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Documents de travail du Département des Affaires économiques de l'OCDE

Documents de travail du Département des affaires économiques de l’OCDE recouvrant toutes les activités de ce département : conjoncture économique, analyse politique et projections ; politique fiscale, dépenses publiques et fiscalité ; questions structurelles dont le vieillissement, la croissance et la productivité, la migration, l’environnement, le capital humain, le logement, les échanges et les investissements, les marchés de l’emploi, la réforme réglementaire, la concurrence, la santé et d’autres thèmes.

Anglais, Français

Enhancing administrative and fiscal decentralisation in the Czech Republic

There is considerable regional variation in incomes and poverty in the Czech Republic and gaps have grown over time. With the highest number of municipalities per head in the OECD, subnational government is very fragmented and the resulting lack of capacity at the local level reduces the quality of public services and impedes the uptake of effective development projects. This paper discusses various policy options to address the challenges faced by Czech subnational governments and proposes reforms to enhance their effectiveness. Mergers of municipalities would be an obvious way towards greater integration, but this may be politically difficult. Mandating inter-municipal co-operation over a legally defined set of public services can be an alternative way of improving efficiency and the quality of service delivery. Tweaking the tax sharing system to disincentivise small size of municipalities and to make subnational governments more autonomous could be steps towards higher efficiency. Improving and consolidating the delivery of education and health services at the local level is also needed in the context of demographic change.

Anglais

Mots-clés: decentralisation, municipal mergers, public services, municipal cooperation, local government, administrative fragmentation
JEL: I28: Health, Education, and Welfare / Education and Research Institutions / Education: Government Policy; R1: Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics / General Regional Economics; I18: Health, Education, and Welfare / Health / Health: Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health; E62: Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics / Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook / Fiscal Policy; H77: Public Economics / State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations / Intergovernmental Relations; Federalism; Secession; H71: Public Economics / State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations / State and Local Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue; H70: Public Economics / State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations / State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations: General; H72: Public Economics / State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations / State and Local Budget and Expenditures
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