The process of reform and fiscal decentralization in the Republic of North Macedonia is already in the second decade of implementation, the legal deadline of which was 2007. However, local government units are still lagging behind in the realization of many of their functions and legal competencies, mainly as a result of lack of financial means, lack of knowledge or lack of capacities to access on alternative sources of funding. An important instrument of financing, especially for financing local and regional economic development are municipal bonds, which are considered the most used financial instruments for financing local and regional capital projects in almost all developed countries of the World, but still in Republic of North Macedonia, no municipality has used this funding source. It is reasonable and necessary that this practice to be developed also in North Macedonia that would result in the realization of strategic municipal projects and at the same time will have an impact on the development of the capital market.Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the factors, causes and barriers of non-application of municipal bonds in North Macedonia as a financing instrument by the municipalities. Also in this paper are analyzed and evaluated the opportunities and constraints, benefits and risks, criteria and budget constraints of municipal bonds as an additional or alternative source of financial resources for financing local and regional economic development.
The Kenya Vision 2030 flagship projects expected to generate rapid economic growth in the country are threatened by inadequate source of funding, financial management problems and failure to link policy, planning and expenditure budgeting. The projects continue to experience inadequacies in project appraisal and implementation time overruns. Therefore, without a clear financial framework, fiscal indiscipline, resource misallocation and inefficient use of resources will militate against achieving the Kenya Vision 2030 targets. The overall objective of this study was to evaluate determinants of government expenditure on public flagship projects in Kenya. The specific objectives were to: evaluate the influence of planning process; source of funds; and management responsibility on government expenditure on public flagship projects in Kenya. The theories reviewed in the study were public finance, budget, cost-benefit analysis and principal-agent which provided grounds for conceptual framework. The study employed descriptive research design, positivist philosophy and multiple regression model. The target population was the planned 348 flagship projects for the period 2008-2012. The unit of analysis was projects based on sample size of 96 stratified random sample while data was collected using a questionnaire. The findings showed that planning process, source of funds and management responsibility had significant positive influence in determining government expenditure on public flagship project in Kenya. The study recommended that, public entities should strengthen and improve planning process by deepening MTEF within programme-based budgeting; the National Treasury should increase resources required for financing public flagship projects by considering public-private-partnerships as a potential source; and public entities should improve, strengthen and enforce management responsibility when designing public flagship projects. The two areas suggested for further research were; impact of project characteristics on the choice of Public-Private Partnership financing model; and impact of fiscal decentralization on financing public projects in light of devolved systems of governance in Kenya.
Considering the critical influencing phenomena, the study explores the causal mechanism of influences, as well as how such process works that lead to shape the dominant implications of influences on local government Union Councils’ budgetary autonomy, leading to the impact on their local governance.The research reveals the fact that the effects of the influencing phenomena on the budgetary autonomy of Union Councils in Bangladesh are evident with varying degrees and dimensions, but the influences do not always collide with the budgetary autonomy of Union Councils there. The indicator-based empirical analysis reveals that the magnitude of influences is almost double than that of the budgetary autonomy of Union Councils in Bangladesh. Thus, the autonomy of Union Councils in their budgeting decisions is a concern in the study of decentralization and local governance in Bangladesh.Originality and significance:The research contributed in the literature stream of public administration, specifically in decentralization, local government finance as well as budgeting, and in local governance studies. The study findings to some extent substantiated the rationality of conditional national government transfers to the sub-national governments in Bangladesh. Beyond the general theoretical and practical significance of the study, its findings led to inviting a fundamental debate on the national-local tax base system and appreciated the fact that central hindrance towards effective functioning of the local government Union Councils in Bangladesh is the crisis of ownership and competence of UP representatives.
Abstract If fiscal decentralization promotes growth, why do some regions decentralize more than others? This article identifies the growing divergence of fiscal centralization among Chinese cities and explains it in a public finance framework. It argues that fiscal decentralization and its economy‐liberalizing effect entail significant short‐term fiscal risk. The more a locality relies on uncompetitive business ownership for fiscal revenue, the less likely fiscal decentralization is to occur. This article compiles a dataset of 20 provincial capitals between 1999 and 2016 to test for the connection between a city's tax base and its fiscal centralization level. It then pairs two “most similar” cities to trace how fiscal security concerns drove their fiscal and economic policies apart. This article adds a micro‐level perspective to the literature on fiscal federalism. By pointing out the fiscal constraints confronting local governments, it offers a new angle to understand the different growth paths of Chinese cities.
Beatrice W. Kadori, Benjamin M. Mwawasi, Paul Mwendac
<em>The issue of financing education, especially secondary education is a growing concern in the Kenyan education system. The government through the Ministry of Education (MoE) has employed financing strategies such as bursaries for the needy but bright students through National Constituency Development Fund (NCDF). The purpose of this study was to assess the role of National Constituency Development Fund (CDF) in enhancing access to secondary school education in Mombasa County. The study objectives were to; assess the role of NCDF of improving access rate in enhancing access to secondary school education in Mombasa County, examine the role of NCDF in provision of infrastructural facilities in enhancing access to secondary school education in Mombasa County and to assess role of NCDF in provision of instructional resources in enhancing access to secondary school education in Mombasa County. The study was based on Decentralization and economic Theory. The study adopted a descriptive research design. The target populations for the study was 32 public secondary schools in Mombasa County (15 schools in Mvita, 6 schools in Likoni, 6 schools in Changamwe and 5 schools in Kisauni Sub-Counties), 32 principals and 582 teachers from the schools in the four Sub-Counties totaling to 646 people. The results were analyzed by the application of descriptive statistics and presented in percentages, means, frequency distribution tables, and pie charts. The expected outcome of the study was the determination of the role of NCDF in enhancing access to secondary school education and other methods used to finance secondary education in Mombasa County. This study research found that</em>
In India, the urban local bodies do not have decentralization in various functions. Therefore, municipal corporations find various issues in functioning and revenue generation. It has resulted into either shortfall or low quality infrastructure services to people. The Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation is developed as modern municipal corporation. Municipal corporation invested financial resources in development for civic infrastructure. Therefore, population, industries, educational institutions, markets, transport and other facilities are expanding very fast. The ordinary least square regression results shows that the municipal corporation has positive co-relation with revenue receipts from LBT, property tax and town planning. The revenue expenditure is positively co-related with municipal estate, public health and hospitals, primary and secondary education. The engineering work for poor is negatively correlated with revenue expenditure. The capital receipts are positively co-related with fire brigade, auditorium, sports and cultural programs and security deposits and water supply. The capital expenditure is positively co-related to women and child welfare schemes, primary education, environment monitoring. It is negatively co-related with dumping grounds. The municipal corporation must raise funds from capital market through municipal bonds. More investment must be made in civic infrastructure. Similarly, corporation must spend more funds on poor, welfare of women and children. Municipal corporation must monitor and protect environment. It must give more priorities for processing of solid and e-waste, protect local culture, primary and secondary education, health care for all and technology in provision of civic services. It must develop human resource and create best place to live in metropolitan region.
Luis Ayala Cañón, Ana Herrero Alcalde, Jorge Martínez-Vázquez
This paper analyzes the determinants of welfare benefit levels within a highly fiscally decentralized context. More specifically, we analyze the role of mimicking as a driver of the institutional design of subnational government policies in the absence of federal co-ordination and financing. Empirically we focus on the welfare benefit programs of Spanish regional governments during the period 1996-2015. Our results strongly support the significant role played by mimicking: regional public agents observe what their peers are doing and act accordingly, and this takes place even in a context of low mobility of households. Moreover, we find evidence of vertical externalities: even in a completely decentralized framework, regions consider the benefits set by the central government as a benchmark when determining their own welfare benefit levels
India is a federation whose roots can be found in the colonial period. Indian federal setup is clearly divided between centre, state and local government and likewise, the sources of revenue and responsibilities are also divided between them. The decentralization process in India is asymmetrical in the sense that decentralization of expenditure has been much more than the revenue decentralization as provided by the Constitution, thereby creating an imbalance in states’ income and spending. When this mismatch between the two is measured at different levels of government, we call it Vertical Fiscal Imbalance. In this paper, I have presented various definitions and measures of VFI given by several economists over the years and tried to measure the extent of VFI that exist in India since 1990-91 to 2014-15. We have used twenty five years data to make an analysis based on the data available in Finance Commission reports and Indian Public Finance Statistics. Our results show that the amount of revenue that has been decentralized over the period of study falls much short of the expenditure requirements that are expected to be met by the state governments. The situation is so intense that the state governments are left with no option other than relying on central transfers for financing their needs and that where the central government enjoys an upper hand and an authoritative power over the internal matters of the states. KEYWORDS: Expenditure, Decentralization, Indian federation, Revenue, Vertical Fiscal Imbalance.
The aim of this paper is to analyze how limits in revenue and spending autonomy of sub-sovereign governments influence their decisions. Revenue and spending autonomy indicators for Polish towns were established and used in analysis on school education expenditures during 2003–2016. The influence of limits on revenue autonomy on municipal spending has been extensively addressed in both theoretical and empirical literature. However, studies related to spending autonomy are rare. The analysis presented in this paper suggests that when limits exist in spending autonomy, more decentralized tasks are crowded out by regulated obligations. That is why the spending autonomy analysis is important to evaluate the equity between local units and the adequacy of local revenues to decentralized expenditures.The basic principle of local finance is that there should be an adequate relationship between the financial resources available to a local authority and the tasks it performs. However, in practice, the assessment of whether this has been achieved is very difficult. Often, only problems with the solvency of local governments indicate that we are dealing with a poorly constructed system of local finances. The expenditure autonomy indicator proposed in this article is a tool that provides a way to indicate problems with the adequacy of revenues before such anextreme situation occurs.
In a recent piece in Public Money & Management, I drew attention to the tacit balance between redistribution and incentives that continues to characterize local government finance in England (Sandf...
Urban public finance is a hidden force shaping cities and their development. This thesis draws attention to the powerful insights which can be gained from studying cities through a fiscal lens. It argues for an interdisciplinary and relational approach which infuses the fiscal study of cities with political and social interpretations of urban dynamics. Accounting for the city through two very different registers, this thesis draws from urban public finance and from critical scholarship on urban infrastructure. The conventional urban public finance literature is largely technical, produced by urban policy and fiscal experts. In contrast, social and political theorization on urban infrastructure provides a critical reading of the technicist approach and contributes to the refinement of key theoretical concepts within urban studies. There are many incommensurabilities between these two scholarly registers. They have different framings of politics, technical knowledge, and the priorities for change. However, there are several shared interests. They are both concerned with urban institutions, urban places, and the necessity for change. These shared interests provide the foundation for a revised approach to the fiscal study of cities. This synthetic approach is spelled out in a series of conceptual and methodological propositions. The first proposition is the device of the C/city, which distinguishes between an urban settlement (the small ccity) and its governing authorities (the big-C City). The C/city device foregrounds the importance of the city, the City, and the fiscal relationships which operate at the intersections between them. The second proposition frames urban public finance not just as a means of financing urban infrastructure but as an infrastructure itself. Drawing from the infrastructure scholarship, the concept of 'configurations’ is deployed creatively to trace fiscal histories, instruments, and relationships. The third proposition is the importance of grounding inquiry in particular places. To address this, the case study method is used. The case method allows for the use of a variety of types of data and analytical tools, grounded in contextualized experiences. The fourth proposition presents Kisumu, a secondary city in Kenya, as an exemplary case for exploring fiscal C/city configurations. Kisumu provides a useful case for wider generalization precisely because it is an ordinary (African) city. Not only is Kisumu on the margins of Western theorization, its unsensational nature also excludes it from dominant discourses on African cities. However, historically, administratively, and politically, Kisumu has many parallels with smaller urban centers in British East Africa and beyond. It provides a fascinating and widely relevant case of the differentiated nature of fiscal decentralization processes and dynamics. There is much which can be learned from Kisumu and its fiscal story. The bulk of this thesis is dedicated to unpacking the Kisumu case. First, there is a focus on the City. This includes tracing the historical development of Kisumu’s urban institutions and unpacking the ways in which the contemporary City shapes and is shaped by public finance. This is followed by a deeper exploration of particular city infrastructures and their fiscal configurations. The fiscal configurations related to property rates, the corporatized water utility company, and transport finance are traced and exposed. The Kisumu case provides a series of valuable insights. First, it demonstrates the potential and limitations of conventional fiscal analysis. The limitations posed by accounting are particularly important in the context of Kisumu, where the C/city has many misalignments. Second, it makes the case for reading public finance as an urban infrastructure. The process of tracing fiscal configurations illuminates the social, political, material and technical dimensions of public finance. Third, it draws attention to the de facto challenges and complexities related to decentralization (and in fact, the unique recentralization which Kenya has undergone). This includes how the sub-national urban state is constructed and deconstructed, over time and in complex ways. Fourth, it foregrounds the fiscal functionaries whose practices shape the everyday operations of the public finance system. These actors shape fiscal configurations. However, they are often hidden in conventional fiscal analyses. Fifth, it reads the practices of fiscal functionaries as a micro-politics of the state. The heterogeneity of the state and multidimensional nature of power are foregrounded. Finally, the case highlights the challenge of urban infrastructure finance in the context of a post-networked city. It shows the necessity of moving beyond common academic and policy tropes related to infrastructure and services. Collectively, these insights provide a compelling case for urban studies to more deeply engage with the fiscal C/city, in Africa and beyond.
The purpose of this work is to reflect on the relationship between subnational finance and the capabilities for regional economic development in Uruguay. It presents rigorous evidence of recent work on the relationships between fiscal decentralization, intergovernmental transfers and regional disparities in Uruguay. This is analyzed together with new available information on the evolution of subnational finances and a critical analysis of the productive policies developed in the country. It seeks to contribute to the current debate on the relationships between territorial development, decentralization and the role of public policy to reduce regional disparities. In this regard, it is concluded that these challenges require a better financing scheme for local development, with greater management capacity for decision-making at the local level. For this, as a prerequisite, it is urgent to improve the technical and management capacities of subnational governments.
İbrahim Korkmaz Kahraman, Habib Küçükşahin, Emin ÇAĞLAK
Getirilerin normal dağıldığı varsayımını temel alan öngörü modelleri sığ piyasalarda yeterince başarılı performans sergileyememektedir. Bu modeller, özellikle yüksek oynaklık gösteren piyasalarda ulaşılabilecek uç noktaların öngörüsünde daha fazla başarısızlık göstermekte ve bu durum da yatırımcıları volatilite tahminlemesine yöneltmektedir. Bahsedilen durumlar çerçevesinde, çalışmada finansal yatırımcılar için alternatif yatırım aracı olarak görülen ve piyasalarında yüksek oynaklıkların görüldüğü kripto paraların volatilite tahmininde Tekil Oynaklık Modelleri (ARCH, GARCH, T-GARCH, GARCH-M, E-GARCH, I-GARCH) ile uzun hafıza modelleri (AP-GARCH ve C-GARCH) kullanılmıştır. Ayrıca oynaklık tahmini için yararlanılan modeller arasından en uygun model test edilmeye çalışılmıştır. Bu bağlamda, kripto para piyasası içerisinde en yüksek piyasa değerine sahip, Bitcoin, Ethereum ve Ripple para birimlerinin 24/08/2016-07/05/2018 tarihleri arası fiyat verilerinden yararlanılmıştır. Araştırma sonuçlarına göre, Bitcoin ve Ethereum için şokların volatilite etkisi kalıcı ve pozitif şokların etkisi negatif şokların etkisinden daha fazla iken Ripple için şokların volatiliteye etkisi geçici karakterde ve oynaklığın geçişkenliği kısa dönemli olmaktadır.
Under conditions of decentralization, especially taking into account the creation and establishment of united territorial communities (UTC), there is a need to transfer financial resources to a different than earlier, primary, level of financing of socio-economic programs. Changing the direction of budgetary funds flows requires studying a number of aspects of the transformation of the budgetary and tax systems. In particular, there is a need to study tax and non-tax flows in the functioning of the united territorial communities. The article justifies the introduction of the concept of tax and non-tax (financial) flows, in particular, in the context of the united territorial communities. It is determined that the use of the category “flows” for tax and non-tax payments or budget revenues at various levels is a first step necessary for further research with the use of economic and mathematical methods. The concept “flow” is more tight-laced in terms of both physical representations and mathematical methods of data processing. The paper suggests introducing the categories of “tax flow” and “non-tax flow” into financial terminology. Tax and non-tax flows (revenues) of the local budgets of Ukraine and the budgets of the united territorial communities are analyzed. The analysis of these revenues in the local budgets of regions of Ukraine showed that all items of revenues increased during the study period, the largest increases being observed for the personal income tax, single tax, corporate income tax and basic subsidy. The data on the dynamic pattern of creating united territorial communities in Lviv region are given. An analysis of the structure of actual revenues and costs of general and special-purpose funds of UTCs of Lviv region is carried out, corresponding calculations are made.
This dissertation addresses various topics in public finance that are particularly relevant for developing countries. These topics include consumption taxes, tax evasion, and rent-seeking by government officials. The first and third chapters focus on how formal and informal taxes affect production and firm behavior in developing countries, while the second focuses on household responses to a consumption tax in a developed country context. Chapter 1 examines firms’ response to a size-based exemption threshold for a Value Added Tax (VAT) in India and shows how compliance costs affect production and strategic misreporting among manufacturing firms. Although the marginal tax rate on production and compliance costs change discontinuously at the exemption threshold, firms’ response can be almost fully attributed to compliance costs alone. Patterns of input use corresponding to the reported output of firms just below the exemption threshold suggest that they are producing less output than they would have in the absence of the tax and not simply underreporting their true output to appear small. Chapter 2, joint with Yeliz Kacamak and Eleanor Wilking, studies how the tax elasticity of the consumption tax base is affected by changing sales tax remittance rules. We study empirically how an important development in U.S. sales tax policy – the requirement of online retailers to remit the sales tax instead of the consumer, as part of Voluntary Collection Agreements (VCAs) – impacts this elasticity. Our identification strategy exploits quasi-experimental variation from the staggered state-wise introduction of the VCAs. We find that consumers reduce their online expenditure after the introduction of VCAs, consistent with an increase in compliance with sales taxes on online sales and suggesting that consumers took note of the tax change. On average, we do not find evidence of an impact of the remittance rule change on the elasticity of the tax base with respect to the tax rate. Chapter 3, joint with Traviss Cassidy, studies whether competition between local governments can reduce rent-seeking by local officials in the context of a major period of decentralization in Indonesia that increased the number of local governments by 50 percent within a decade. District governments, which are responsible for most local public goods expenditure and receive revenue from business licensing and fees, split into smaller districts, increasing the number of local governments within original district boundaries. We find that on average, there is a small increase in the probability of any bribe payments by firms and no change in the average size of payments. However, newly created establishments in districts that split are less likely to report bribe payments. We suggest that these results are consistent with a model of rent-maximizing bureaucrats in which bribe rates are constrained by mobility of firms.
The real estate industry has been one of China’s pillar industries over the last two decades, but soaring housing prices and overheated investments have hindered the sustainable development of the economy. Land transfer fee is a critical determinant of housing prices under the current land reserve system in China and also the main revenue resource for local governments. The reliance of local governments on land-leasing fees as their dominant source of revenue is usually referred as “land finance”, which started from fiscal decentralization and tax sharing reform in 1990s and created a mismatch between revenue distribution and expenditure responsibility for local governments. Therefore, against the background of tax sharing reform, this study analyzes the hypothesis that the degree of fiscal decentralization and the land finance phenomenon are important factors causing China’s soaring housing prices. In addition, land finance is the intermediate variable linking tax reform and high housing prices. Using panel data covering 31 provinces and municipality cities in China from 2000 to 2009, the research finds that enlarged fiscal decentralization caused by the reform of the tax-sharing system is an indispensable institutional factor leading to the rapid rise of housing prices. This study presents a comprehensive influence mechanism of fiscal decentralization on housing price, contributing to the understanding of local governments’ behavior and provides recommendations for the future urban development.
Milan Rapajić, Milivoje Lapčević, Violeta Miladinović
Since the introduction of property taxation in Serbian legislation, the tax system has been the subject of reforms a number of times for the purpose of its harmonization it with European Union standards. Initial changes were almost unnoticiable, while the latest modifications in the law attracted considerable interest of the tax policy creators, financial experts, as well as the taxpayers themselves because they introduced a new method of determining the tax basis which has increased the overall tax liabilities at annual level. Bearing in mind that the property tax generates local revenue and that local governments are in constant need for additional resources, the methodology of determining the tax liability should be based on the principle of equity and equality in order to ensure an ultimately efficient tax collection. In this paper, the authors will attempt to analyze both positive and negative aspects of improving the property tax system through a number of years, as well as to propose some solutions for the future reform of this system. By means of fiscal decentralization, this revenue plays an important role in financing local expenditure, while its abundance directly secures a larger autonomy of local self-government units, making them less dependable on the funds coming from the state budget.
Resumen:En este trabajo se mide el desempeño de la gestión tributaria española, para 2004-2015, mediante un análisis envolvente de datos, de dos etapas. En la primera, se estiman los indicadores de eficiencia, de las Delegaciones territoriales, correspondientes a las CCAA de régimen común; que por término medio alcanza el 85 %. En la segunda etapa, mediante el modelo de regresión censurado, se identifica una relación significativa de la eficiencia, con el PIB y con el nivel de educación. Adicionalmente, mediante la regresión logística, se establece la probabilidad de ser eficiente, a partir de los valores futuros de las variables ambientales.Abstract:Introduction The function carried out by the tax public Administration, which consists in obtaining resources with which to finance the public Sector, must be carried out in an efficient manner to legitimize its actions over time and to encourage the fulfillment of obligations of the taxpayers. The application of the spanish tax regimen in the decentralized field, has gained an important role as a result of the strong process of delegation of the public actions, entrusted to the Autonomous Communities, initiated with the Constitution spanish of 1978. Therefore, in this paper we measure the performance of the tax management carried out by the territorial Delegations of the spanish autonomic tax administration, for the period 2004-2015, by means of a semi-parametric analysis of two stages. The aims of the research are to estimate the levels of relative technical efficiency, reached by the territorial delegations, in the management of the taxes with the most important incomes. These taxes are the property tax, the inheritance and donations tax, the tax on onerous patrimonial transmissions and documented legal acts; and the taxes on the game. The tax collection obtained by the previous taxes, represent in 2014, 77% of the collection obtained by the taxes with tax autonomy, wich managed by the autonomous regions. Also, the research aims to identify the factors that cause efficiency levels, by means of parametric regression techniques. Methodology This study uses a semi-parametric methodology of two stages, which consists in applying, in a first stage, the data enveloping analysis -DEA- of Charnes, Cooper and Rhodes (1978), to estimate the levels of technical efficiency relative, of the 46 territorial Delegations, corresponding to the 15 spanish autonomous regions, financed by the common regimen. The variables used in the research are obtained from the General Budgets of the State. An entry is used, which is the personnel that carries out the management of the transferred taxes. As well as 5 outputs that are, the number of records instructed, the number of providences issued, the number of complementary liquidations of the property tax, the number of autoliquidations sent of the tax on onerous patrimonial transmissions and documented legal acts, the number of files sent of the inheritance and donations tax; and the number of self-liquidations presented by automatic machines and devices. These variables are representative of the functions that compose the tax procedures carried out by the autonomous tax administrations in the management of the ceded taxes, which are the management, the fundraising, the inspection and the application of the sanctioning regime. In the second stage, through the Tobit regression model (Tobin, 1958), the environmental factors that affect the efficiency levels are identified. The model dependent variable is the level of efficiency obtained in the first stage of the investigation. The returns considered in the study are the environmental factors that represent the economic context, measured by GDP per capita and with the number of mortgages constituted; the situation of fiscal policy, measured with public debt as a percentage of GDP; the social context, determined by potential contributors and with the level of training achieved by society; the geographical environment, measured with the km2 of the regions; the legislation in force in the period of analysis, established by organic law 3/2009 of 18 December, on the financing of the autonomous Communities; and the form of organization of the tax management, carried out through a tax Administration or through an autonomous tax Agency. Additionally, through the binary logistic regression model, a predictive model is established that reports the probability that the autonomous public administration will be efficient, based on the future values of the environmental variables, wich are significant in the study. Main results The results of the DEA show an average technical efficiency in the tax management of 85%, for the 2004-2015. This means that for the autonomous tax administrations to achieve optimal behaviors with the amount of work factor used, they should expand their outputs radially by 17.64%. In addition, the minimum level of technical efficiency obtained is 33%, which is reached by the territorial delegation of Ourense. Also, the results show a tendency of the average technical efficiency decreasing, during the 12 years of the period analyzed. The Tobit model determines a significant direct relationship of efficiency with GDP and the level of higher education obtained by the population. It is to be hoped that greater tax capacity of the region will achieve a higher level of efficiency. Also, there is a inverse significant relationship between efficiency and the variables public debt and km2. This implies that a lower level of efficiency in management could lead to lower levels of tax revenue. This deficit could be financed with higher levels of public debt. For its part, a greater extension of the territory where the management is carried out, can produce more efforts by the tax managers, reducing their levels of efficiency. Conclusions In this paper we study the tax management of spanish regional territorial Delegations during the 2004-2015. The technical efficiency levels estimated with the DEA are 85%, on average. The delegations that are considered reference for the remainder in each of the 12 years of study are, Salamanca in 2004, Asturias and Ciudad Real in 2005, Asturias in 2006, Asturias in 2007, Madrid in 2008, Madrid in 2009, la Rioja in 2010, Tarragona in 2011, Barcelona in 2012, Segovia and Valencia in 2013, Barcelona and Málaga in 2014; and Malaga in 2015. According to Tobit's regression, the variables that denote direct significance with efficiency are the GDP and the higher education level reached by the population. The factors that have an inverse significance with efficiency are the public debt and the geographical extension, measured with the km2 of the regions.
The aim of this article is to assess the importance of user charges as a source of revenues in state and local government and factors that impact a volume of these revenues. In order to carry out the research it has been assumed that volume of revenues from fees and user charges are dependent on fi scal decentralization, are positively affected public expenditure and depend on the wealth of a society. Two models-for the whole public sector and for state and local government has been designed. Using a panel of 26 selected OECD countries in period 1995-2016 it has been proved that decentralization is a signifi cant factor only in case of fees and user charges in whole public sector but not signifi cant in decentralized model. As expected fees and user charges positively depend on volume of expenditures in both models and additionally negatively depends on tax burden.
Cities across sub-Saharan Africa are faced with challenges in urban planning and service delivery due to insufficient capital for long-term investment projects. Despite the success of municipal bonds as a tool to assist in closing this financing gap in much of the rest of the world, there have been limited examples of success in this region. This study looks at the universal obstacles limiting sub-national governments from using municipal bonds as a financial instrument before examining four case studies - Johannesburg, Douala, Dakar and Kampala - to better understand their approaches to municipal bond issuance. Based on the findings from research, the thesis concludes that the chief obstacle blocking the uptake of municipal bond issuance as a means for raising funds stems from a variety of elements in the constitutional and regulatory systems in each country. This represents a significant departure from the commonly-held understandings that cities in the region are not eligible for long-term debt and are ill-managed, lack capacity, or are not viewed as creditworthy by institutional investors and other purchasers of municipal bonds. The success of municipal bond issuance appears to be contingent on strong interlinkages between central and subnational governments. This dissertation offers a critical review of the explicit and implicit powers granted to local governments under the constitutions of each of the countries, specifically the legislation that enables or prohibits municipalities from issuing bonds. Reform to the existing regulatory and legal environments across the African continent, ones that govern a financially-sustainable level of indebtedness for sub-sovereign governments, is an essential step in ensuring the future growth of Africa’s cities.
The purpose of the article is to study the theoretical foundations of decentralization, to analyze the indicators of the efficiency of cash management and to identify problems that have arisen as a result of the reform of intergovernmental fiscal relations. The article deals with problems of functioning of local budgets and regulation of intergovernmental fiscal relations under conditions of budget decentralization. The main directions of the budget policy introducing a new mechanism of budget regulation and equalization have been described. Suggestions for the functioning of local finance have been provided. The problems of intergovernmental financing have been identified and ways of their solution have been proposed. It has been noted that as a result of the decentralization process, the mechanism of the use of monetary resources has changed, therefore, an analysis of the efficiency of budget filling and rational use of budget funds is necessary to assess the actual state of affairs. The object of the study was the united territorial communities of Ukraine and their structure on subsidization in the conditions of modern reforms. On January 1, 2019, 876 OTGs were created in Ukraine as a result of the association of 4010 territorial communities (36.6% of all territorial communities), which covers 37.6% of the country’s territory. Elements of scientific novelty are developed criteria, which are isolated according to the results of the research: the basic grant should contribute to the fiscal capacity of local budgets; the amount of transfers must correspond to the financial security of the macroeconomic financial stability of the region and promote its economic growth; the system of intergovernmental transfers should stimulate local authorities to form their own revenues in local budgets; the transfer system should provide coverage of vertical and horizontal imbalances. It has been determined that the basis of intergovernmental relations should be the volume of transfer payments to certain territorial units, which should take into account such indicators as real incomes and the amount of substantiated expenditures. It has been concluded that the system of intergovernmental transfers should stimulate local authorities to form their own revenues in local budgets. Further research will be aimed at deepening the analysis of the impact of decentralization on the incomes and expenditures of territorial communities in the Transcarpathian region
We analyze the strategic interaction of regional and federal governments using a model that includes fiscal externalities in the form of inter-regional capital tax competition and technical externalities in the form of inter-regional spillovers. The federal government aims to correct for these inefficiencies using a transfer system. If the regional governments are policy leaders (such that federal policy is set conditional on regional choices), they will internalize both fiscal and technical externalities but free-ride on the transfer system. Efficiency can be achieved by introducing a second transfer scheme that is independent of regional public production. If the federal government sets its policy first and can commit itself to it, the outcome is efficient only if matching grants are used that are financed outside of the transfer system.