Using a panel of data on the financing of the United States’ largest central cities from 1997 to 2008, the empirical results of this paper provide strong support for the hypothesis that a more diversified revenue structure generates more revenues than one that relies primarily on the property tax.
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This presentation was delivered by Larry Beasley at an event co-sponsored by Ideas That Matter on December 6, 2006, with two panel presentations: Planning in Toronto: What's the Problem?, chaired by Paul Bedford, including panelists Julie Di Lorenzo, Frank Lewinberg, and Gary Wright; and Amenities for Density: Section 37 of the Planning Act, chaired by John Lorinc, with a presentation by Larry Beasley, and panelists Steve Diamond, and Ted Tyndorf.
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The current division of spending responsibilities among the three orders of government and their ability to use own-source revenues to fund these responsibilities has led to concerns about the existence of a vertical fiscal imbalance. This paper provides an assessment of trends in the levels of expenditures and revenues by all three orders of government, trends that are important in assessing the extent to which there is a fiscal imbalance.
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IMFG has an opening for an Administrator. The deadline for applications is February 12, 2018.
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A presentation by Adam Found, the 2010 recipient of the Alan Broadbent Graduate Fellowship in Municipal Finance and Governance funded by the Diamante Development Corporation and Dr. James Wong, on April 21, 2010 at the Munk School for Global Affairs.
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Using capital cities in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Ethiopia, Germany, India, Mexico, Nigeria, South Africa, Switzerland, and the United States as case studies, this book examines federal policies towards capital cities, with a particular emphasis on how capital cities are funded and governed, and the extent to which the federal government compensates them for their unique role.
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The conventional theory of fiscal federalism, which sees earmarking largely as a means to deal with positive spillovers in local expenditures, explains neither the level of such grants nor the trends over time. Nor can it readily account for the existence of non-matching, but still categorical, block grants. In this paper, we explore several alternative perspectives that interpret earmarking as a response to information failures between governments and, even more fundamentally, to accountability issues that arise between governments as well as between governments and voters.
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This paper provides a case study of provincial-local transfers in Canada and evaluates the extent to which they are designed to increase local accountability or maintain provincial control. The evaluation is based, in part, on a review of trends in provincial transfers to municipalities and school boards over the last 20 years and, in part, on an assessment of the extent to which 3 grants are designed to satisfy the standard rationales for intergovernmental transfers found in the traditional fiscal federalism literature (vertical fiscal imbalance, horizontal fiscal imbalance, and externalities) or political rationales.
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