Less than two years after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s illegal, unprovoked and unjustifiable war of aggression against Ukraine has triggered the biggest military confrontation in Europe since World War II. Many OECD countries have...

Fiscal rules are increasingly used at state and local levels to promote fiscal sustainability in OECD countries. Following the Global Financial Crisis, multiple reforms to fiscal rule frameworks were made so that governments could better tackle...

The COVID-19 pandemic led to significant economic disruptions and revenue losses for business impacted by workplace closure measures aimed at restraining the spread of the virus. Governments provided extensive monetary and fiscal support to address...

Government revenues may be affected by economic growth and changes in demographics over time. The effect of economic growth can be captured by long-run buoyancy – responsiveness of government revenues to GDP growth – while the demographic effect can...

OECD economies are undergoing a seemingly inevitable process of population ageing that has been changing income and consumption patterns. Notably, the demand for health services is expected to increase, while labour forces are projected to shrink....

The COVID-19 pandemic has had devastating effects on lives, the economy, and the public finances worldwide, drawing attention to the need to enhance resilience to future shocks. This paper focuses on subnational governments, given their important and...

Fiscal equalisation refers to the transfer of financial resources to and between subnational governments with the aim of mitigating regional differences in fiscal capacity and expenditure needs. However, the determination of fiscal capacity and...

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...

The bulk of government investment is done at the local level in OECD countries, representing on average 41% of total public investment. Most studies on subnational government debt focus on the regional or state level, and very few studies analyse...

The Coronavirus pandemic has put extreme pressure on public health services, often delivered at the local and regional levels of government. The paper focuses on how countries made changes to the configuration of federalism during the first wave of...

Based on a survey, this paper presents new data on the decentralisation of the housing system and co-ordination mechanisms across levels of government, focusing on the provision of social housing. Decision-making in social housing tends to be more...

The world economy and societies are going through a digital transformation that goes well beyond computerisation and use of information and telecommunications technologies. This transformation is creating opportunities and challenges for all levels...

The population in OECD countries is ageing rapidly, which will have significant macroeconomic impacts, including on public expenditure and tax revenues. This paper analyses the consequences of population ageing at the sub-central government (SCG)...

The Network on Fiscal Relations has been assessing the degree of sub-central government tax autonomy in OECD countries for almost two decades. This paper provides an in-depth description of the methodology used to characterise tax autonomy. After...

Based on an OECD survey, this paper presents quantitative and qualitative data on the decentralisation of health systems, focusing on how they vary according to different institutional characteristics and what types of performance measurement systems...

This paper examines the relationship between the degree of administrative decentralisation across levels of government in health care decision-making and health care spending, life expectancy as well as hospital costs. This empirical analysis builds...

How do administrative and fiscal decentralisation relate to education system performance? The question is answered by exploiting a panel with several different measures of fiscal decentralisation: a measure of administrative decentralisation, as well...

The paper develops new measures of spending power and performance across five key sectors of sub-national government service delivery –- education, long-term care, transport services, social housing and health care. The new indicators reveal unique...

The past decades have seen an undeniable trend towards decentralisation and greater diversity of multilevel governance arrangements around the world. Decentralisation outcomes depend on the way decentralisation is designed and implemented. A key...

Sub-national insolvency frameworks stipulate rules and procedures to resolve sub-national debt in a prompt and orderly way. As such they may serve to facilitate debt restructuring and the fiscal recovery of sub-national entities. They may even...