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A framework for allocating taxing and spending responsibilities to various levels of government and for designing fiscal transfers to foster decentralized decisionmaking while preserving or even enhancing equity and efficiency goals.
An important dimension of public sector reform in developing and emerging market economies has been the loosening of central control over the private sector and lower level governments. The author's overview of the principles and best practices of fiscal federalism should help guide policy debates on restructuring intergovernmental fiscal arrangements. Strong emphasis on central planning impedes innovative responses to local issues by local governments and stymies private sector development. Decentralization should be the rule, the author argues, unless a strong case can be made for centralizing specific responsibilities. Local public services can be provided more efficiently if expenditures more closely match local needs and preferences. More closely linking benefits to costs also promotes accountability. Increased fiscal autonomy can also help mobilize more revenue from local sources, improving a country's fiscal position. And decentralized desicion-making encourages local participation in development. Constitutional responsibilities should be stated clearly and precisely. Tax and spending assignments should be determined simultaneously, so revenue means are matched as closely as possible to spending needs at each level of government. In most developing countries, subnational governments have limited access to their own tax bases and depend on higher level transfers. A grant's design should reflect the situation and objectives. The author gives examples. Although most countries give a high priority to limiting interregional fiscal disparities, no developing or transitional economy has adopted an explicit standard for equalization. Revenue sharing should be supplemented by an equilization program with a specified standard rather than by combining several factors into one formula. Local borrowing to meet capital expenditures is a major issue in most developing countries. In such cases, autonomous bodies can supervise and assist local borrowing for capital projects. The decentralization of responsibilities and the rationalization of intergovernmental transfers should be supported by strengthening local institutional capabilities. Monitoring, auditing, and inspections functions in most developing nations especially need to be strengthened. Transitional economies also need to give high priority to establishing or improving framework laws on property rights, corporate legal ownership and control, and bankruptcy, and financial accounting and control.
This book draws on experiences in developing countries to bridge the gap between the conventional textbook treatment of fiscal decentralization and the actual practice of subnational government finance. The extensive literature about the theory and practice is surveyed and longstanding problems and new questions are addressed. It focuses on the key choices that must be made in decentralizing, on how economic and political factors shape the choices that countries make, and on how, by paying more attention to the need for a more comprehensive approach and the critical connections between different components of decentralization reform, everyone involved might get more for their money.
The design of a federal system to deal with growth, stabilization, and regional and local development issues is the primary concern of this volume, edited by Anwar Shah. The book provides analytical tools to address issues arising from globalization, localization, and regional integration. It discusses tax harmonization issues associated with subnational value added tax administration. It provides a framework for fiscal discipline in a federal system. Lessons from international experiences from policies to deal with lagging regions are drawn. The book empirically examines the effect of fiscal decentralization on the overall size of the public sector. Finally, it draws lessons from industrial countries' experiences on local governance. This important new series represents a response to several independent evaluations in recent years that have argued that development practitioners and policy makers dealing with public sector reforms in developing countries and, indeed, anyone with a concern for effective public governance could benefit from a synthesis of newer perspectives on public sector reforms. This series distills current wisdom and presents tools of analysis for improving the efficiency, equity, and efficacy of the public sector. Leading public policy experts and practitioners have contributed to the series.
This volume presents the work of experts on the tax reform in several developing countries, from the restructuring of the economy of post-war Japan to the 1986 reforms in Jamaica. This study is based on the conference convened by the Center for International Development Research of the Institute of Policy Sciences at Duke University in April 1988.
While socialist economies sought ways of loosening the grip of the state over economic activities, countries with mixed economies had to contend with chronic imbalances in the government budget, inflation, and severe balance of payments problems.
There appears to be an increasing trend in worldwide fiscal decentralization. In particular, many developing countries are turning to various forms of fiscal decentralization as an escape from inefficient and ineffective governance, macroeconomic stability, and inadequate growth. Fiscal Decentralization in Developing Countries: An Overview edited by Professors Bird and Vaillancourt and featuring important research from leading scholars assesses the progress, problems and potentials of fiscal decentralization in a variety of developing countries around the world. With rich and varied case-study material from countries as diverse as India, China, Colombia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and South Africa this volume complements neatly the collection Fiscal Aspects of Evolving Federations edited by David Wildasin and also published by Cambridge, which presented theoretical advances in the area of research.
Study on tax reform from basic economic principles with emphasis to guidelines for a practical tax reform for Pakistan.