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The Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) assessed the effectiveness of Bank support for decentralization between fiscal 1990 and 2007 in 20 countries, seeking to inform the design and implementation of future support. Given the difficulties of measuring the results of decentralization, the evaluation used intermediate outcome indicators—such as strengthened legal and regulatory frameworks for intergovernmental relations, improved administrative capacity, and increased accountability of sub national governments and functionaries to higher levels of government and to citizens—to assess the results of Bank support in these 20 countries. To examine potential lessons at a sectoral level, the evaluation also assessed whether Bank support for decentralization improved intermediate outcomes for service delivery in the education sector in 6 of the 20 countries.

This article looks at the relationship between fiscal and political decentralization and the evolution of regional inequalities in a panel of 26 countries—19 developed and 7 developing—for the period between 1990 and 2006. Using an instrumental variables method, it finds that whereas for the whole sample decentralization is completely dissociated from the evolution of regional disparities, the results are highly contingent on the level of development, the existing level of territorial inequalities, and the fiscal redistributive capacity of the countries in the sample. Decentralization in high income countries has, if anything, been linked with a reduction of regional inequality. In low and medium income countries, fiscal decentralization has been associated with a significant rise in regional disparities, which the positive effects of political decentralization have been unable to compensate. Policy preferences by subnational governments for expenditure in economic affairs, education, and social protection have contributed to this trend.

To promote county economic prosperity and social development, China enacted a fiscal reform known as “province governing county” (PGC) in the early 2000s. Using the difference-in-differences (DID) method and a massive sample of enterprises from 2003 to 2011, this study investigates the effect of PGC reform on firm environmental performance. The results show that enterprises in reformed counties have significantly decreased their pollution intensity since the fiscal reform. Our research reveals that the environmental effects of fiscal decentralization are related to changes in the political assessment metrics of local officials. It also shows that PGC fiscal reform has a significant positive effect on the environmental performance of large, small, and micro enterprises. Furthermore, it suggests that PGC fiscal reform benefits the environmental performance due to the informational advantages of county governments. In terms of environmental governance, although local governments have an information advantage in the allocation of green fiscal funds, well-designed mechanisms are needed to strengthen their motivation.

We all witness, in advertising and on supermarket shelves, the fierce competition for our food dollars. In this engrossing exposé, Marion Nestle goes behind the scenes to reveal how the competition really works and how it affects our health. The abundance of food in the United States--enough calories to meet the needs of every man, woman, and child twice over--has a downside. Our over-efficient food industry must do everything possible to persuade people to eat more--more food, more often, and in larger portions--no matter what it does to waistlines or well-being. Like manufacturing cigarettes or building weapons, making food is big business. Food companies in 2000 generated nearly

The authors of the article have studied the legal principles in the interaction between local self-government bodies and the National Police in the field of cultural heritage protection, in terms of martial law in Ukraine. The authors have analysed the current legislation regulating the powers of the relevant entities in the field of cultural heritage and objects’ preservation, including the Ukranian laws on the protection of cultural heritage, on the National Police, as well as the relevant by-laws. Practical problems related to the fragmentation and vagueness of normative regulation, in particular the lack of special provisions on involving the police in security measures in emergency situations, have been outlined. The feasibility of amending the relevant laws has been substantiated, particularly by supplementing the law on the protection of cultural heritage with a norm on legal grounds and mechanisms of interacting with the police. Particular attention has been paid to perspectives for harmonizing the national legislation with international legal acts, such as the 1954 Hague Convention and the 2005 Faro Convention. Specific areas for improving the regulatory framework have been suggested, including the inventory of powers of local self-government bodies, modernization of legislation in the field of culture, and the initiative for codification in the form of the Code of Laws on Culture. The article contains analytical generalizations and practical recommendations and is based on an interdisciplinary approach using the methods of legal analysis, comparative law, and elements of public administration.

This article aims to analyse the changing central-local government relationships in Java from the late nineteenth to late twentieth centuries. These changes allowed actors with different professional backgrounds (bureaucrats, politicians, military officers, businessmen, etc.) to emerge as local heads. One key finding is the resilience of the civilian bureaucracy in local government leadership. Since the late colonial period, bureaucrats have survived government changes and have successfully assumed a fair number of local head posts in Java. This article shows their resilience quantitatively.

Federal countries face innumerable challenges including public health crises, economic uncertainty, and widespread public distrust in governing institutions. They are also home to 40 per cent of the world's population. Rethinking Decentralization explores the question of what makes a successful federal government by examining the unique role of public attitudes in maintaining the fragile institutions of federalism. Conventional wisdom is that successful federal governance is predicated on the degree to which authority is devolved to lower levels of government and the extent to which citizens display a \"federal spirit\" - a term often referenced but rarely defined. Jacob Deem puts these claims to the test, examining public attitudes in Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Deem demonstrates how the role of citizen attachment to particular manifestations of decentralization, subsidiarity, and federalism is unique to each country and a reflection of its history, institutions, and culture. Essential reading for policymakers, academics, and everyday citizens, Rethinking Decentralization re-centres the public to offer a nuanced way of thinking about federal governance.

Having a reasonable environmental management system is key to achieve regional green development. This article integrates environmental decentralization into an environmental/economic analytical framework, introducing a fiscal decentralization indicator to explore the mechanism of environmental decentralization and regional green development, and then tests this concept using Chinese provincial penal data. The results show that the spillover effect of green development is significant: Improving regional green development will promote green development in neighboring regions. At the national level, different categories of environmental decentralization have different effects, and these can also affect green development through both direct and indirect paths. There is also a positive interaction mechanism between these two variables. Moreover, the interaction between environmental and fiscal decentralization has a negative effect on regional green development, with the impact varying across regions. These findings play an important role in green development, industrial transformation, and advancement, especially in China.

Agglomeration economies are a fundamental explanation for the existence of cities. Spatial clustering allows for a variety of external benefits such as labor pooling, sharing of suppliers, and specialization; these in turn contribute to increased productivity and economic growth. Over the past several decades, the strength and nature of agglomeration economies have come into question. In the 1980s, it was argued that information and telecommunications technology reduced the need for physical proximity, and hence the value of agglomeration economies. Reduced agglomeration economies would explain the decentralization of economic activity and decline of central cities. We are now fully in the era of the information economy, with smart phones, cars, buildings, and appliances merging into the Internet of Things. At the same time, we observe the re-emergence of some downtowns and the continued growth of megalopolises around the USA, despite rising congestion. This essay traces the role and nature of agglomeration economies in the evolution of urban form.

This paper develops a new theory of fluctuations—one that helps accommodate the notions of \"animal spirits\" and \"market sentiment\" in unique-equilibrium, rational-expectations, macroeconomic models. To this goal, we limit the communication that is embedded in a neoclassical economy by allowing trading to be random and decentralized. We then show that the business cycle may be driven by a certain type of extrinsic shocks which we call sentiments. These shocks formalize shifts in expectations of economic activity without shifts in the underlying preferences and technologies; they are akin to sunspots, but operate in unique-equilibrium models. We further show how communication may help propagate these shocks in a way that resembles the spread of fads and rumors and that gives rise to boom-and-bust phenomena. We finally illustrate the quantitative potential of our insights within a variant of the RBC model.