Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 20th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview Public Finance Author(s) Sergii Slukhai Taras Shevchenko National University Kyiv Ukraine Title Ukrainian public finance after 20 years of independence: Leaping forward or going in circles? File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Sergii Slukhai Abstract After becoming an independent nation, Ukraine had to institutionalize its own public finance system. The system, inherited from the Soviet past, was not consistent with the national statehood and challenges put forward by the emerging market economy. The first steps in this direction were undertaken even before independence, in the late 1980s, when the centralistic Soviet state began to collapse. But the real reform endeavours started after independence became real. It is widely acknowledged: the reforms were successful in terms of creating more stable and transparent intergovernmental fiscal relations which became more or less alike ones existing in Europe. Nevertheless, it is a question, whether the reforming efforts really created a sustainable framework for an efficient and flexible system of public good delivery. This is an important issue because some experts assume that Ukrainian experience could be valuable for international community, especially for the developing countries. The main goal of the paper is to analyse the trends in Ukrainian public finance system from the point of view of allocative efficiency and distributional fairness. The research questions could be formulated in the following way: - whether a sufficient environment for functioning public finance has been created by the Ukrainian legislation in this field; - in which way the changes in Ukrainian public finance affected the allocative efficiency in public good delivery; - whether the major changes in public finance legislation led to greater fairness in interregional distribution of public good consumption; To reach the goal and objectives stated above, the following efforts will be undertaken: - evaluating the major changes in legislation with respect to their impact on possible improvement in efficiency and fairness in public good delivery; - studying the dynamics of the total general government share in GDP; - analysing the composition of general government expenditures and revenues as concerns central and local government shares; - analysing dynamics of per capita public (local) expenditures/revenues and their geographical distribution pattern. To realize all these, the major legal acts in the field of Ukrainian public finance since 1991 till recently will be studied and the statistic data on Ukrainian public finance 1991-2010 published by the Ministry of Finance processed. The evaluation of public finance trends will be done by use of publications of modern Ukrainian and international experts. The paper is to be structured in the following way: 1. Introduction. 2. Reforming legal regulation of Ukrainian public finance and institution-building. 3. Did reforms impact the trends in governmental share and composition of public sector? (a regression model to be elaborated) 4. Public expenditures: meeting public demands versus nurturing Leviathan? (changes in composition of public sector will be presented along with developments in composition of central and local expenditures and revenues). 5. Distributional patterns of public expenditures and revenues (a geographical distribution of public expenditures and revenues since independence with regards to regions will be studied and conclusions formulated concerning in which way they were affected by the reforming activities). 6. Conclusions and policy recommendations (what measures could be recommended to strengthen reforming activities in order to reach greater efficiency of public finance and assessment of the feasibility of recommended policy measures).
