N°
3
11 sep 2006
Intergovernmental Transfers and Decentralised Public Spending Daniel Bergvall, Claire Charbit, Dirk-Jan Kraan, Olaf Merk
Intergovernmental grants are used in many countries to finance sub-national spending and to implement national policies. However, the governance of grants is complex, and practices vary widely across OECD countries. The aim of this article is to provide a study of grant design that will be...
N°
2
11 sep 2006
Fiscal Autonomy of Sub-Central Governments Hansjörg Blöchliger, David King
State and local governments in OECD countries have access to a variety of fiscal resources. Discretion over these resources varies considerably, and so does sub-central governments’ power to shape public service delivery. The design of fiscal autonomy affects sub-central government’s behaviour...
N°
4
05 sep 2007
Fiscal Equalisation in OECD Countries Hansjörg Blöchliger, Olaf Merk, Claire Charbit, Lee Mizell
Fiscal equalisation is a transfer of fiscal resources across jurisdictions with the aim of offsetting differences in revenue raising capacity or public service cost. Its principal objective is to allow sub-central governments to provide their citizens with similar sets of public services at a...
N°
5
13 juin 2008
Promoting Performance - Using Indicators to Enhance the Effectiveness of Sub-Central Spending Lee Mizell
On average, one-third of public expenditures in OECD countries occur at the sub-central level, a figure that has risen slightly over time. This is due, in part, to the decentralisation of competences for public services in many OECD countries. Not surprisingly, the efficiency and effectiveness...
N°
7
18 mai 2009
Taxes and Grants Hansjörg Blöchliger, Oliver Petzold
This paper analyses trends and driving forces in the revenue composition of sub-central government (SCG). Between 1995 and 2005 the share of SCG in total government spending increased significantly from 31 to 33 percent while the SCG tax share remained stable at around 17 percent, increasing...
N°
9
10 juin 2009
The Fiscal Autonomy of Sub-Central Governments Hansjörg Blöchliger, Josette Rabesona
This paper describes the progress that has been made since 2006 in establishing statistical databases on tax autonomy and intergovernmental grants, aiming to better understand sub-central finance and intergovernmental fiscal relations. The paper is divided into two parts: a first part on taxing...
N°
10
17 juin 2009
Finding the Dividing Line Between Tax Sharing and Grants Hansjörg Blöchliger, Oliver Petzold
Tax sharing and intergovernmental grants are two sub-central funding arrangements that are often difficult to disentangle. The dividing line is not drawn uniformly across OECD countries or across time, and rules established in National Accounts, Revenue Statistics and others give incomplete...
N°
11
12 jan 2010
Explaining the Sub-National Tax-Grants Balance in OECD Countries Claire Charbit
Normative principles provide a relatively clear set of rules for the balance between grants and
taxes (box 1 reviews the normative theory), but in practice a variety of types of tax-grant systems are
observed in OECD countries, which do not all follow these rules. According to the theory,...
N°
12
05 mars 2010
Fiscal Policy Across Levels of Government in Times of Crisis Hansjörg Blöchliger, Monica Brezzi, Claire Charbit, Mauro Migotto, José Maria Pinero Campos, Camila Vammalle
The world is recovering from the worst economic and financial crisis since the Great Depression.
The recovery will probably be shallow and government deficits could remain very large over the next few
years in a number of countries. The crisis has a negative impact not only on central...
N°
13
19 avr 2011
Tax Competition Between Sub-Central Governments Hansjörg Blöchliger, José Maria Pinero Campos
Tax competition is the strategic interaction of tax policy between sub-central governments (SCG)
with the objective to attract and retain mobile tax bases. Tax competition rests on firms’ and households’
willingness and ability to shift the tax base – i.e. profits, capital, income, consumption...
N°
16
03 juin 2013
Decentralisation and Economic Growth - Part 3: Decentralisation, Infrastructure Investment and Educational Performance Kaja Fredriksen
Theories of fiscal competition between jurisdictions suggest that investment in productive relative to consumptive spending is higher in a decentralised setting, and that efficiency of the public sector is also higher. This paper empirically analyses the link between decentralisation and the...
N°
15
03 juin 2013
Decentralisation and Economic Growth - Part 2: The Impact on Economic Activity, Productivity and Investment Hansjörg Blöchliger, Balázs Égert
This paper analyses the relationship between fiscal decentralisation and economic activity. Like other institutional arrangements, fiscal decentralisation affects firms, households and public entities, and the way they save, invest, spend or innovate. This in turn may have considerable...
N°
14
03 juin 2013
Decentralisation and Economic Growth - Part 1: How Fiscal Federalism Affects Long-Term Development Hansjörg Blöchliger
Intergovernmental fiscal frameworks usually reflect fundamental societal choices and history and are not foremost geared towards achieving economic policy objectives. Yet, like most institutional arrangements, fiscal relations affect the behaviour of firms, households and governments and...
