Fiscal Decentralization Analysis

Fiscal decentralization analysis examines how taxing, spending and borrowing powers are divided among levels of government — central, regional and local — and what that division means for efficiency, equity and accountability. Its theoretical foundation is the fiscal federalism tradition pioneered by Wallace Oates, whose 1972 book Fiscal Federalism and 1999 essay set out when decentralized provision improves welfare and how intergovernmental transfers should be designed. The method maps the assignment of revenues and expenditures across tiers, measures the degree of decentralization and the gap between subnational spending and own revenue, and assesses how these arrangements affect service delivery, redistribution and the accountability of governments to citizens.