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The literature continues to debate the effects of democracy and fiscal capacity on economic growth, both partially and jointly. To remedy the literature puzzle, this study examines the economic growth effects of democracy and fiscal capacity in 34 Indonesian provinces from 2016 to 2021. Using a fixed-effect model, this study documents no evidence of a partial effect; rather, it finds a joint effect of democracy and fiscal capacity on Indonesian economic growth. These findings remain relatively robust even when provincial heterogeneity, COVID-19 pandemic shocks, and sectoral composition are factored into the model. This finding indicates that regions with democracy and strong fiscal capacity possess relatively fast per capita GRDP growth. Based on these findings, the study concludes that democracy and fiscal capacity should exist side by side. Indonesia's sub-national economic growth strategy, like a tango game, requires reforming two types of decentralization: political decentralization to improve the quality of democracy that upholds the merit system and fiscal decentralization to expand local tax capacity to finance public goods productively.

Fiscal capacity is regularly linked to warfare and democratization. However, the majority of income taxes – a cornerstone of government finance – were introduced by non-democratic states in peacetime. This paper is concerned with how autocratic politics shape the adoption and expansion of income taxes. Political institutions help overcome a commitment problem related to investments in taxation. To avoid being deposed by his or her elite supporters, a ruler needs to guarantee that new taxes will not be used opportunistically (e.g. expropriating the elite). If the elite supporters can effectively monitor the government, any transgressions will be detected and punishable. Institutions such as legislatures solve this commitment problem when they allow oversight and monitoring over the executive branch. The empirical implications are straightforward: in places with strong institutional oversight, which allows the elite to monitor the executive, we should observe higher fiscal capacity. I find support for this by analyzing newly available historical datasets over tax revenues, tax introduction dates, and political institutions.

Tax compliance is a big challenge in weakly institutionalized countries, in which citizens do not trust the State and prefer to evade. Can compliance be increased, and hence fiscal state capacity strengthened, using online strategies? We perform a randomized field experiment in Venezuela's capital, Caracas, to determine if email messages, Facebook ads, or a combination of both, can increase tax compliance. By varying the mechanism used to approach taxpayers, we are able to test if more direct and personalized methods, such as email messages, are more effective than general advertisement tools, such as Facebook ads. Moreover, our design allows us to test if both strategies complement each other and boost the capacity of a local government to increase compliance. Preliminary results suggest that these strategies are cost-effective methods for increasing tax revenues, even in a context of low confidence in the State, as is the case of Venezuela nowadays.

The policy study assesses the possible scope and the technical and legal difficulties in implementing a "permanent Next-Generation EU (NGEU)", a central fiscal capacity for the EU, without ever losing sight of the democratic requirement. The implementation of NGEU has raised coordination issues between the member states as to the allocation of funds across structural priorities (e.g. ecological transition vs digitalisation) and across countries. To these coordination difficulties, Section 2 adds the issue of the democratic legitimacy of EU policies when supranational priorities constrain the autonomy of national parliaments. The problem of accountability is not new when one thinks that supranational rules, such as the Stability and Growth Pact, impose limits on the power of parliaments to "tax and spend"; in fact, the intrinsic logic of coordination is to force (political) discretionary power to comply with (macroeconomic) functional imperatives; this inevitably produces a form of depoliticisation of fiscal policy. Throughout this policy study, we constantly keep in mind that transforming NGEU into a permanent programme offers an opportunity to fix this depoliticisation of EU policies and open a window for a breakthrough to a "political Europe".

This article sets out to empirically examine the salience of EU fiscal integration processes between 2007 and 2022. By employing text-mining and qualitative analysis, the previously generated discourse on fiscal integration during and after the financial and sovereign debt crisis, several EU regulatory overhauls, Brexit and the COVID-19 crisis has been tracked. Particularly important have been the new counter-COVID-19 policies such as SURE and NGEU as these substantially impacted the course of common fiscal integration. The assessment covered a body of 160 documents including legal texts, peer reviewed articles, communications and reports of the EU bodies and policy papers, and has relied on the neo(neo)functionalism theory to identify shifts in fiscal integration. The findings show that the discourse on fiscal integration gains prominence with each economic and political crisis and that the shifts can go in the direction of either more (upward) or less (downward) fiscal integration, or involve enough (nil) integration.

Do strong states affect the culture and actions of their citizens in a persistent way? And if so, can the capacity to tax, by itself, have a role in driving this effect? I study how the historical capacity of a state to collect taxes affects the decision of citizens to evade the mandatory military draft. I look at Italy during World War I and identify quasi-exogenous variation in tax collection induced by the administrative structure of Piedmont during the 1814-1870 period. Using newly collected and digitised individual data on nearly all the men of the 1899 cohort drafted in the province of Turin, I find that citizens born in towns with lower historical fiscal capacity are more likely to evade the military draft, and that the effect transmits through changes in culture. Results are consistent with fiscal capacity spurring norms of rule-following able to persist in the long run. Placebo estimates from other Italian territories confirm that the effect I estimate can be attributed to fiscal capacity, and it is not confounded by legal capacity.

In this paper I study whether citizens' tax morale (and, more broadly, citizens' attitudes towards the state) can be affected by past institutions, focusing on the role of historical fiscal capacity. Exploiting the features of the tax collection system of a pre-unification state in XIX Century Italy I identify differences in local historical fiscal capacity (as proxied by geographical proximity to a tax collector) and map them into contemporary tax morale, as measured by evasion of the TV Tax in 2014. Exploiting only variation in historical fiscal capacity that arises within matched pairs of neighbouring towns on the border of tax districts, I find imprecisely estimated and arguably small differences in tax morale today between towns where fiscal capacity was different. Investigating the mechanisms of transmission, I provide evidence that phenomena associated with structural transformation are likely to have halted the persistence of the historical fiscal capacity effect.

We study the stabilization properties and welfare implications of a fiscal capacity in a New Keynesian model for a monetary union. A novel feature of the model is that access to the fiscal capacity is conditional on a country's public debt accumulation being sufficiently low. Likewise, the national fiscal effort to stabilize debt is more ambitious at higher debt levels. We show that the fiscal capacity reduces union-wide macroeconomic variability and raises union-wide welfare by reducing the incidence of regimes with large (pro-cyclical) fiscal consolidations. Welfare gains are higher under greater trade openness and price stickiness.

The world economy, including Indonesia, in the first quarter of 2020 has not been too affected by Covid-19. However, in the second quarter of 2020, national economic growth began to decline. As a result of the contraction of the Indonesian economy, it has an impact on the decline in regional fiscal capacity. This study focuses on: 1) The effect of Economic Growth on fiscal capacity in 34 provinces in Indonesia before and during the Covid-19 pandemic?; 2). Development of sources of fiscal capacity in Indonesia; 3). Quadrant of Relationship between Economic Growth and Fiscal Capacity; 4). The government's policy direction is to encourage increased fiscal capacity during the Covid-19 pandemic. This research uses descriptive quantitative method using panel data regression model. The rate of economic growth does not significantly affect the amount of regional fiscal capacity in 34 provinces in Indonesia. The decline in fiscal capacity was largely influenced by a decrease in Regional Original Income (ROI). In 2021 the sources of fiscal capacity building have not run normally. The effect is that the regional fiscal capacity is still low for each province. Therefore, to restore the economy, the government uses various stimuli, namely fiscal, monetary, and sectoral.

Introduction/Main Objectives: This paper is aimed at answering the following research questions: Where should Indonesia’s journey toward a prosperous society start from? Should state institutions be improved first to increase the tax collection necessary to finance this journey? Or should the tax capacity be improved first to help improve the institutions? Background Problems: Maintaining good quality state institutions requires fiscal support and, vice versa, maintaining fiscal support through tax revenue requires the existence of good quality state institutions. This paper empirically examines which of these two aspects needs to be improved first to achieve a better society for Indonesians. Novelty: To the best of the author’s knowledge this paper may be the first that tries to empirically explore the causal relationships between the quality of Indonesia’s state institutions and its tax capacity. Research Methods: Answers to the research questions were approached by employing a vector error-correction model of governance indicators and tax revenue data for Indonesia, covering the period from 2002 to 2017. Finding / Results: It has been found that, for Indonesia, the quality of the state institutions and the tax capacity did not have a causal relationship in any direction. Conclusion: Indonesia seems to be caught in a dilemma: On one side, choosing the strategy of improving the quality of the institutions first may not be sustainable because it is unlikely to lead to improvements in the tax capacity, thus the prospects for sustaining good-quality institutions may be uncertain due to the possible lack of fiscal support. On the other hand, improving the tax capacity first does not seem to be a reliable strategy either because it may not result in better quality state institutions, hence revenue mobilization efforts might not be effective due to the incomplete support provided by the poor-quality institutions

We model how corruption erodes state power, that is, the state’s ability to keep its apparatus under control in crises. Under a general assumption about fat-tailed risk of crisis, we show that given strong fiscal capacity, the head of the state will control local corruption at such a level that its power is secured; given weaker capacity, the state will over-tolerate corruption to retain officials, risking control in crises; moreover, a state may be trapped with too weak fiscal capacity, rampant corruption, and the state losing control in any real crisis, while having little incentive to invest in fiscal capacity. By developing historical narratives, we show that these theoretical results are consistent with experience from the Roman Empire, New Kingdom of Egypt, Ming China and many other powerful states in history.

The literature on the natural resource curse is well known – countries with abundant natural resources fail to transform that advantage into favourable development outcomes (see Badeeb, Lean, and C...

This paper explains the economic policy developed in the euro area to manage the economic effects induced by the COVID health crisis. First, an overview of developments in the euro area is presented. It then explains the fiscal decisions taken by member countries, as well as the monetary policy pursued by the European Central Bank. The final part reflects on the advisability of abandoning the fiscal rules that limit the fiscal capacity of states in order to favor economic recovery once the health crisis has been overcome.

The authors investigate the prospects for the spatial development of modern Russia highlighting the supporting regions considered in the budgetary aspect. The relevance of the study is due to the insufficient evidence for the effectiveness of the current policy of “equalization”, as well as the need for breakthrough growth of the Russian economy within the framework of national development goals. The present paper aims to identify one of the key elements of the supporting framework of the spatial organization of Russia in terms of the level of fiscal capacity. The research methodology is based on the use of complex, statistical and comparative analyses. The authors used official data of Rosstat on the population, tax and non-tax revenues, gratuitous receipts in 2010 and 2019 by regions of Russia. The authors highlight the key aspects of the spatial development of the Russian economy in the regional context: human capital development, economic development, the functioning of spatial structures of various types, fiscal capacity, environmental component, location of information and communication infrastructure, and geopolitical position. The influence of the fiscal capacity parameter on the sustainable socio-economic development of the region is justified. The fiscal capacity index of the constituent entities of Russia is analyzed at the end of 2010 and 2019, the main trends are identified. The study presents a cartographic visualization of the Russian regions by per capita fiscal capacity for tax and non-tax revenues of the consolidated budgets in 2019. The authors carried out a comparative analysis of the revenues of consolidated regional budgets on the macro-regional level, as a result of which the leading regions were identified and their budget parameters described.The present paper outlines one of the key elements of the supporting framework of Russian spatial organization from the point of view of fiscal capacity and identifies potential regions supporting spatial development in the context of macro-regions. The authors conclude that the supporting framework of the spatial organization of Russia, formed by the level of fiscal capacity, characterizes the financial potential of the territories, which can contribute to the development of interregional cooperation, including through the use of mechanisms for ensuring “horizontal” inter-budgetary transfers and budget loans. The prospect for further research on this topic consists in assessing and shaping other elements of the spatial development of Russia and identifying, by uniting them, supporting regions that can stimulate the development of not only the semi-periphery and periphery of their macro-regions but also of the entire country.

Regional finance has a pivotal role in regional autonomy because regional finance reflects the ability of regions in running the local government. One of the tools to analyze local government financial performance is ratio analysis. The purpose of this study was to determine how the regional financial performance of Sukoharjo Regency in terms of regional autonomy perspective. This research uses descriptive quantitative method. The data used in this research is secondary in the form of financial report data Sukoharjo regency in 2015-2019 were obtained using the time series technique. The analysis results show that the financial performance of Sukoharjo regency is still not optimal. This is indicated by lack of ability to extract local revenue known from the low of DDF ratio, DOF ratio, Fiscal capacity and fiscal effort. Other than that, low independence ratio indicates that the regional dependence on central financial is still high.

This paper argues that, on the development of European Union (EU)/Eurozone fiscal capacity German governments have consistently engaged in foot-dragging. Few German state elites have ever supported European fiscal capacity building beyond the EC budget. Following the outbreak of the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis, German governments agreed to the creation of financial support mechanisms only with reluctance. We see a case of continuity in German policy preferences driven by consistent ordoliberal and, specifically, moral hazard concerns. The important long-term change that we can observe relates to the growing importance for successive governments of avoiding audience costs driven by sceptical public opinion and the rise of a challenger party in German politics. German government support for a massive EU fiscal response to the economic crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates an exceptional policy position in favour of temporary financial mechanisms involving no fiscal transfers among member state governments.

In the United States (U.S.), most reports regarding racial disparities in incidence and death from COVID-19 understate the importance of majority-Black local jurisdictions’ fiscal capacity in shapi...

The paper analyzes the concept and indicator of vertical fiscal imbalance (VFI) and its capability in assessing the creditworthiness (debt sustainability) of Russian regions. It is found that VFI does not replace other indicators of debt and broader fiscal sustainability, but complements them by providing diagnostics of the balance of incoming and outgoing intergovernmental transfers in addition to the balance of expenditures and revenues (budget deficit). Vertical fiscal imbalance has a close inverse pair correlation with the share of own (tax and non-tax) revenues and fiscal capacity, and can therefore reflect creditworthiness (along with the amount of debt and capital expenditures). Technically, it is advisable to carry out an analysis using VFI with a recalculation accounting for subventions. It is concluded that vertical fiscal imbalance is an important element of the methodology of diagnosing fiscal sustainability. Further study of features of the concept, as well as the use of VFI in the analysis and regulation of intergovernmental relations, suggests a promising outlook.

This paper offers new evidence on the impacts of school finance reforms (SFRs) precipitated by school finance litigation, exploring the extent to which the impact of SFR differs by district racial composition. Using difference-in-differences and event study models with a series of district and year (or state-by-year) fixed effects, and a sixteen-year panel of over 10,000 school districts, my analyses exploit variation in funding across school districts, and timing of school finance court orders across states, to estimate the effect of SFR on the distribution of district funding by racial composition. Models include relevant control variables available in national data and results are robust to numerous alternative specifications, including estimating impacts on percent changes in resources (in addition to levels), restricting analyses to districts in SFR states, controlling for additional covariates available in only some years and some states, and adding controls for state-specific time trends. In addition, I estimate changes in New York State to assess whether and to what extent results are sensitive to additional controls for revenue-raising capacity and district costs. Results suggest that SFR can work to alleviate racial funding gaps, though impacts are moderate.

The paper presents the top-down (formula-based) approach in allocation of specific purpose grants for infrastructure (DAK fisik) in education by considering the needs of infrastructure in education. First, we estimate the needs of education infrastructure by calculating the gap between current condition of infrastructures and the minimum required infrastructures in education. Then, we translate the needs into necessary costs for education per region. After that, we simulate the financial scenario for the necessary costs using specific allocation grants in hierarchical, temporal and regional dimension. We also consider the local fiscal capacity and indicators on achievement of local governments in education for the distribution on DAK Fisik for FY2021 and onwards. Finally, we provide potential implication of formula-based approach as a top-down planning and budgeting for DAK Fisik.

This paper explores how wars make nations, above and beyond their need to raise the fiscal capacity to finance warfare. As army size increases, states change the conduct of war, switching from mercenaries to mass conscript armies. In order for the population to accept fighting and enduring wars, the government elites provide public goods, reduce rent-extraction, and adopt policies to build a nation – i.e., homogenize the culture of the population. Governments can instill “positive” national sentiment, in the sense of emphasizing the benefit of the nation, but they also can instill “negative” sentiment, in terms of aggressive propaganda against the opponent. We analyze these two types of nation-building and study their implications.

The high level of poverty in East Nusa Tenggara Province, Indonesia, requires effort to be alleviated. For instance, there is a need to enhance the financial management performance of the locals. Therefore this study analyzes the contribution of local financial performance to the poverty rate. It uses panel data regression analysis involving 22 regencies and municipalities from 2015 to 2018. The results of the study showed that the local financial independency ratio in various regencies and municipalities has fewer contributions to the poverty rate. Local governments need to increase regional fiscal capacity integrated with efforts to improve regional macroeconomic performance. Moreover, they should increase alignments toward poverty alleviation programs as well as the capacity of regional apparatus.

The topic of this article is the development of the tax system of the Cape Colony from 1820 to 1910. This period was crucial for the introduction and diffusion of modern taxes, and the Cape constit...

This study discusses the development of fiscal capacity in Central Java, Indonesia. The purpose of this study is to analyze internal and external factors that increase regional fiscal capacity, and formulate strategies by analyzing internal and external elements to obtain four alternative strategies namely 'strength - opportunity' strategy, 'strength - threat' strategy, 'weakness - opportunity' strategy and Strategy for 'weaknesses - threats'. This study uses secondary data to analyze indicators of regional fiscal capacity and primary data collected through focused discussions, to analyze strategies. The results of the analysis indicate that there are several main strategies to increase regional fiscal in Central Java Province, namely the program of intensification and extensification of regional taxes; improving the quality of human resources with special competencies in the field of taxation; synergy and internal coordination between regional government institutions; improvement of the supervision system for taxpayers; realizing clear and legal regional regulations, simplifying the mechanism for managing investment licenses in Central Java and optimizing regional revenues through modernizing the collection of taxes and levies by utilizing technology. Modernization of increasing regional fiscal capacity will encourage the achievement of equitable regional revenue, increase public participation, administrative efficiency, consistent law enforcement, and improve the level of public confidence in the implementation of good governance.

This paper examines the politics of governing Greater London by focusing on the financing of Transport for London’s Northern Line Extension. It argues that metropolitan infrastructure policy is a t...

This paper contributes to the debate on the Sustainable Development Goals progress by evaluating the MDGs achievements in South Asia and the policy and institutional challenges deriving from such experience. Using cross-country regressions and aggregate indicators of poverty, health, education and gender parity outcomes, we offer three sets of findings. First, comparative evidence shows that, while South Asia has converged with richer regions, there is still significant variation in gender equality, universal primary education, and income poverty achievements across countries. Second, projections based on past trends on where SDGs are expected to be by 2030 reveal that there is a long way to go, where emblematic targets as income poverty eradication may not be met in the populous South Asian countries. Finally, considering the expanded set of development targets in the SDGs and the growth slowdown in South Asia, we argue that further progress would simultaneously require increased public spending on health and education and reforms improving state capacity. A simulation exercise confirms that such a combination of interventions would deliver significant benefits in the region, particularly in areas that are critical to progress on the goals of ‘No Poverty’, ‘Quality Education’, ‘Gender Equality’, and ‘Inclusive Growth’.

This asymmetric effect of the shock on economic activities becomes an asymmetric impact on countries depending on their sectoral composition.

Calls against austerity have entered the political agenda of very different actors in the political spectrum – from social democratic to right-wing populist parties. In this article, we argue that the main failures in realizing these claims and thus overcoming austerity can hardly be explained only in terms of (lacking) political will. We rather approach this problem complex in the two emblematic cases of Italy and Spain by foregrounding the disciplinary effects of capital accumulation in both the countries through a long-term historical reconstruction of the fiscal and steering capacity of their respective state institutions. Despite key specificities in the respective fragile accumulation regimes, the main findings point to the fact that the structure of accumulation has imposed strong constraints in both Italy and Spain. An unstable and crisis-prone capital accumulation characterized by low productivity, a lack of sectoral diversity, regional fragmentation, as well as high levels of exposure and dependency within variegated capitalism have restricted state capacity – a tendency only ruptured in temporary boom-cycles. This, we argue, entails some major implications, first, to address the present failures of social democratic forces and second, to gauge the concrete transformative potential at the politico-economic level of populist calls for ‘breaking the chains’ of austerity.

The structure of the financial system of local government units (LGUs) determines the efficiency of its operation and development opportunities. Such a system should take into account both appropriately assigned sources of its own revenues as well as properly estimated expenditure needs, and equalization transfers. This paper focuses on the revenue side, more precisely – on the fiscal capacity of local governments. The paper begins by analyzing the concept of fiscal capacity in foreign and Polish literature. Then, three different types of fiscal capacity are distinguished, which is justified by the different purposes for which such capacities can be used. The remainder of the paper presents the amounts of fiscal capacity of various types of Polish LGUs in 2010-2017. An attempt was also made to identify external factors affecting the amount of this capacity.

Dalam 10 tahun terakhir (2010-2019), kapasitas fiskal dan ruang fiskal Pemerintah Kota Kupang mengalami peningkatan setiap tahun. Peningkatan tersebut memberi dampak positif bagi peningkatan solvabilitas fiskal daerah dan diskresi yang semakin luas bagi Kepala Daerah untuk membiayai program prioritasnya. Di dalam dinamikanya, besarnya kapasitas dan ruang fiskal sangat peka terhadap perubahan PAD. Setiap peningkatan PAD sebesar 1% dapat meningkatkan kapasitas fiskal sebesar 2,69% dan ruang fiskal sebesar 2,11%. Dengam demikian peningkatan PAD menjadi sangat penting untuk meningkatkan kapasitas dan ruang fiskal daerah. Peningkatan PAD yang dimaksud dapat dilakukan secara sistematis, terukur dan berkelanjutan, melalui ekstensifikasi dan intensifikasi basis pendapatan daerah.

Policing is a prominent but understudied part of American politics. This article asks: Why did some, but not all, American states adopt a state police force in the early twentieth century? The state police force—a statewide policing agency with general jurisdiction over crimes throughout a state—was a prized progressive policy reform for decades. Yet many states declined to adopt the innovation. That puzzle becomes even more interesting given that all forty-eight states adopted the closely related innovation of a state highway patrol during the same period. This article applies diffusion theory to explain the origins of a familiar feature of American policing. Using a multimethod research design, I found that labor-capital struggles and regional pressures for diffusion were most important in shaping the adoption of state police forces. By contrast, adoptions of highway patrols appear to have been influenced by factors such as urbanization and fiscal capacity.

There was much euphoria and enthusiasm surrounding the advent of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015, but there was little empirical evidence regarding how much would be required of countries to achieve the goals. This article contributes to filling this gap by estimating what Ghana needs in fiscal terms to achieve SDG 4: Quality Education. The article estimated an education gap, which indicates the difference between what pertains to education indicators in Ghana and what SDG 4 sets to achieve. Further, the fiscal capacity needed to address the gap was estimated while taking cognisance of the nation's education budget and fiscal space from tax revenues. The results indicated that Ghana is inefficient in its allocation of education resources.

During the years of the so-called "Great Moderation", monetary policy and automatic stabilizers were deemed sufficient for counter-cyclical purposes. However, the depth and the length of the recent crisis, together with policy interest rates at the zero lower bound, induced a more positive re-assessment of a countercyclical fiscal stance, especially in the euro area. Against this background, we look at discretionary fiscal policy in the euro area from three different perspectives. First, we provide evidence that the discretionary fiscal policy in euro area countries has been mostly acyclical even if our estimates suggest that it could have been useful, particularly during the crisis. Second, focusing on the short-run - i.e. taking as given the economic and institutional constraints that currently make a significant fiscal expansion quite unrealistic in Europe - we discuss some budget-neutral proposals aimed at fostering economic growth. Finally, taking a more forward-looking perspective, we discuss the issue of the appropriate fiscal stance for the euro area as a whole, and argue that the advantages of having a coordinated approach (e.g. through a fiscal capacity at the central level) can be substantial.

Three basic methods are employed to assess the fiscal capacity of territories for fiscal equalization: the representative tax system method, the historical data method, and the macroeconomic indicator method. Each of these methods has its own advantages and disadvantages, while the historical data method is considered the most accurate in terms of approximation of the values of fiscal capacity to actual budget revenues. The aim of the article is to compare the accuracy of assessing Russian regions’ fiscal capacities through various methods, as well as by combining them, and to propose measures to change the current methodology for fiscal capacity assessment. The calculations presented in this article for the Russian regions for 2018 show that, in fact, the representative tax system and historical data methods have a comparable degree of accuracy, and the macroeconomic indicator method is only slightly inferior to them. At the same time, while assessing the fiscal capacity in regard to individual taxes, both the method of historical data and the method of representative tax system may have an advantage in the accuracy of the assessment, the method of macroeconomic indicators being inferior to them (except for the case of corporate income tax). As the author’s calculations show, it is possible to improve the accuracy of assessing regional fiscal capacity through the following measures: (1) not taking into account data for the current financial year, that is, taking into account data for only two reporting years; (2) not adjusting income tax and personal income tax fiscal capacity to the rate of tax revenue growth; (3) using the method of macroeconomic indicators for mineral extraction tax and other tax fiscal capacity.

Social inequalities are a significant challenge in developing countries. Therefore, they should be treated as a leading priority in boosting socio-economic development. Such inequalities are a growing challenge for Poland. It is believed that social inequalities are behind Poland's relatively low position against other European countries in the Human Development Index ranking. Many factors influence social inequalities, one being the system of financing local government units. A critical area for considering social inequalities in the context of financial phenomena is the study of fiscal inequalities resulting from the implemented vertical division of public revenues among individual levels of public authority. The paper presents the results of research on the relationship between the fiscal capacity of local government units in Poland across voivodeships and the expenditure of government institutions, as well as the relationship of these expenses with social inequalities in voivodeships. To this end, six areas of social life were distinguished, for which the degree of inequality of transferred expenditure was determined using the Gini index. The method of the total order of objects was used to assess the impact of government institutions' expenditure on an individual's social situation across voivodeships. The conducted research showed both the weak dependence of government expenditure on individual units' fiscal capacity and its low effectiveness in eliminating inter-voivodeship social inequalities.

Revenue sharing arrangements and the fiscal equalization system in Croatia have long been perceived as inadequate and ineffective. The reform of personal income tax sharing implemented in 2018 was accompanied by a new fiscal capacity equalization system. To date the effects of these reforms have not been empirically analyzed. In addition, the impact of the omission of differences in expenditure needs in the new formula has not been adequately analyzed either. This paper aims to fill those gaps by analyzing the existing disparities in fiscal capacity and expenditure needs across subnational governments in Croatia, testing the effectiveness of the current fiscal equalization mechanisms. Using Gini coefficients and other inequality measures we confirm that the new fiscal equalization does reduce disparities in per capita fiscal capacity. However, its equalizing effectiveness regarding expenditure needs arising from decentralized functional responsibilities remains overall rather weak.

This study contributes to debates on the efficacy of institutions in settler colonies by comparing the Cape Colony’s fiscal path to the experiences of Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. I find that the Cape’s fiscal trajectory was divergent. Agricultural and mining taxes were important surrogates of income taxes in other colonies, but the Cape’s narrow interests pushed for insulation from direct taxes. This made the Cape’s fiscal path unsustainable with comparatively low per capita taxes, high deficits, and the highest level of indebtedness. I argue that the instrumentality of ‘‘responsible government” status was conditional on how imported self-government institutions were endogenized.

How do modern fiscal states arise? Perhaps the most dominant explanation, based on the European experience, is that democratic institutions that limited the extractive power of states-exemplified by the 1688 Glorious Revolution in England-paved the way for the rise of fiscal capacity and subsequent prosperity. Revisionist accounts, however, reveal that this dominant narrative is flawed. In fact, numerous factors converged to enable the rise of European fiscal states, and in England, debt and land were particularly salient factors. Building off this literature, I bring attention to the role of 'taxless public financing' (i.e. financing public infrastructure through means other than taxation) in the making of fiscal states in two seldom compared cases: 19th-century America and 21st-century China. Both countries relied heavily on taxless financing to launch an infrastructure boom that spurred rapid growth along with massive corruption and financial risks.

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COVID-19 pandemic has an impact on global economic activity, but the negative effects vary from country to country. The key factors determining the depth of the impact are the economic situation at the beginning of 2020, the features of the economic structure and the fiscal capacity of governments to help citizens, businesses and the economy as a whole. Free zones and special economic zones are historically perceived as places that, to some extent, protect investors from unpredictability and act as places where the weak business environment is mitigated. The article investigates the impact of pandemic COVID - 19 on the world's economic situation and free zones, as well as free zones forecasts on the economic recovery. The objective of the article – to analyse the impact of pandemic COVID-19 on the world free zones performance and global economic situation. Within the framework of the study has been characterised the impact of pandemic COVID - 19 on the world's economic situation, described the extent and nature of the COVID- 19 pandemic impacts on performance in the Free Zones, as well as has been described the impact of pandemic COVID 19 on the operation of free-zone enterprises in Latvia by analysing the example of Rezekne's special economic zone.The descriptive methods, document analysis, comparative analysis was used in the study, survey.

PPP withdrawal policy is helpful to reduce over-investment in PPPs leading to sustainable development. However, little is known about the role of local governments on over-investment in PPPs. Using the PPP Project Platform Data, a unique dataset, this article is able to quantify over-investment in PPPs by coding PPP withdrawal for the first time. This research tests the influencing factors of PPP withdrawal at the municipal level, according to the centralized withdrawal policy in late 2017 as an exogenous treatment. Based on the theory of over-investment to rapid economic growth, this study develops a two-pillar framework under the combination of political man and economic man assumptions to explain the PPP withdrawal of local governments. The results show that both official tenure and fiscal capacity are significant factors. In addition, debt partially mediates the mayor tenure on PPP withdrawal, and the land revenue growth can hinder the negative relationship between mayor tenure and PPP withdrawal. It implies that over-investment in PPPs is strongly influenced by official leaders’ personal promotion incentive and official group members’ collective benefit. Thus, our findings indicate that the centralized withdrawal policy is an effective instrument to prevent over-investment in PPPs. Moreover, a match should be formed between local development planning and investment plans to promote sustainable of PPP investment. Published version

This entry has been realised in the framework of the H2020-MSCA-RISE-2018 project “LoGov - Local Government and the Changing Urban-Rural Interplay”. LoGov aims to provide solutions for local governments that address the fundamental challenges resulting from urbanisation. To address this complex issue, 18 partners from 17 countries and six continents share their expertise and knowledge in the realms of public law, political science, and public administration. LoGov identifies, evaluates, compares, and shares innovative practices that cope with the impact of changing urban-rural relations in five major local government areas: (1) local responsibilities and public services, (2) local financial arrangements, (3) structure of local government, (4) intergovernmental relations of local governments, and (5) people’s participation in local decision-making. The present entry addresses local financial arrangements in Moldova. The entry forms part of the LoGov Report on Moldova. To access the full version of the report on Moldova, other practices regarding local financial arrangements and to receive more information about the project, please visit: https://www.logov-rise.eu/. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 823961.

Tax revenue in many low-income countries is inadequate for funding government investment in infrastructure and public services. This paper examines two dimensions of low state capacity that hinder tax collection: the inability to ascertain the tax base (detection capacity) and the inability to enforce unpaid liabilities (enforcement capacity). A randomized experiment with Liberian property owners finds that using identifying information from a newly developed property database to alert property owners that their noncompliance has been detected quadruples the tax payment rate, but only when the notice includes details on the penalties for noncompliance. A second experiment finds a further increase in compliance from signaling greater enforcement probability to delinquent property owners. These results highlight the importance of investments in both detection and enforcement capacity.

Caribbean countries, a set of mostly Small Island Developing States (SIDS), have a history of dealing with large shocks. The region is threatened by both economic and natural hazards. Nations have specialized in tourism and commodity exports, disproportionately exposing them to global economic cycles through changes in tourism demand and commodity prices. They are also located in a region that is highly exposed to a range of natural hazards, from volcanic eruptions to earthquakes and hurricanes, which damage their infrastructure stock, reduce tourism demand, and destroy agricultural production. Hazards have often caused severe damage to economies and livelihoods in the region. This report reviews existing assessments of past losses from natural and economic shocks in the Caribbean, looking at impacts on physical capital, private sector activity (especially tourism and agriculture), economic growth, poverty, and well-being. It concludes that, despite the damage to physical capital experienced by countries due to natural hazards (especially in housing and transport infrastructure), the impacts on growth are short-lived, possibly because many mechanisms are in place to help economies bounce back rapidly. However, natural hazards have a high impact on poverty and human capital and threaten the sustainability of economic growth.