In recent years, reforms aimed at the development of budget federalism, local governance and enhancement of the quality of public finance management have been conducted in the Russian Federation. New types of municipalities have emerged at the local level, such as: municipal districts, urban districts and settlements. The range of issues within the competence of each municipality was defined, and revenue sources of municipal budgets were assigned to municipalities on permanent basis.
IUE experts investigated the impact of the municipal reform and the reform of intergovernmental fiscal relations on the degree of financial autonomy, balancing of budgets and the size of the revenue base of local governments in 2003-2007. The investigation focused on the evaluation of the reform-driven changes in the degree of fiscal municipal autonomy, which is interpreted as municipalities’ ability to independently determine the scope of expenditure and revenue mandates of local budgets.
The analytical paper based on the investigation outputs targets the staff of local governments, municipal institutions and organizations, as well as wide audiences of experts in the field of public finance, teachers, students and post-graduates of financial and economic higher educational institutions, and all those who take interest in the aforesaid topics.
