The COVID-19 pandemic unleashed a health and economic catastrophe in most countries across the globe. The rapid spread of the virus, the inability of many health systems to fully meet the demand for health services, and the steps taken to restrict economic activity and social mobility showed just how unprepared...

Spain is a decentralized country as far as government spending is concerned, operating a system in which its regions or autonomous communities play a particularly relevant role – administering roughly a third of total public expenditure – and where their fiscal outcomes have a significant impact on general fiscal policy...

Congestion, environmental pollution and accidents are some of the issues that require action in order to reduce their negative effects. This is the focus of this IEB document, written by professors Antonio Russo (Loughborough University, UK), Jos van Ommeren (VU Amsterdam, The Netherlands), Maria Börjesson (Linköping University, Sweden) and Daniel...

The aim of this paper is to shed light on the effect of Low Emission Zones (LEZs) on traffic. LEZs are areas in which access is restricted for the most polluting vehicles. They have been found to be effective in reducing pollution, while the expected effect on traffic is not...

We use census data on external assessments in primary and secondary school in the Basque Country (Spain) to estimate learning losses due to the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2021, one year after school closures, which lasted from March to June 2020. Differences-in-differences with student and school-by-grade fixed effects show an...

The IEB Report on Fiscal Federalism and Public Finance is published every year, since 2009, with the aim of analysing issues of great relevance today related to fiscal federalism and public finance.