Nataliya Pihul

Further improvement of financial relations at the local level and the development of local budgets take place in the context of financial decentralization. This implies strengthening the role of local governments in attracting necessary financial resources to ensure socio-economic development of territories. The purpose of this paper is to identify the impact of decentralization on the state of local budgets and to develop a scientific and methodological approach to assessing the level of financial decentralization of local budgets using the example of Ukraine for 2010–2019. The developed methodology consists of six successive stages. A comparative analysis of the dynamics of indicators of local budget execution in Ukraine in terms of revenues, expenditures and transfers using an integrated index obtained through taxonomic analysis is conducted. As a result of evaluating the effectiveness of the basic principles of financial decentralization, the expediency of calculating the integrated index of local budget financial decentralization is substantiated. This index is formed using intermediate indicators of autonomy to cover expenses and generate income both on the basis of own sources and taking into account the received state transfers for the implementation of their own and delegated powers of local governments. The implementation of the proposed method allow one to assess the levels of financial decentralization of local budgets to establish the degree of financial autonomy and financial self-sufficiency of the territories. The results obtained should be considered when determining the effectiveness of financial support for local budgets in the process of socio-economic development of regions.

This study focuses on the relationship between the Human Development Index (HDI) and public social expenditures, analyzing socio-economic models using the examples of selected European countries and Ukraine. The study used the values of the HDI, GDP, and indicators of public expenditures for social purposes, namely, healthcare, education, leisure, culture and religion, and social protection for the period from 2010 to 2021. The analysis targeted 13 European countries using data sets from Eurostat, the Office for National Statistics of the United Kingdom, the State Statistics Service of Ukraine, and the Ministry of Finance of Ukraine. The input time series were checked for lagged values using the STATISTICA software.
Empirical evidence suggests a relationship between HDI and public social spending. An increase in the share of public social expenditures in GDP leads to an increase in HDI and vice versa. European countries with a social-democratic model of development have the highest level of centralization of public expenditure in GDP (34.72%) and the highest HDI (0.930), while countries belonging to the Southern European model have the lowest share of socially oriented public expenditure (30.41%) and the lowest HDI (0.873). In addition, there is a time lag between the investment of public funds in healthcare, education, leisure, culture and religion, and social protection and their impact on HDI changes. Thus, ensuring a high level of HDI is achieved, among other things, through state financial support for the relevant components of the social sphere and social protection.

Acknowledgment
The study is funded by the EU NextGenerationEU through the Recovery and Resilience Plan for Slovakia under project No. 09I03-03-V01-00130.