Austria

The recent financial crisis of 2008/2009 has been a severe external shock for public finances. It did show dramatic and ongoing consequences in many countries around the world. Although plenty of research points to the effects of the crisis on the national level, comparably little do we know about its impact on local governments and their fiscal stance (noticeable exceptions are Bailey & Chapain 2011; Steccolini, Jones & Saliterer 2017). The following country reports show that some states have effectively cushioned their local levels against the negative consequences of the economic downturn; in other states the crisis displayed direct or indirect effects on budgets, regulatory regimes, but also in unexpected fields. The financial crisis did change the central-local-relationships in different ways. <br/>We deepen those matters in the way of single country reports. In all, we cover 22 countries, 19 of them being members of European Union. This selection refers to the idea of showing a wide variety of settings rather than to give an exhaustive picture of EU-members. <br/>Each country report follows the same outline and gives answers to the following questions: (1) What is the administrative structure of the country at whole and of the local level in particular? (2) By which sources local governments are funded? (3) For which functions do they spend their financial means? (4) How is the current fiscal status of the local government level in the respective country? (5) Which repercussions did the financial crisis unfold on local public finance? (6) How do states supervise and regulate local budgets? The first three questions are rather common themes of research. Nonetheless, they are not only alone relevant by themselves and worth being repeated periodically, but they are also necessary framework conditions to light the picture of financial crisis impacts on and state regulation of local public finance.