This report was produced by the OECD Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities (CFE) led by Lamia Kamal-Chaoui, Director. It is part of the multi-level governance Programme of Work of the OECD’s Regional Development Policy Committee.
The report was coordinated by Isabelle Chatry, Senior Policy Analyst under the supervision of Dorothée Allain-Dupré, Head of Decentralisation, Public Investment and Subnational Finance Unit in the Economic Analysis, Statistics and Multi-level Governance Section, led by Rudiger Ahrend, in CFE.
The report was written by Isabelle Chatry (OECD Secretariat), Guy Gilbert, Professor Emeritus at the Ecole Normale Supérieure of Paris-Saclay (France) and Andrew Reschovsky, Professor Emeritus of Public Affairs and Applied Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (United States of America).
The OECD would like to thank the Israeli authorities for their co-operation and support during the study process. Special thanks are given to the local team at the Ministry of Finance who was very helpful in the organisation of the mission, for communicating all necessary documents and data and for providing comments to the draft versions of the report. The local team was composed of Itay Temkin, Head of the Sector for Interior Affairs and Mayaan Spivak, Head of the Municipal Sector, under the direction of Ariel Yotzer, Deputy to the Head of the Budget Department.
The Secretariat is also thankful to Ran Ridnik, Deputy Permanent Representative and Sofia Ilan, Economic Advisor at the Permanent Mission of Israel to the OECD for their support, comments and guidance throughout the project.
The OECD extends warm thanks to the people met during the mission at national and local levels, in particular representatives from ministries, public institutions and agencies, regional clusters, municipalities, in particular that of Kfar Kasem, academia and civil society organisations.
Valuable comments and inputs on the report were also received from Joaquim Oliveira Martins, Rudiger Ahrend, Dorothée Allain-Dupré and Antti Moisio from CFE as well as from Michelle Harding, from the OECD Center of Tax Policy and Administration, and Daniela Glocker, Gabriel Machlica and Oliver Roehn from the OECD Economics Department.
Thanks are also due to Nikolina Jonsson and Jennifer Allain for formatting the manuscript and to Pilar Philip who prepared the final publication.