This book sheds new light on if and why, between 2009 and 2015, European governments succeeded or failed in initiating and actually realizing some of the farthest-reaching austerity plans in modern history. The author analyzes the economic and political context and the underlying causes of austerity and economic adjustment packages during the Euro crisis. In doing so, he shows that austerity has its roots in an institutional mismatch between capitalist diversity in the Eurozone on the one hand, and an ill-conceived common economic regime on the other. In this context, austerity trumped politics, and even democracy itself. The book will appeal to scholars of political science and comparative political economy, as well as governmental policymakers and practitioners in the finance sector.

Evaluation in recent decades has evolved from a tool for project appraisals to a more widely used framework for public decision-making and operational management. Most evaluation books are focused on traditional tools of analysis such as cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit analysis to the neglect of modern tools such as multi-criteria evaluation, social marginal cost of funds analysis, data envelopment analysis, results-oriented management and evaluation and theory based evaluations. This edited volume provides an easily accessible and comprehensive survey of both traditional and modern tools of analysis that are used in the evaluation literature to evaluate public projects, programs, policies and policy analysis and advice. The book will be of interest to students, scholars, researchers, practitioners and policy makers.

This book analyzes public debt from a political, historical, and global perspective. It demonstrates that public debt has been a defining feature in the construction of modern states, a main driver in the history of capitalism, and a potent geopolitical force. From revolutionary crisis to empire and the rise and fall of a post-war world order, the problem of debt has never been the sole purview of closed economic circles. This book offers a key to understanding the centrality of public debt today by revealing that political problems of public debt have and will continue to need a political response. Today's tendency to consider public debt as a source of fragility or economic inefficiency misses the fact that, since the eighteenth century, public debts and capital markets have on many occasions been used by states to enforce their sovereignty and build their institutions, especially in times of war. It is nonetheless striking to observe that certain solutions that were used in the past to smooth out public debt crises (inflation, default, cancellation, or capital controls) were left out of the political framing of the recent crisis, therefore revealing how the balance of power between bondholders, taxpayers, pensioners, and wage-earners has evolved over the past 40 years. Today, as the Covid-19 pandemic opens up a dramatic new crisis, reconnecting the history of capitalism and that of democracy seems one of the most urgent intellectual and political tasks of our time. This global political history of public debt is a contribution to this debate and will be of interest to financial, economic, and political historians and researchers. Chapters 13 and 19 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Das Gerke Borsen Lexikon informiert Sie in mehr als 8.000 Stichwortern uber alle Aspekte des Borsengeschehens. Von A wie Aktie bis Z wie Zerobond werden samtliche Fachausdrucke verstandlich und praxisnah erlautert. Marktentwicklungen und Zusammenhange an der Borse werden in Schwerpunktbeitragen aufgezeigt. Fur tagesaktuelle und weiterfuhrende Informationen finden Sie zu vielen Stichwortern Internet-Adressen.
"

This book explores the incentives and effects of modern welfare policy, contrasted with outcomes of global basic income pilots in the past seventy years. The author contends that paternalistic and counterproductive eligibility rules in the modern American welfare state violate the human dignity of the poor and make it nearly impossible to escape the "poverty trap." Furthermore, these types of restrictions are absent from expenditures aimed at middle and upper-income households such as mortgage interest deductions and tax-sheltered retirement accounts. Case examples from the author's years as a front-line social worker and interviews with basic income pilot recipients in Ontario, Canada, are woven throughout the book to better illustrate the effects of the current system and the hidden potential of more radical alternatives such as a universal basic income.

This book gathers selected papers from the 28th Eurasia Business and Economics Society (EBES) Conference, held in Coventry, United Kingdom. While the theoretical and empirical papers presented cover diverse areas of economics and finance in various geographic regions, the main focus is on the latest research concerning the economics of innovation, finance and macroeconomics. The book also includes regional studies.

This book analyses the relationship between stakeholder engagement practices and organizational sustainability across sectors and disciplines. It illuminates the relationships between the inputs and processes, vital for all kinds of organizations to engage stakeholders. Then, it describes the mutually-valued outcomes that can produce broader organizational impacts and sustainability. Each chapter is structured around a logic model that provides an analytical framework to engage the reader in strategic analysis and offer practical applications for adaptation and implementation in any organization. The book encourages the reader to systematically consider the descriptive, instrumental, and normative aspects of stakeholder theory as a precursor to designing stakeholder engagement practices.

This book examines the effect of banking on the real economy and society, focusing on banking supervision as the decisive factor in steering banking activities and determining the social outcome of the game of finance. Banking is like a cardiovascular system for our society. If it functions correctly, it allows the economy to operate smoothly. On the other hand, if it malfunctions it becomes a doomsday device. This creates an asymmetry of risks - the asymmetry between the potential dire consequences and the modest rewards of accepting those risks. Banking was one of the critical technological factors enabling the transition from the middle ages and the creation of modern society. However, while today it contributes little to economic growth, its malfunction has a profound and lasting adverse impact. The book explains why, how and what. Why is it important to keep tight supervision of the banks? How can banking supervision improve stability, not only of the financial system but also of the whole human society? What went wrong with the regulation in the past?

This edited volume brings together international and national scholars and major activists leading or spearheading basic income guarantee political initiatives in their respective countries. Contributing authors address specific issues about major efforts to influence public policy regarding basic income guarantee, such as: who were the main advocates and thought leaders involved in support of such legislative initiatives; what were the main organizational and framing strategies and tactics used to influence public opinion and elected officials to support the idea of and policies related to basic income guarantee; what were the major obstacles they faced; and what practical and theoretical lessons might be learned from past and contemporary actions to affect social policy change regarding basic income guarantee and related measures to guide the efforts of activists and public intellectuals in the 2020 and 2024 election cycles.

This book provides an assessment of public financial management (PFM) reforms in developing countries using Turkey as a case study. Volume II elaborates on asset and liability management, intergovernmental fiscal relations, accounting, financial reporting, and auditing. Bringing together academics and practitioners, the book analyzes the PFM reforms in the light of theoretical explanations and practices to reveal the achievements, challenges, and future perspectives of PFM.

Exploring the negative social impact of cyber-attacks, this book takes a closer look at the challenges faced by both the public and private sectors of the financial industry. It is widely known amongst senior executives in both sectors that cybercrime poses a real threat, however effective collaboration between individual financial institutions and the public sector into detecting, monitoring and responding to cyber-attacks remains limited. Addressing this problem, the authors present the results from a series of interviews with cybersecurity professionals based in Canada in order to better understand the potential risks and threats that financial institutions are facing in the digital age. Offering policy recommendations for improving cybersecurity protection measures within financial institutions, and enhancing the sharing of information between the public and private sector, this book is a timely and invaluable read for those researching financial services, cybercrime and risk management, as well as finance professionals interested in cybersecurity.

This volume features a selection of contributions presented at the 2019 Wroclaw Conference in Finance, covering a wide range of topics in finance and financial economics, e.g. financial markets; monetary policy; corporate, personal and public finance; and risk management and insurance. Reflecting the diversity and richness of research in the field, the papers discuss both fundamental and applied finance, and offer a detailed analysis of current financial-market problems, including specifics of the Polish and Central European markets. They also examine the results of advanced financial modeling. Accordingly, the proceedings offer a valuable resource for researchers at universities and policy institutions, as well as graduate students and practitioners in economics and finance at both private and government organizations.

This book features an in-depth comparative study of South American National Development Bank's governance systems. It explores the relationship between bank governance and performance frameworks, both in terms of financial-economic indicators and development impact. It seeks to observe, analyze, and compare governance arrangements used by different development banks as tools to overcome the challenges associated with state-ownership while remaining financially sustainable and aligned with their policy mandates.

Over the last few decades universities in Australia and overseas have been criticized for not meeting the needs and expectations of the societies in which they operate. At the heart of this problem is their strategy. This book reviews the organizational-level strategies of some of Australia's prominent universities. It is based on their public documents that boldly report how they see their role in society and how they intend to navigate the future. These strategic statements are written to proclaim relevance, showcase achievements, attract students, and help to gain the support of the communities in which they operate. Using a strategy framework taught in their business schools, this book suggests that most such statements are deficient. Grand aspirations substitute for realistic operations and outcomes. The analysis also suggests that many of Australia's universities are poorly governed and have become too complex and bureaucratic. A greater focus on their core responsibilities would help alleviate their current funding predicament.

This book discusses the changing role of government finance in the twentieth century. It documents the enormous increase in government spending throughout the 1900s across all industrialized countries. However, the authors find that the growth of the welfare state over the past thirty-five years has not brought about much additional social and economic welfare. This suggests that public spending in industrialized countries could be much smaller than today without sacrificing important policy objectives. For this to happen, governments need to refocus their role on setting the rules of the game, and the study provides a blueprint of institutional and expenditure policy reform.

This book discusses the changing role of government finance in the twentieth century. It documents the enormous increase in government spending throughout the 1900s across all industrialized countries. However, the authors find that the growth of the welfare state over the past thirty-five years has not brought about much additional social and economic welfare. This suggests that public spending in industrialized countries could be much smaller than today without sacrificing important policy objectives. For this to happen, governments need to refocus their role on setting the 'rules of the game', and the study provides a blueprint for institutional and expenditure policy reform. After a detailed account of reform experiences in several countries and the public debate regarding government reform, the study closes with an outlook on the future role of the state, which is crucial in that globalization may require and people want much 'leaner' but not 'meaner' states.

This book gives a new answer to the old question about the optimal degree of fiscal decentralization in a federal state. It shows that fiscal decentralization is a method to disclose the preferences of currently living and future generations for local public goods, to limit the size of the government, and to avoid excessive public debt finance. While the allocative branch of the government benefits from fiscal decentralization, it is difficult to obtain a distribution of incomes that differs from the outcome that the market brings along.

The European Union (EU) has reached crisis point. Populist and Nativist forces are militating against years of austerity economics, distant elites, and a rising tide of migration. Despite the EU's shortcomings, this book seeks to determine the future of the EU, outlining how the institution can learn lessons from the elements that have plunged much of Europe into social, economic and political turmoil. This book argues for reform not revolution. By interviewing politicians, economists, representatives of national bodies and EU citizens, this book provides unique insights never before disclosed and makes a major contribution to current debates on the future of the EU and the Eurozone.

This book examines the major economic challenges associated with the sustainability of public pensions, specifically demographic change, labor-market relations, and risk sharing. The issue of public pensions occupies the political and economic agendas of many major governments in the world. International organizations such as the World Bank and the OECD warn that the economic changes driven by an aging society negatively affects the sustainability of pension systems. This book analyzes different global public pension systems to offer policies, methods and tools for sustainable public pensions. Real case studies from France, Sweden, Latin America, Algeria, USA and Mexico are featured.

The question of how to generate sufficient revenue to pay for health care has become a serious concern for nearly all European policy-makers. This book examines the advantages and disadvantages of funding arrangements currently in use across Europe. Adopting a cross-national, cross-disciplinary perspective, it assesses the relative merits of the main methods of raising resources including taxation; social, voluntary and supplemental forms of insurance; and self-pay including co-payments. Chapters written by leading health policy analysts review recent evidence and experience in both eastern and western Europe. The volume is introduced by a summary chapter which integrates conceptual issues in funding with an overview of the main advantages and disadvantages of each method of funding drawn from the expert chapters.
This is an important book for students of health policy, health economics, public policy and managment, and for health managers and policy makers.

This book examines interesting new topics in applied economics from the perspectives of the economics of information and risk, two fields of economics that address the consequences of asymmetric information, environmental risk and uncertainty for the nature and efficiency of interactions between individuals and organizations. In the economics of information, the essential task is to examine the condition of asymmetric information under which the information gap is exploited. For the economics of risk, it is important to investigate types of behavior including risk aversion, risk sharing, and risk prevention, and to reexamine the classical expected utility approach and the relationships among several types of the changes in risk. Few books have ever analyzed topics in applied economics with regard to information and risk. This book provides a comprehensive collection of applied analyses, while also revisiting certain basic concepts in the economics of information and risk. The book consists of two parts. In Part I, several aspects of applied economics are investigated, including public policy, labor economics, and political economics, from the standpoint of the economics of (asymmetric) information. First, several basic frameworks of the incentive mechanism with regard to transaction-specific investment are assessed, then various tools for market design and organization design are explored. In Part II, mathematical measures of risk and risk aversion are examined in more detail, and readers are introduced to stochastic selection rules governing choice behavior under uncertainty. Several types of change in the random variable for the cumulative distribution function (CDF) and probability distribution function (PDF) are discussed. In closing, the part investigates the comparative static results of these changes in CDF or PDF on the general decision model, incorporating uncertain situations in applied economics.

A serious consideration of the debate on social security reform that is taking place in many countries around the world. Professor Seidman advocates the concept of 'funded social security' as a middle position between pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) social security and privatized social security, and constitutes a politically strategic alternative. His analysis covers two distinct components, fund accumulation and portfolio diversification. The concept of funded social security uses a mix of payroll taxes and portfolio investment income to finance benefits. With funded social security, the government contracts with private investment firms to manage the portfolio of the social security trust fund. It is entirely a defined-benefit plan without any individual defined-contribution accounts; each retiree's benefit is linked by a legislated formula to the retiree's own wage history. The benefit is an annuity - an annual benefit that continues as long as the retiree (or spouse) lives - and is automatically adjusted annually for inflation.

The Late Middle Ages (c.1300-c.1500) saw the development of many of the key economic institutions of the modern unitary nation-state in Europe. After the 'commercial revolution' of the thirteenth century, taxes on trade became increasingly significant contributors to government finances, and as such there were ever greater efforts to control the flow of goods and money. This book presents a case study of the commercial and financial links between the kingdom of England and the duchy of Aquitaine across the late-medieval period, with a special emphasis on the role of the English Plantagenet government that had ruled both in a political union since 1154. It establishes a strong connection between fluctuations in commodity markets, large monetary flows and unstable financial markets, most notably in trade credit and equity partnerships. It shows how the economic relationship deteriorated under the many exogenous shocks of the period, the wars, plagues and famines, as well as politically motivated regulatory intervention. Despite frequent efforts to innovate in response, both merchants and governments experienced a series of protracted financial crises that presaged the break-up of the union of kingdom and duchy in 1453, with the latter's conquest by the French crown. Of particular interest to scholars of the late-medieval European economy, this book will also appeal to those researching wider economic or financial history.

There appears to be an increasing trend in worldwide fiscal decentralization. In particular, many developing countries are turning to various forms of fiscal decentralization as an escape from inefficient and ineffective governance, macroeconomic stability, and inadequate growth. Fiscal Decentralization in Developing Countries: An Overview edited by Professors Bird and Vaillancourt and featuring important research from leading scholars assesses the progress, problems and potentials of fiscal decentralization in a variety of developing countries around the world. With rich and varied case-study material from countries as diverse as India, China, Colombia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and South Africa this volume complements neatly the collection Fiscal Aspects of Evolving Federations edited by David Wildasin and also published by Cambridge, which presented theoretical advances in the area of research.

This book provides an assessment of public financial management (PFM) reforms in developing countries using Turkey as a case study. The book elaborates on revenue management, expenditure management, public budget, public financial management information systems, asset and liability management, intergovernmental fiscal relations, accounting, financial reporting, and auditing. Bringing together academics and practitioners, the book analyzes the PFM reforms in the light of theoretical explanations and practices to reveal the achievements, challenges, and future perspectives of PFM.