OECD Working Papers on Fiscal Federalism
This series covers issues related to intergovernmental fiscal relations and local/regional public finance, such as: tax and spending assignment across government levels; intergovernmental grants; fiscal equalization; local and regional public service efficiency; inter-jurisdictional tax competition; and macroeconomic issues such as intergovernmental fiscal management and sub-central fiscal rules. Many of these working papers are outputs of the OECD Network on Fiscal Relations Across Levels of Government. Related working papers on fiscal federalism issues are also published in other OECD working paper series on tax policy, economics, public governance and regional development. An integrated list of key papers produced by the Fiscal Network can be found at http://oe.cd/fiscalnetwork.
(Note: numbers 1, 6 and 8 are available in the OECD Economics Department Working Papers, as numbers 465, 626 and 705.)
- ISSN: 22265848 (online)
- https://doi.org/10.1787/22265848
Decentralisation in a Globalised World
Consequences and Opportunities
Globalisation accompanied by the growing importance of information technology and knowledge-based production pose challenging problems for federations. We summarise the difficulties that traditional decentralised federations face in addressing problems of competitiveness, innovation and inequality brought on by globalisation. Adapting to these challenges involves rethinking the roles of various levels of government and rebalancing them appropriately. On the one hand, responding to inequality enhances the policy role of the federal government. On the other hand, state and local governments must respond to the imperative of providing education and business services to equip citizens and firms to compete in the knowledge economy. Perhaps most important, large urban governments are best placed to provide the physical and social capital to support innovation hubs. A key challenge for fiscal federalism is to facilitate the decentralisation of responsibilities to urban governments. This entails new thinking about revenue decentralisation, policy harmonisation and the structure of intergovernmental transfers so that cities can implement their policies effectively and accountably.
- Click to access:
-
Click to download PDF - 839.49KBPDF