National Fiscal Policy and Local Government during the Economic Crisis

Volume 2 of this policy paper presents a contextual overview of local government finance in the OECD countries. The overview consists of a set of tables and discussion of the role of local government in the public sector, the extent of local government autonomy in each of the countries, and the functional assignment of responsibility of the various local government systems (who does what?). The six countries that are the focus of the study — the United States, Spain, U.K., Germany, Italy, and Poland — are thus placed within the broader context of all OECD countries for which relevant data are available. A more complete discussion of the local government context of the six countries is then included.