On the 1st of December of 2020, Instituto Complutense de Estudios Internacionales (ICEI-UCM) and Ituna Center for Basque Economic Agreement and Fiscal Federalism Studies (UPV/EHU), hosted the second edition of the International Workshop on Intergovernmental Fiscal Relations.

The event gathered researchers and policymakers from more than ten different European and American countries in order to discuss and exchange their work and views on most relevant issues on the field of decentralization and fiscal federalism, particularly on the context of the COVID-19 economic, social and political crisis.

After a brief introduction to both research centers made by the Academic Secretary of ICEI-UCM, Professor Antonio-Jesús Sanchez-Fuentes, the conference started with “What Happens When Dying Gets Cheaper? Behavioural Responses to Inheritance Taxation by Mariona Mas Montserrat (IEB & Generalitat de Catalunya), who explained the reaction taxpayers experienced after a reform on the decentralized Catalan Inheritance Tax. Willem Sas (University of Stirling / KU Leuven) was next presenting “Starting from the Scratch: A New Approach to Subnational Public Finance”. He offered an alternative, flexible and more transparent proposal to improve the incentive scheme set by regional funding systems.

After the first Digital Coffee Break, the session was resumed with “Federal debt and regional transfers: the case of Belgium” by Geert Jennes (Hochschule Osnabrück & VIVES-KU Leuven). He explained how traditional fiscal federalism statistics neglect the role of federal debt as a redistribution tool and suggested new indexes that could be introduced to solve this issue. In a similar line, Mikel Erkoreka (Ituna Center-UPV/EHU) present the asymmetrical impact the COVID-19 crisis is having on Spanish regions´ budgets, in a work titled “Budgetary stability objectives and COVID-19 in Spain: an asymmetric response”.

Finally, the third block of presentations focused on the future challenges for subcentral governments. On the one hand, Sean M. Dougherty (OECD) and Pietrangelo De Biase (OECD) talked about their research on “Healthcare decentralisation and the COVID-19 crisis”. They offered a complete overview on the consequences the COVID-19 crisis is having on one of the most decentralized public service, healthcare. Accounting data methodological limitations or the cross-regional heterogeneities on health services among OECD countries were among the issues they addressed.

On the other hand, the workshop ended with Manuel Alberto Gómez González (UCM & AIFIL), who presented his research on “The role of decentralization and fiscal federalism in the neoliberal agenda during the lost decade in Latin America”, providing a very useful theoretical framework to approach two issues that have rarely been studied together in a very innovative basis.

The Scientific and Organizing Committee of the II Workshop on Intergovernmental Fiscal Relations, formed by Andoni Montes (Ituna Center-UPV/EHU & ICEI-UCM), Jorge Onrubia (ICEI-UCM, Fedea & GENUvigo) and Antonio-Jesús Sanchez-Fuentes (ICEI-UCM & GENUvigo), thanks all the participants who took part on the event and wish to continue working with them, wishing to hold the third edition of the Workshop next year.