On Thursday, September 29, the thirteenth edition of the PEARL Seminar began at the headquarters of the Economic and Social Council (CES Galicia) in Santiago de Compostela. It was the first time the event had been organized in Spain, after being held on a rotating basis in France, Italy, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Finland, and China.

Over the course of two days, a group of international experts in public economics from the perspective of regional and local government discussed various topics, including municipal transparency, the influence of term limits on local public finances, the effects of housing bubbles on municipal spending and government quality, tax evasion, fiscal competition between municipalities, and regional secession and how decentralization can either slow down or accelerate the process.