Paper Title
The Nexus Of Fiscal Decentralization And Service Delivery: With Provincial Councils Of Sri Lanka

Abstract
The Provincial Councils introduced in 1987 could be described as a decentralization mechanism in Sri Lanka. However, the literature review reveals a dearth of research, quantifying the short-run and long-run impacts of budgetary decentralization on service delivery. Hence, this empirical study examines the effect of fiscal decentralization on service delivery in Sri Lanka using the time series data from 1988 to 2016. This investigation employs the Autoregressive Distributed Lag- (ARDL) modeling approach and a broad range of secondary sources and textual sources. According to long-run expenditure decentralization, the infant mortality rate was negative and significant, while the human development index presented a significantpositive coefficient. The primary gross school enrollment rate was the negative coefficient, and it was not significant. At the same time, according to the long-run revenue decentralization, the infant mortality rate was negative but significant, and the human development index showed a positive coefficient and not significant. The primary gross school enrollment is not significant and was a negative coefficient. According to the short-run expenditure decentralization, the infant mortality rate is negative and significant, whereas the human development index is positive and significant. The primary gross school enrollment rate was negative and not significant, and as per the revenue decentralization results, the infant mortality rate was significant. Similarly, as revenue decentralization, the infant mortality rate was significant. Human development index was positive and not significant, and the primary gross school enrollment was negative and not significant. Keywords - Provincial Councils, Fiscal decentralization, ARDL approach, Service delivery.