This comprehensive book describes and analyzes the substance and politics of public budgeting at the national, state, and local levels of government. In doing so, it takes a comparative approach, illustrating the distinctiveness of budgeting at each level, as well as highlighting the features common to all three. A unifying focus is the extent to which budgetary decision makers use the budget as a central vehicle to advance their policy preferences. This fully updated sixth edition provides an extensive and thorough analysis of the causes of the Great Recession, its economic consequences, and the policy responses which pushed the boundaries of conventional monetary and fiscal policy. Also new to this edition is a chapter on the intergovernmental dimensions of public budgeting, along with boxed features highlighting hands-on vignettes of contemporary practical challenges facing budget makers at the different levels of government.

There are a number of people I wish to acknowledge for helping me write this book. First, the idea of politics as a nonequilibrium process owes its origins largely to a series of ongoing conservations I have had with Father Richard Telnack, o. c. s. o. Our discussions of Augustine's city of God and Hegel's Phenomenology in the hours before the night office led me to think about the world more as an ongoing flux than as a static rational order. The use of structurally unstable dynamical systems to. model democratic politics was greatly enhanced by my interactions with Professor Alex Kleiner, department of mathematics, Drake University. Professor Manfred Holler of the University of Aarhus provided a detailed critique of an earlier version. His insights and remarks were invaluable in improving the work's content and structure. I also wish to thank Dr. Werner A. Muller, director of Physica Verlag for his confidence in my work and his efforts on my behalf. Miss Jane Blevins was a patient and thorough typist. I thank her for her attention to the production of the manuscript. Finally, writing a book is in one way a moral act. It requires committment to pursue a line of thought to its conclusion when the final results are not clear. without the encouragement and support of my wife over a long period of time, I would have certainly faltered. Whatever good emerges from the work is due largely to her example and patient endurance.

The collapse of socialism across Eastern Europe - as manifested most dramatically by the events of the forever memorable November 9, 1989, when the Germans of East and West reunited, moved and overjoyed, on top of the Berlin Wall - has added more support and urgency to the central thesis of this volume than I had ever hoped for. Whether the following studies deal with economic topics, such as employment, interest, money, banking, business cycles, taxes, public goods, or growth; with philosophical problems as the foundations of know ledge, and of economics and ethics in particular; or the reconstruction and theoretical explanation of historical and sociological phenomena such as exploitation, the rise and fall of civilizations, international politics, war, imperialism, and the role of ideas and ideological movements in the course of social evolution - each ultimately contributes to but one conclusion: The right to private property is an indisputably valid, absolute principle of ethics and the basis for continuous 'optimal' economic progress. To rise from the ruins of socialism and overcome the stagnation of the Western welfare states, nothing will suffice but the uncompromizing privatization of all socialized, that is, government, property and the establishment of a contractual society based on the recognition of the absoluteness of private property rights. *** In writing the following studies I received help from many sides. Special thanks go to my wife Margaret, who again took on the task of de Germanizing my English; to Llewellyn H."

This volume contains the papers, along with the discussant's re marks, presented at a conference on 'Federal Fiscal Responsibility', held at The Homestead, Hot Springs, Virginia, on 26-27 March 1976. Additionally, we, the editors, have included an introductory essay which sets forth some of our background thoughts that in formed our organization of the conference and which also de scribes some of our reactions to the conference. This conference was sponsored by the Liberty Fund, Inc. of Indianapolis, Indiana, which incorporated this conference into its overall program directed toward the study of the ideals of a free society of responsible individuals. Related to this effort, the Liberty Fund also assisted in supporting research on Democracy in Deficit: The Political Legacy of Lord Keynes, by James M. Buchanan and Richard E. Wagner (New York: Academic Press, 1977). Both Democracy in Deficit and the conference were de signed to examine one important aspect of the Liberty Fund's general set of concerns, namely the' way in which political con siderations influence the macroeconomic aspects of budgetary policy, thereby, in turn, influencing the future of American liberty and prosperity. We are most grateful to the Liberty Fund for their efforts, and we are pleased that Enid Goodrich, William Fletcher, Neil McLeod, and Helen Schultz of the Liberty Fund were able to attend the conference."

The ageing, financial and labour market challenges facing the old age pension systems of the member states of the European Union are well known. Those who cast doubt on the ability of the present system of pension provision - at least to the extent that it is pay-as-you-go financed - to cope with the problems posed by these challenges are getting more vociferous. Increasingly there are calls for pay-as-you-go systems to be cut back and for funded systems to be expanded. This book contests the view that funding is the answer. It shows how adaptable the largely pay-as-you-go old age pension systems in the European Union are. Actuaries, economists, lawyers, political scientists, pension advisers, and sociologists, from nine European countries and the United States, consider four main themes: population ageing, competitiveness and retirement; pension financing and economic growth; adapting pension systems to meet change; and decision-making processes. They argue that pay-as-you-go-financed old age pension systems in the European Union have the ability to successfully adapt to economic and social change provided they do not take on too many non-insurance-related risks. Solving the problems of the labour market and controlling the direction and extent of economic development are beyond the powers of old age pension systems, regardless of how they are structured or financed. Separate budgets for separate risks is an indispensable principle if the complex processes of social protection are to be successfully managed, monitored, and made transparent. There can be no single plan for the future development of old age pension systems which would be universally valid for all the countries of the European Union. A single solution cannot take into account the special circumstances obtaining in every nation, and since respect for the special features of national systems is the basis of popular acceptance, the way forward is to reform existing systems in existing contexts.

The financial crisis of 2008 is probably the single most important economic event in post-war history. Macroprudential policy is the response to that crisis - a determined attempt to stabilize the financial system. This book explains why it is necessary, who will be responsible for executing this responsibility and how they will go about doing it.

This book combines the two most important typologies of capitalist diversity; Esping-Andersen's welfare regime typology and Hall and Soskice's 'Varieties of Capitalism' typology, into a unified typology of capitalist diversity. The author shows empircally that certain welfare states bundle together with certain production systems.

This book analyses recent reform trends of European health care systems. Using eight European countries case studies it connects policy reforms with a healthcare quadrilemma, and compares how well these systems perform in terms of economic efficiency, medical achievements, social inequalities, and responsiveness to patients and workers.

As a contribution to the search for suitable and sustainable solutions to finance rising medical care expenditures, the book proposes a typology of healthcare financing and insurance schemes, based on the dimensions of basic vs. supplementary services and mandatory vs. voluntary coverage, to analyse the design and the complex interactions between various financing and insurance arrangements in several OECD countries. This study provides a better understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the financial and organisational structures of different countries' healthcare financing and insurance schemes. Its main contributions are the development of a novel and rigorous theoretical framework analysing the economic rationales for the optimal design of healthcare financing and insurance schemes, and an empirical and institutional analysis investigating the consequences for efficiency and affordability of the complex interactions between basic and supplementary sources of financing.

China's emerging financial markets reflect the usual contrast between the country's measured approach toward policy, regulatory, and market reform, and the dynamic pace of rapid economic growth and development. But they also offer unusual challenges and opportunities. In the past five years, the pace of opening and reform has accelerated sharply. Recapitalization and partial privatization of the largest banks, and the allowance of some joint venture and branch operations for foreign financial institutions, are making rapid headway in developing and expanding financial services and improving access to domestic business and households. This book provides the most extensive look available at the evolving Chinese financial system. It begins with alternative perspectives on the evolution of the financial system and the broad outlines of its prospects and potential contribution to economic growth. Three articles review broad aspects of the financial system. Franklin Allen, Jun ''QJ'' Qian, Meijun Qian, and Mengxin Zhao lead off with overviews of the banking system and performance of the equity market and other institutions.

The fast-evolving relationship between the promotion of welfare-enhancing competition and the balanced protection of intellectual property (IP) rights has attracted the attention of policymakers, analysts and scholars. This interest is inevitable in an environment that lays ever greater emphasis on the management of knowledge and innovation and on mechanisms to ensure that the public derives the expected social and economic benefits from this innovation and the spread of knowledge. This book looks at the positive linkage between IP and competition in jurisdictions around the world, surveying developments and policy issues from an international and comparative perspective. It includes analysis of key doctrinal and policy issues by leading academics and practitioners from around the globe and a cutting-edge survey of related developments across both developed and developing economies. It also situates current policy developments at the national level in the context of multilateral developments, at WIPO, WTO and elsewhere.

A detailed and informed analysis of the current crisis facing the eurozone, examining the root causes and exploring the possible outcomes and uncertain future of the European Union and its currency. Chapters include case studies of Portugal, Ireland, Spain and Greece, as well as broader comparative perspectives.

The book analyses the Spanish financial system from the turn of the last century to the present day and the economic, social and political backdrop to this history. The result is a consummate survey of historical developments leading right up to today's key issues and challenges, and to what the future may hold.

Management accounting has undergone significant evolution moving away from rigid budgeting programs and static output measures to comprehensive approaches of value identification and measurement. The book provides case studies, commentary and analysis from international experts in management accounting across the contemporary focus areas.

By the dawn of the 21st century, more than half of the world's population was living in urban areas. This volume explores the implications of this unprecedented expansion in the world's most urbanized region, Latin America, exploring the new urban reality, and the consequences for both Latin America and the rest of the developing world.

Public expenditure has increased considerably in the UK from around ten per cent of GDP in the 1870s to forty per cent and above in the 21st century. Clive Lee explores the fluctuations in state spending, highlighting the ongoing political conflict over the size and extent of welfare provision.

An in-depth analysis of the fundamental role that decentralization plays in developing countries, using detailed statistical data to examine the actual fiscal structure between tiers of government, and the effects of decentralization at the local, national and international levels.

The main objective of this book is to restate the important theories and evidence from economic analysis concerning intergovernmental fiscal issues. More importantly, the second objective of the book is to identify gaps in knowledge, empirical uncertainties, and missing theoretical structures and then to establish a preliminary agenda for new research on this topic. The book is organized in two sections. The first covers the core body of intergovernmental fiscal relations, including optimal size for jurisdictions and assignment of public sector functions, the formulation and execution of tax policy in an intergovernmental setting, and the appropriate structure and use of intergovernmental transfers. In the second section, the core knowledge is applied to four major policy areas: education, welfare, fiscal interaction in urban areas, and economic development. In thinking about a new research agenda, the authors call for more current and authoritative estimates of fiscal incidence, including interjurisdictional spillovers, for more fundamental research about the federation process and effects of consolidation, for new evidence about the long run, general equilibrium effects of interjurisdictional competition, and for basic research about the choice process and establishment of intergovernmental fiscal institutions and policies by federal and subnational governments.

Consumption takes place in settings or environments which have both direct and indirect effects on its dynamic path. Direct effects of environments on activities in consuming can occur through constraints that environments impose. Environment can also have indirect effects on consumption through enduring modification of internalized constructs which enter heuristics for decisions on activities. The importance of environments to consumption is increased by the definitional dependence of status on the judgements of others. This study examines microprocessing in consumer activities for status as it interacts with structure in the environments of these activities. The importance of environments in status activities provides the basis for a seperate, but related inquiry into observed differences in the form they take across societies. Conjecture on the consequences of differences in the structure of environments for consumption that typify a society is studied in the narrative statements by members of comparison societies and in the content of print advertising in these societies.Evolutionary processes which could establish observed differences in structure across societies are also considered in both their systematic and random components. I review models of random drift and stochastic resonance as candidate forms for generating observed structure in environments. Directions for the subsequent study of status through consumption are discussed.P * Introduction: Status Through Consumption; * Knowledge Use in Nonwork Activities for Status; * Interactions of Consumer Microprocessing and Structured Environments: Activity Feedback and the Stability of Structure; * Awards and Honors Systems in Structured Environments: Cross Societal Comparisons of Narrative Statements on Consuming for Status; * Comparative Analyses of Consumption Appeals in the Print Advertising of the USA and France, 1955-1991 * Random Process in the Generation of Structured Environments; * Overview and directions for Study of Status Through Consumption.

THE JANUS-FACE OF RACE: REFLEC- TIONS ON ECONOMIC THEORY Patrick L. Mason and Rhonda Williams Many economists are willing to accept that race is a significant factor in US eco nomic and social affairs. Yet the professional literature displays a peculiar schizo phrenia when faced with the task of actually formulating what race means and how race works in our political economy. On the one hand, race matters when the dis cussion is focused on anti-social behavior, social choices, and undesired market outcomes. Inexplicably, African Americans are more likely to prefer welfare, lower labor force participation, and unemployment. On the other hand, race does not matter when the subject of discussion is economically productive or socially accept able activities and legal market choices (for example, wages and employment). This Janus-faced construction of race is maintained by economists' stubborn ad herence to the market power hypothesis. The market power hypothesis asserts that racial discrimination and market competition are inversely correlated. Discrimina tory behavior will persist only in those sectors of society where the competitive forces of the market are least operative. When applied to the labor market, the mar ket power hypothesis suggests that pre- and post-labor market decisions represent disjoint sets. On average, members of a disadvantaged social group may accumulate a lower amount of or a lower quality of productive attributes because of discrimina tion in marital, residential, or school choice, or because of substantial animosity in day-to-day interpersonal relations with members of a privileged group.

Over the last fifty years, increasingly sophisticated risk measurement and management techniques have revolutionized the field of finance. More recently, the globalization of financial markets and policy changes in the regulation of financial institutions have impacted upon how commercial banks manage risk. The widespread implications of these fundamental changes prompted an international conference held in May, 1997, devoted to the topic of risk management and regulation in banking. This book contains the formal papers and the panel discussions that comprise the conference proceedings, and thus collects some of the latest research on managing financial market risk by top scholars, policymakers, and high-ranking banking officials from around the world.

As the public in the U.S. has grown increasingly concerned over the gaps in the health care system's attention to quality, and as the health care industry itself struggles for stability in a volatile environment, a historic opportunity presents itself. This book reviews a variety of quality monitoring approaches, identifies critical issues pertaining to assessment, measurement, implementation, and evaluation of quality initiatives, and suggests scientific approaches to put in place a core set of performance measures that reliably identify the value-added clinical and managerial behaviors in health care - for both quality and cost efficiency. The key to quality improvement has to focus on physicians and other health professionals. This book is designed to identify issues pertaining to health care quality and to formulate appropriate approaches for improving quality. It can be used by risk managers and hospital executives to guide their development, implementation, and evaluation of quality improvement programs.

Policy Uncertainty and Risk presents a contribution to risk analysis and risk management in public policy and management at large. Special emphasis is put on the utilization of scientific knowledge by decision-makers in instances where knowledge in both spheres of science and administration is highly uncertain and contested. The book therefore contributes a model of science-practitioner interaction in a policy area of strong current relevance. The perspective is a realist constructivist one, which means that risk and policy are taken to be socially predicated insofar as we can choose and change the way we define and interact with its practices. It is realist insofar as we continually use such constructions to re-define and re-structure the world we live in. Although essentially theory-driven and conceptually oriented, the authors develop their argument for a new interpretation of policy-relevant science through a number of pressing case studies. These studies include the recent BSE/CJD crises in the UK, the introduction of Marine Protected Areas in Sweden, and the current practices surrounding risk management in corporate bodies. Drawing on empirical cases and theoretical explication, the book provides a number of suggestions as to how risk analysis and risk management may be more properly conceived of both from a practitioner as well as from an academic point of view.

The issue of asymmetric information and public decision-making has been widely explored by economists. Most of the traditional analysis of public sector activities has been reviewed to take account of the different incentive problems arising from an asymmetric distribution of relevant information among the actors of the public decision-making process. A normative approach has been developed, mainly employing the principal agent paradigm to design incentive schemes which tackle adverse selection and moral hazard problems within public organizations. Still, this analysis is under way in many fields of public economics. However, a debate is ongoing on the theoretical limitations of this approach and on its relevance for the actual public sector activities. Public Decision-Making Processes and Asymmetry of Information encompasses different contributions to these issues, on both theoretical and practical areas.The innermost problem in the current discussion arises from the fact that this normative analysis is firmly rooted in the complete contracting framework, with the consequence that, despite the analytical complexities of most models, their results rely on very simplified assumptions. Most complexities of the organization of public sector, and more generally, of writing contracts, are therefore swept away. Once the need for an incomplete contracting approach is recognized, the question becomes how to relax some of the assumptions characterizing the complete contracting framework, without getting ad hoc results. The Introduction to this book, written by Jean Jacques Laffont, sets the general grid to interpret the position of its papers in this debate. The four papers in Part 1 of the book are devoted to developing the analysis of some of the theoretical issues mentioned in the Introduction. Part 2 is devoted to discussing the applications of the theory to different public sector activities.

Over the past thirty years, urban economic theory has been one of the most active areas of urban and regional economic research. Just as static general equilibrium theory is at the core of modern microeconomics, so is the topic of this book - the static allocation of resources within a city and between cities - at the core of urban economic theory. An Essay on Urban Economic Theory well reflects the state of the field. Part I provides an elegant, coherent, and rigorous presentation of several variants of the monocentric (city) model - as the centerpiece of urban economic theory - treating equilibrium, optimum, and comparative statistics. Part II explores less familiar and even some uncharted territory. The monocentric model looks at a single city in isolation, taking as given a central business district surrounded by residences. Part II, in contrast, makes the intra-urban location of residential and non-residential activity the outcome of the fundamental tradeoff between the propensity to interact and the aversion to crowding; the resulting pattern of agglomeration may be polycentric. Part II also develops models of an urbanized economy with trade between specialized cities and examines how the market-determined size distribution of cities differs from the optimum. This book launches a new series, Advances in Urban and Regional Economics. The series aims to provide an outlet for longer scholarly works dealing with topics in urban and regional economics.