

The UK government is consulting on significant reforms to how funding from central government is allocated between English councils. From 2026-27, there will be a new system for allocating funding between councils, which will take account of new official assessments of councils' spending needs...

Previous research on urban shrinkage has primarily focused on conceptual development and identifying underlying drivers. This paper seeks to extend this foundation by proposing a comprehensive analytical framework, grounded in a review of relevant literature, to examine the fiscal implications...

We study the reaction of low vs. high-skilled politicians to a reform, approved in Italy in 2011, that introduces stringent individual financial and career sanctions to local administrators who are judged responsible for their municipality’s bankruptcy. To this aim, we leverage exogenous...

"In recent years, urban policy-makers have been urged to adopt the development of urban policies for shrinking cities from an urban management perspective. However, urban management in shrinking cities is a difficult problem because it is fiscally restrictive compared with cities with growing...

Are European municipalities ready to lead the green and social infrastructure transition? The EIB Municipalities Survey 2024-2025 sheds light on this key question by analysing data from over 1,000 municipalities across the EU.

Purpose - This paper explores how COVID-19 has impacted the shift from public participation by conventional means to e-participation. Specifically, we investigated to what extent COVID-19 has been a driver for electronic participation in community participatory budgeting, which is a kind of...

At just under £8 billion, spending on schools and childcare is the second-largest area of public service spending in Scotland, behind spending on health. While councils rather than the Scottish Government itself determine how much to spend on schools, they do so in the context of a funding and...

In recent decades, decentralization reforms have surged across the Global South, aiming to bring governance closer to citizens. Despite extensive debate on their effectiveness, systematic methods to assess local government performance remain underexplored, particularly in data-constrained...

This paper examines the fiscal and extra-fiscal effects of decentralizing the collection of Brazil's rural land tax from the federal level to local governments. Using a difference-in-differences research design, we assess the impact of local tax enforcement on revenue, land use, and...

Can negotiated peace settlements promote fiscal capacity in post-conflict countries? We explore this question in the context of the 2016 peace agreement in Colombia, after which more than 6,000 insurgents collectively demobilized and a series of peace zones was created. Leveraging the uneven...

In many decentralized countries, local tax rates are set by local governments but are simultaneously linked to tax schedules that are determined by superior governments. In such systems, a change to the tax schedule by a superior level of government creates a vertical tax externality and affects...

A tight budgetary situation in Lithuania forces the Government to seek savings, plan financial resources carefully, and monitor their use closely. As a result, municipalities - which are responsible for im‑ plementing several delegated functions - are often viewed unfavourably by the central...

Achieving clean audit reports has remained a difficult task for most local municipalities in South Africa due to financial misappropriation, mismanagement, and the inability to apply legal actions against the defaulters who misuse municipal financial resources. This study explored the meaning of...