engleski

Local public finance regulation in Southeast Europe: a comparison of Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia

Local public finance regulation differs among countries. This chapter compares three South- Eastern European countries – Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia – once part of the same country Yugoslavia, sharing a common history, culture, legal, political and economic system. However, their local public finance regulation developed in different directions, with different reform efforts and different budget constraints. This chapter investigates regulatory regimes of local public finance, trying to explain the different paths those three countries followed and the ensuing results. It starts with a description of local government structure and local government finance, followed by a comparison of fiscal rules and supervision. One can conclude that those three countries still have more similarities than some of them would be eager to admit. This holds true especially when it comes to the availability of reliable statistical data, hesitation in substantially reforming their local government systems, simplifying financing and raising local government autonomy. Referring to local government public finance itself, Croatia and Slovenia have stricter regulation than Serbia as the EU accession worked as a driver for the quality of fiscal regulation.

Local finance, local debt, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia

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