Municipal Finances, A Handbook for Local Governments (2014), edited by Catherine Farvacque-Vitkovic and Mihaly Kopanyi, is designed to help local government practitioners to improve strategic management of municipal finances. It provides practitioners, particularly staff of medium and large cities, with ideas and tools to control expenditures, strengthen revenues, as well as to tap external source of funds by adopting good borrowing practices and improving creditworthiness.
Most cities all over the world have faced, or are facing, challenges to finance their government operation. Increasing demand for public service, infrastructure maintenance, and urban poverty add pressure to many local government finances. Decentralization also becomes part of the pressure, as transfer of responsibilities from central to local governments are often not accompanied with an adequate transfer of resources.
The eight chapters in this Handbook cover such topics as fiscal decentralization and intergovernmental finances; management of metropolises; instruments of good financial management; management of revenues, expenditures, assets, and external resources; and performance measurement. Focusing on the perspectives of local officers, this handbook combines theory, pragmatic how-to advice, best practices from global experiences, and possible solutions.
Full text is available for download here.
Farvacque-Vitkovic, Catherine, Kopanyi, Mihaly, Eds. 2014. Municipal Finances : A Handbook for Local Governments. Washington, DC: World Bank.
