With over 95% of Iraq’s government budget received from oil revenues, an agreeable inter-governmental framework for managing petroleum resources and for distributing revenues is aptly regarded as the ...lynchpin of federalism. Iraq has great potential to develop a fiscal framework, consistent with sound principles and best practices, that will distribute revenues equitably and efficiently, decentralize resource management where appropriate, and bind the country together as a stable federation. As in most resource-rich countries, Iraq’s petroleum deposits are unevenly spread and deposits differ in productive capacity, cost of extraction and processing, and quality of crude. Moreover, Iraq’s petroleum infrastructure requires extensive repair and reinvestment in order to maximize its production potential. Furthermore, large areas of Iraq remain unexplored, particularly Iraqi Kurdistan and the Western Desert, and preliminary assessments point to large potential reserves.
The argument is presented that an analysis of the capitalized burdens and benefits of the local public sector offers a simple and objective computational methodology to fiscal incidence at the local ...level. However, a simpler approach to local budget incidence is possible with the help of disaggregated data on real estate transactions. The capitalization approach is implemented empirically by analyzing the variations in residential property values due to the provision and financing of local public goods. This analysis is conducted for the Edmonton, Alberta, metropolitan area as revealed by the house price regressions. It is concluded that: 1. the incidence of residential property tax is highly pro-rich, 2. the incidence of expenditure benefits is pro-poor for those earning less than $22,000 and pro-rich for incomes in the $22,000 to $28,000 range, but pro-rich for the richest class, 3. the overall impact of the local public sector in Edmonton is to redistribute income from the middle class to the poor and the rich, and 4. the local public sector aggravates income inequality in Edmonton.
This paper addresses three complementary themes in bringing about responsive and accountable public governance in developing countries—namely globalisation, localisation and a results oriented ...management and evaluation (ROME). The first theme recognises interdependencies in an interconnected world and discusses how these influences would shape partnership within and across nations. The'Second theme is concerned with public sector realignments within nations to meet the challenges associated with heightened expectations from an informed citizenry. The third theme relates to creating a new culture of public governance that is responsive and accountable to citizens. The paper argues that a road to ROME holds significant promise of overcoming the ills of a dysfunctional, command and control, overbearing and rent seeking public sector in many developing countries. ROME de-emphasises traditional input controls and instead is concerned with creating an authorising environment in which the public officials are given the flexibility to manage for results but are held accountable for delivering public services consistent with citizen preferences. Further under ROME incentive mechanisms induce public and non-public (private and nongovernment) sectors to compete in the delivery of public services and match public services with citizen preferences at lower tax cost to society per unit of output.
Examines the implications of the new power-sharing arrangements for federal control over macroeconomic policies in Brazil. It is suggested that the new order has limited, but not imperiled, the scope ...of fiscal policy as a stabilization tool. In contrast, federal control over monetary policy has been significantly enhanced. It is argued that, as currently organized, the Brazilian fiscal & monetary systems interact in ways that are not well understood; therefore, the actions taken by the federal government may not achieve the desired results. 3 Tables, 1 Appendix, 13 References. Adapted from the source document.
An extensive literature on the relationship between decentralization (or localization) and corruption has developed in recent years. While some authors argue that there is a positive relationship ...between decentralization and corruption, others claim that decentralization in fact leads to a reduction in the level of corruption. This important policy question has not yet been laid to rest, since previous empirical work simply uses eclectic regressions and lacks a conceptual framework to discover the root causes of corruption. This paper attempts to fill this void by presenting a framework in identifying the drivers of corruption both conceptually and empirically in order to isolate the role of centralized decision-making on corruption. The following results emerge: 1) For a sample of 30 countries (developing and industrial), corruption is caused by: a lack of service-orientation in the public sector, weak democratic institutions, economic isolation (closed economy), colonial past, internal bureaucratic controls and centralized decision making. 2) Decentralization is found to have a negative impact on corruption, with the effect being stronger in unitary than in federal countries.
The authors evaluate the case for carbon taxes in terms of national interests. They reach the following conclusions. (A) A global carbon tax involves issues of international resource transfers and ...would be difficult to administer and enforce. It is thus unlikely to be implemented in the near future. (b) National carbon taxes can raise significant revenues cost-effectively in developing countries and are not likely to be as regressive in their impact as commonly perceived. Such taxes can also enhance economic efficiency if introduced as a revenue-neutral partial replacement for corporate income taxes or in cases where subsidies are prevalent. The welfare costs of carbon taxes generally vary directly with the existing level of energy taxes, so a carbon tax should be an instrument of choice for countries such as India and Indonesia, which have few or no energy taxes. A carbon tax can significantly reduce local pollution and carbon dioxide emissions. Cost-benefit analysis shows countries with few or no energy taxes substantially gaining from carbon taxes in terms of an improved local environment. A carbon tax of $10 a ton produces very small output losses for Pakistani industries analyzed in this paper, and the output losses are fully offset by health benefits from reduced emissions of local pollutants - even ignoring the global implications of a reduced greenhouse effect. Tradable permits are preferable to carbon taxes where the critical threshold of the stock of carbon emission beyond which temperatures would rise exponentially is known. Given our current ignorance on the costs of reducing carbon emissions and the threshold effect, a carbon tax appears to be a better and more flexible instrument for avoiding large unexpected costs.
