Federalism and regionalism in transition countries: A survey

The paper provides a brief survey of the key contributions to the studies of the federalism and regionalism in transition states, specifically the countries of the Central and Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union. It covers the dynamics of the Russian federalism and decentralization in other post-Soviet states. Furthermore, it looks at the evolution of the regional economic integration in the former Soviet Union, as well as briefly discusses the regional integration arrangements of the transition countries of Central and Eastern Europe.federalism; regional integration; transition economies

Public Budget Composition, Fiscal(De)Centralization, and Welfare

We present a dynamic two-region model with overlapping generations. There are two types of public expenditure, education and infrastructure funding, and governments decide optimally on budget size (tax rate) and its allocation across the two outlays. Productivity of government infrastructure spending can differ across regions. This assumption follows well established empirical evidence, and highlights regional heterogeneity in a previously unexplored dimension. We study the implications of three different fiscal regimes for capital accumulation and aggregate national welfare. Full centralization of revenue and expenditure decisions is the optimal fiscal arrangement for the country when infrastructure spending productivity is similar across regions. When regional differences exist but are not too large, the partial centralization regime is optimal where the federal government sets a common tax rate, but allows the regional governments to decide on the budget composition. Only when the differences are sufficiently large does full decentralization become the optimal regime. National steady state output is instead highest when the economy is decentralized. This result is consistent with the “Oates conjecture” that fiscal decentralization increases capital accumulation. However, in terms of welfare this result can be reversed.fiscal federalism, capital accumulation, infrastructure, public education

The Impact of Local Decentralization on Economic Growth: Evidence from U.S. Counties

We analyze the impact of fiscal decentralization on U.S. county population, employment, and real income growth. Our findings suggest that government organization matters for local economic growth, but that the impacts vary by government unit and by economic indicator. We find that single-purpose governments per square mile have a positive impact on metropolitan population and employment growth, but no significant impact on nonmetropolitan counties. In contrast, the fragmentation of general-purpose governments per capita has a negative impact on employment and population growth in nonmetropolitan counties. Our results suggest that local government decentralization matters differently for metropolitan and nonmetropolitan counties.fiscal decentralization, metropolitan, nonmetropolitan, population, employment, income, spatial econometrics

Regulatory federalism and industrial policy in broadband telecommunications

We analyse the impact of regulation, industrial policy and jurisdictional allocation on broadband deployment using a theoretical model and an empirical estimation. Although central powers may be more focused and internalize interjurisdictional externalities, decentralized powers may internalize local horizontal policy spillovers and use a diversity of objectives as a commitment device in the presence of sunk investments. The latter may, for instance, alleviate the collective action problem of the joint use of rights of way and other physical infrastructures. In the empirical exercise, using data for OECD and EU countries for the period 1999-2006, we examine whether centralization promotes new telecommunications markets, in particular the broadband access market. The existing literature, in the main, claims it does, but we find no support for this claim in our data. Our results show that indicators of national industrial policy are a weakly positive determinant of broadband deployment and that different measures of centralization are either irrelevant or have a negative impact on broadband penetration.Regulation, industrial policy, decentralization, broadband

THE ANALYSIS OF URBAN CONCENTRATION AND DECENTRALIZATION IN EGYPT: CASE STUDY OF PORT SAID GOVERNORATE.

The structural spatial imbalances in Egypt have received considerable attention in recent years. Discussions have been characterized by both a focus towards the importance of the exploitation of the competitive advantages of regions and the reduction of socio-economic disparities by directing development towards backward regions. Those two opinions are drawing attention towards the need for an in-depth analysis of concentration and decentralization policies and their impacts on the land use distribution. This paper analyzes the urban growth scenarios in Port Said governorate within a framework of a decentralized concentration approach for the allocation of economic activities. The purpose of this approach is to support the preparation of a spatial and socio-economic plan that could assist in closing the gap between the rural/urban inequalities and socioeconomic disparities. The analysis of urban growth in Port Said area reveals that there is a strong need to create new employment centers along new transportation corridors to create polycentric regions, each functioning as an integrated socio-economic system that is formally independent from the others, yet connected and concentrated. Meanwhile, rural development has to be promoted as independent functional units that form an agropolitan system. It is concluded that the combination of urban polycentrism and rural concentrated decentralization could present a solution to the unmanaged urban growth on arable land, rural to urban migration and the low quality of life at the urban fringes of the main urban centers

Transformations and Reforms of European Health Care Systems: The Case of Estonia

The purpose of this article is to present the main directions of changes in the Estonian health care system following the transformation of the national economy and the accession of Estonia to the European Union. Special attention has been paid to the ways of sourcing, and the collection and redistribution of financial resources allocated to health care in different periods of the transformation. The initial changes introduced far-reaching decentralization of the health system, while further reforms led to his re-centralization. The intensity of the re-centralization of finance and health management processes was accelerated after 2008, when the impact of the global financial crisis on the condition of the economy of Estonia was significant. As a result of the introduced changes, Bismarck’s mixed system - a hybrid system - has been formed.Celem artykułu jest prezentacja głównych kierunków zmian wprowadzanych w estońskim systemie zdrowia po transformacji systemowej gospodarki narodowej i przystąpieniu Estonii do Unii Europejskiej. Szczególna uwaga została zwrócona na sposoby pozyskiwania, gromadzenia i redystrybucji środków finansowych przeznaczonych na opiekę zdrowotną w poszczególnych okresach wprowadzania zmian. Początkowe zmiany wprowadzały daleko idącą decentralizację systemu zdrowotnego, natomiast kolejne reformy doprowadziły do ponownej jego centralizacji. Nasilenie się procesów ponownej centralizacji finansowania i zarządzania ochroną zdrowia nastąpiło po roku 2008, w którym zaobserwowano znaczny wpływ światowego kryzysu finansowego na kondycję gospodarki Estonii. W rezultacie wprowadzanych zmian ukształtował się mieszany system Bismarcka, zwany również hybrydowym

Urban form and planning in the information age: Lessons from literature

This paper focuses on the relationship between information and communication technologies (ICT) and urban form, and on urban planning response to spatial and economic consequences of ICT. It starts with literature-based review of how urban environments in the United States change with technological advances and explanations of the relationship between ICT and urban form. The paper also includes a discussion of the manner in which ICT impact is handled by urban planning. The literature review points to insufficient attention to the dynamics between ICT and urban planning and increasing gap between physical and economic development implications of ICT. It is the role of urban planners to balance the consideration of the physical and economic aspects against the prospects and opportunities offered by ICT.

China’s Regional Disparities: Experience and Policy

International Development, International Relations/Trade,

An analysis of the dynamics of resource sharing networks in ant colonies

Cooperation ties animals together into social groups that often demonstrate complex emergent behaviours. One striking example of this are social insect societies that emerge from extreme cooperative behaviour and have an important impact in many ecosystems. Colonies of most social insects construct and inhabit a single nest. However, colonies of some species have been found to spread across many different nests – known as polydomy. This strategy is thought to have evolved in response to several different drivers, such as increased foraging efficiency, avoiding nest-size limitations and territory defence. In this thesis, I present studies that investigated how polydomous colonies function and the reasons that some, but not all, ant species use polydomy as a strategy. I used a mathematical model to demonstrate that decentralization of the nest population can be advantageous under a variety of different conditions, which explains why polydomous species are so behaviourally and phylogenetically diverse. Using a longitudinal study of several years of data on a set of polydomous colonies I found that resource sharing networks become more static over a season and that while nest foundation occurs throughout the season, nest abandonment occurs at a much faster rate in the latter part of the season. Through sampling several polydomous colonies, I found that there is a correlation between relatedness of the inhabitants of different nests and the rate of resource sharing between the nests. The most likely mechanism for this is that nests that share resources become more closely related due to migration and brood transfer. Finally, using a resource manipulation study, I found that resource-sharing networks can adapt in response to change in the availability of food. Together these results demonstrate how ant colonies can use polydomy to their advantage and the various factors that are important in determining the dynamics of these complex societies

Traffic, urban growth and suburban sprawl

Cities are still getting bigger in the western world. Even though urbanpopulations are barely reproducing themselves and migration from thecountryside to the town has slowed to a trickle, the demand for more livingspace shows no sign of abating as cities continue to expand their bordersthrough suburban sprawl. The automobile, of course, makes this possiblebut we show no signs of moving to other forms of transport that mightenable our cities to become a little more compact. The problems of sprawlare pervasive. Besides congestion, time wasted, and the long term costs ofusing non-renewable energy, the lack of good social infrastructure inrapidly growing suburban areas together with the erosion of agriculturalland, often of high environmental quality, has focused the debate onwhether or not such forms of development are sustainable. In this paper,we begin by noting that suburban sprawl is an age-old phenomenon whichrepresents a fine balance between the forces that are pushing peopletogether in cities and those that are forcing them out. These lead todifferent types of sprawl in different places and at different times butwhatever the variety, there are costs to be borne. We briefly review these,noting how these affect suburban sprawl in Europe, and the efforts of theEuropean Commission to understand the problem. We conclude not with aplea that cities should be compacted and all automobile traffic removedbut that we should engage in policies for ?smart growth? such as thosebeing adopted in North America