A B S T R A C T S

Paweł Swianiewicz

LOCAL REVENUES FROM INTER-GOVERNMENTALTRANSFERS

The paper is an attempt to answer few questions, which are of crucialimportance for the assessment of local government financing in Poland. The mainfocus of the paper is on inter-governmental financial transfers. What are goals andprinciples of inter-governmental grants in the theory of fiscal federalism? Howthese principles are applied in European countries? How the practice of localfinance in Poland is related to these principles and to international experience?The first section deals with theoretical issues of grants’ transfers and equa-lization schemes. The second part includes a brief description of grant systemsin selected European countries. The third section concentrates on the evaluationof the Polish practice, and includes recommendation for future changes.However, the paper skips a detail description of the Polish grant system(which is well-known and described in Polish academic literature).