Article history: Received 16 August 2011 Received in revised form 5 February 2013 Accepted 12 February 2013 Available online xxxx This article examines the quantitative effects of the Chinese fiscal system on the increasing regional income inequality in China, from 1978 to 2007. Fiscal decentralization is a multifaceted concept not likely to be captured by a single measure. This paper investiga...

The typical post-Bretton-Woods era development approach that puts great emphasis on central government efforts to promote development, has changed dramatically and local governments have now emerged as important players in development policy. Now, the concept of requirements for achieving the development objectives is changing and many countries around the world are now implementing fiscal dece...

This paper studies the effect of fiscal and political decentralization on the death toll by disasters for up to 46 developing and transitional economies from 1974 to 2004. The results show that elected government at the local level does not help mitigate disaster risk. This study underscores the importance of the joint effects of different forms of decentralization and shows that when political...

James Edwin Kee, Professor of Public Policy and Public Administration The George Washington University Abstract The last decade has seen a renewed interest in the concept of fiscal decentralization or fiscal federalism. This comes after a half-century of fiscal centralization in most developed and developing nations. This paper examines the theory behind fiscal decentralization and suggests the...

This paper looks at the relationship between fiscal and political decentralization and the evolution of regional inequalities in a panel of 26 countries – 19 developed and 7 developing – for the period between 1990 and 2006. Using an instrumental variables method, it finds that whereas for the whole sample decentralization is completely dissociated for the evolution of regional disparities, the...

This paper uses a unique panel dataset from China's initial reform of fiscal decentralization to analyze the relationships between fiscal decentralization, local economic development, and rural-rural undocumented inter-provincial labor mobility. Using a modified gravity model with Heckman Maximum Likelihood Estimation method, this paper shows that fiscal decentralization has two contending effe...

We examine the relationship between fiscal decentralization and the functional composition of public expenditures. Using a distance-sensitive representative agent model, we hypothesize that higher levels of fiscal decentralization induce agents to demand increased production of publicly provided private goods. We test this hypothesis using an unbalanced panel data set of 59 developed and develo...

There has been growing interest in fiscal decentralization in many developed and developing nations. There seem to be both (i) economic and (ii) political motives behind. Fiscal decentralization can be a way to cope with restructuring public sectors: it is expected to improving efficiency of public sector. Also, delegating power to a lower level government will make public policy more accountab...

The global drive towards decentralization has been increasingly justified on the basis that greater transfers of resources to subnational governments are expected to deliver greater efficiency in the provision of public goods and services and greater economic growth. This paper examines whether this is the case, by analysing the relationship between decentralization and economic growth in 21 OE...