....................................................................................................................................... iii Abbreviations ................................................................................................................................ iv INTRODUCTION .....................................................................................................

Fiscal Decentralisation, Local Institutions and Public Goods Provision: Evidence from Indonesia Using data from the Indonesian Family Life Surveys, this paper studies the impact of fiscal decentralisation in Indonesia on local public spending across communities with different types of local institutions. Our results provide evidence of heterogeneity in access to public goods across communities ...

Background The implications of decentralisation on human resource for health management has not received adequate research attention despite the presupposition that the concept of decentralisation leads to the transfer of management authority and discretion for human resource management from national levels to subnational levels. This study aims at investigating the extent to which decent...

A major obstacle to the provision of health services is lack of an effective workforce. Human resource management (HRM) can improve the effectiveness of the workforce, though this is difficult in large bureaucratic organisations. Decentralisation is a common reform strategy and this paper sets out to examine whether HRM would be improved in decentralised settings. Indicators were developed for ...

This paper investigates the effects of decentralisation on living conditions in core cities of the European Union. It uses data from the Urban Audit to investigate whether the level of local expenditures relative to central government expenditures has any impact on the subjective appreciation of local living conditions as measured in the Urban Audit Survey in 75 cities as well as the actual qua...

decentralisation has been described as an empty concept that lacks clarity. yet there is an enduring interest in the process of decentralisation within health systems and public services more generally. many claims about the benefits of decentralisation are not supported by evidence. it may be useful as an organising framework for analysis of health systems but in this context it lacks conceptu...

Democratic decentralisation is often presented as the sine qua non of rural poverty reduction. But there is little evidence that either democracy or decentralisation is necessary for poverty reduction in rural or urban areas, and indeed some evidence that they are counter-productive. There are success stories to report, however. They are cases where three conditions have been met: an appropriat...

Many developing countries are experimenting with decentralisation of public service delivery to elected local governments instead of bureaucrats appointed by a central government. We study the resulting implications in a theoretical model in which the central government is uninformed about local need and unable to monitor service allocations. Bureaucrats charge bribes for services as monopoly p...