In international commentary and debate on the effects of the Great Recession and austerity, Ireland has been hailed as the poster child for economic recovery and regeneration out of deep economic and fiscal contraction. While the genesis of Ireland's financial, economic, and fiscal crisis has been covered in the literature, no systematic analysis has yet been devoted to the period of austerity, to the impact of austerity on institutions and people, or to the roots of economic recovery. In this book a group of Ireland's leading social scientists present a multidisciplinary analysis of recession and austerity and their effects on economic, business, political, and social life. Individual chapters discuss the fiscal and economic policies implemented, the role of international, and, in particular, of EU institutions, and the effects on businesses, consumption, work, the labour market, migration, political and financial institutions, social inequality and cohesion, housing, and cultural expression. The book shows that Ireland cannot be viewed uncritically as a poster child for austerity. While fiscal contraction provided a basis for stabilizing the perilous finances of the state, economic recovery was due in the main to the long-established structure of Irish economic and business activity, to the importance of foreign direct investment and the dynamic export sector, and to recovery in the international economy. The restructuring and recovery of the financial system was aided by favourable international developments, including historically low interest rates and quantitative easing. Migration flows, nominal wage stability, the protection of social transfer payments, and the involvement of trade unions in severe public sector retrenchment - long-established features of Irish political economy - were of critical importance in the maintenance of social cohesion.

Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) represent both an increasingly important - and potentially dominant - category of alternative investor, and a novel form for governments to project their interests both home and abroad. As such, they represent both economic actors and embody power vested in the financial and diplomatic resources they can leverage. Although at times they have acted in concert with other alternative investors, their intergenerational savings function should, in theory at least, promote more long-termist thinking. However, they may be impelled in towards greater short termism, in response to popular pressures, demands from predatory elites and/or unforeseen external shocks. Of all the categories of alternative investment, SWFs perhaps embody the most contradictory pressures, making for diverse and complex outcomes. The aim of this volume is to consolidate the present state of the art, and advance the field through new applied, conceptual and theoretical insights. The volume is ordered into chapters that explore thematic issues and country studies, incorporating novel insights in on the most recent developments in the SWF ecosystem. This handbook is organized into four sections and 23 chapters. The four sections are: Governance of SWFs, Political and Legal Aspects of SWFs, Investment Choices and Structures of SWFs, Country and Regional Analyses of SWFs.

In 2008, the world was plunged into a financial and economic crash. This book explores the roots of the crash, including the build-up of global economic imbalances, the explosion in the use of novel financial instruments, the mismanagement of risk, and the specific roles played by housing and debt. It reviews the evidence that on the eve of the crash all was not well and that many political and finance industry leaders ignored the dangers. The key events of the crash are described, and the main amplification mechanisms explained. An economics lens is used to dissect the bank rescue, paying particular attention to the hidden ways in which it worked, who will ultimately bear the costs, and to what degree new risks were created. The book evaluates the fiscal and monetary policies used to rescue economies, efforts to tackle unemployment, proposals for dealing with collapsing housing markets, austerity and the battles over long-term sovereign debt, the Eurozone crash, and the risks of future economic instability. It reviews reform-of mortgage markets, monetary policy, and banking-designed to make such disasters less likely in future. Written before, during, and in the years immediately after the crash, it is an engaging chronicle and comprehensive analysis of the events and thinking of these years. The book's arguments take on added authority given that the author had identified, and called attention to, key features of the crash before it happened.

Originally published in 1987, Cost-Benefit Analysis in Urban and Regional Planning, outlines the theory and practice of cost-benefit analysis (CBA) in the context of urban and regional planning. The theory of CBA is developed with examples to illustrate the principles, it also deals with details of the applications and covers issues such as local health and social services provision, local economic development and regional policy evaluation, and planning in less developed countries - as well as the conventional land-use issues of physical planning.

This volume identifies and compares 'fiscal squeezes' (major efforts to cut public spending and/or raise taxes) in the UK over a century from 1900 to 2015. The authors examine how different the politics of fiscal squeeze and austerity is today from what it was a century ago, how (if at all) fiscal squeezes reshaped the state and the provision of public services, and how political credit and blame played out after austerity episodes. The analysis is both quantitative and qualitative, starting with reported financial outcomes from historical statistics and then going behind those numbers to explore the political choices and processes in play. This analysis identifies some patterns that have not been explained or even recognized in earlier works on retrenchment and austerity. For example, it identifies a long term shift from what it terms a 'surgery without anaesthetics' approach (deep but short-lived episodes of spending restraint or tax increases) in the earlier part of the period towards a 'boiling frogs' approach (episodes in which the pain is spread out over a longer period) in more recent decades. It also identifies a curious reduction of revenue-led squeezes in more recent decades, and a puzzle over why blame-avoidance logic only led to outsourcing painful decisions over squeeze in a minority of cases. Furthermore, the volume's distinctive approach to classifying types of fiscal squeezes and qualitatively assessing their intensity seeks to solve the puzzle as to why voter'punishment' of governments that impose austerity policies seems to be so erratic.

Since the onset of the global economic crisis, activists, policy makers, and social scientists have been searching for alternative paradigms through which to re-imagine contemporary modes of thinking and writing about economic orders. These attempts have led to their re-engagement with fundamental anthropological categories of economic analysis, such as barter, debt, and the gift. Focusing on favours, and the paradoxes of action, meaning, and significance they engender, this volume advocates for their addition to this list of economic universals. It presents a critical re-interrogation of the conceptual relationships between gratuitous and instrumental behaviour, and raises novel questions about the intersection of economic actions with the ethical and expressive aspects of human life. Scholars of post-socialist politics and society have often used 'favour' as a by-word for corruption and clientelism. The contributors to this volume treat favours, and the doing of favours, as a distinct mode of acting, rather than as a form of 'masked' economic exchange or simply an expression of goodwill. Casting their comparative net from post-socialist Central, Eastern, and South Eastern Europe; to the former Soviet Union, Mongolia, and post-Maoist China, the contributors to this volume show how gratuitous behaviour shapes a plethora of different actions, practices, and judgements across religious and political life, imaginative practices, and local moral economies. They show that favours do not operate 'outside' or 'beyond' the economic sphere. Rather, they constitute a distinct mode of action which has economic consequences, without being fully explicable in terms of transactional cost-benefit analyses.

How does social spending relate to economic growth and which countries have got this right and wrong? Peter Lindert examines the experience of countries across the globe to reveal what has worked, what needs changing, and who the winners and losers are under different systems. He traces the development of public education, health care, pensions, and welfare provision, and addresses key questions around intergenerational inequality and fiscal redistribution, the returns to investment in human capital, how to deal with an aging population, whether migration is a cost or a benefit, and how social spending differs in autocracies and democracies. The book shows that what we need to do above all is to invest more in the young from cradle to career, and shift the burden of paying for social insurance away from the workplace and to society as a whole.

From the mid-1980s to the early 2000s, images of crisis and reform dominated talk of Cameroon's economy. Doing Business in Cameroon examines the aftermath of that period of turbulence and unpredictability in the northern city of Ngaoundere. Taking the everyday encounters between business actors and state bureaucrats as its point of departure, the book vividly illustrates the backstage and interconnected dynamics of four different sectors (cattle trade, trucking, public contracting, and NGO work). Drawing on his training in law and social anthropology, the author is able to clarify intricate policy dynamics and abstruse legal developments for readers. A widespread picture emerges of actors grappling with the long-term implications of selective or suspended enforcement of legal rules. The book deftly illuminates a set of shifting configurations in which economic outcomes like monetary gains or the circulation of goods are achieved by foregoing the possibility of relying on or complying with the law.

This book offers a critical assessment of the history of the euro, its crisis, and the rescue measures taken by the European Central Bank and the community of states. The euro induced huge capital flows from the northern to the southern countries of the Eurozone that triggered an inflationary credit bubble in the latter, deprived them of their competitiveness, and made them vulnerable to the financial crisis that spilled over from the US in 2007 and 2008. As private capital shied away from the southern countries, the ECB helped out by providing credit from the local money-printing presses. The ECB became heavily exposed to investment risks in the process, and subsequently had to be bailed out by intergovernmental rescue operations that provided replacement credit for the ECB credit, which itself had replaced the dwindling private credit. The interventions stretched the legal structures stipulated by the Maastricht Treaty which, in the absence of a European federal state, had granted the ECB a very limited mandate. These interventions created a path dependency that effectively made parliaments vicarious agents of the ECB's Governing Council. This book describes what the author considers to be a dangerous political process that undermines both the market economy and democracy, without solving southern Europe's competitiveness problem. It argues that the Eurozone has to rethink its rules of conduct by limiting the role of the ECB, exiting the regime of soft budget constraints and writing off public and bank debt to help the crisis countries breathe again. At the same time, the Eurosystem should become more flexible by offering its members the option of exiting and re-entering the euro - something between the dollar and the Bretton Woods system - until it eventually turns into a federation with a strong political power centre and a uniform currency like the dollar.

This volumes examines the interaction of labour market conditions and retirement decisions. Based on French and US data, it provides empirical evidence and quantitative analysis of retirement and labor market flows. It studies the horizon effect and uses French individual data and probit models to show that the horizon effect does matter for the probability of being employed before the early retirement age. It analyses the influence of the retirement age on labour-market equilibrium, as well as the impact of labour market conditions, especially the importance of unemployment risk, on retirement decisions.

This book is based on lectures conducted for two classes at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University: A Public Finance Seminar for PhD students in public administration and State and Local Public Finance for master's students in public administration.Topics covered include the role of voters in a federal system, the sorting of different households into different communities, the determinants of public service costs, the property tax and other sources of local (and state) revenue, fiscal aspects of economic development, and intergovernmental aid (especially for education).The notes for the Ph.D. class also cover several more advanced topics, such as the estimation of education production and cost functions, the capitalization of school quality into house values, and tax competition among jurisdictions. The focus in these notes is on the highly decentralized federal system in the United States, but many of the principles and much of the behavioral analysis in the class apply to other countries as well.These notes draw on Professor Yinger's extensive teaching experience and publication record in state and local public finance. They should prove useful to many teachers, scholars, and students who find topics in state and local public finance that they wish to pursue.

For effective program evaluation, it is necessary to specify a counterfactual state, i.e., what would have happened without the program. Conventional approaches to program evaluation, preoccupied with technical and value issues, fail to address directly the need for counterfactual arguments. They also fail to recognize the indispensable role of positive theories of technical and behavioral processes in making these arguments. In order to understand the impact of the General Revenue Sharing (GRS) program on the fiscal behavior of municipal governments, Patrick Larkey develops and demonstrates an unconventional approach to program evaluation that overcomes these failures. Drawing on the positive theories of budgetary decisionmaking processes as well as longitudinal revenue and expenditure data from primary sources, the author specifies, estimates, and tests four "bureaucratic process" models for each of five city governments receiving GRS funds. Using these models to generate complex, counterfactual hypotheses, he then compares the counterfactual patterns with observed patterns to understand the fiscal effects of GRS. Originally published in 1979. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Since the opening of the Ottoman Archives, research on the history of the Ottoman Empire prior to 1800 has resulted primarily in the publication of individual financial and administrative records, sometimes with analysis. Dr. Shaw's study is the first effort to use all the available records concerning an individual province, synthesizing them into an exhaustive study of Egypt's administration under Ottoman rule, from its conquest in 1517 until the French invasion of Egypt in 1798. A unique work of scholarship, the book shows in detail the changes made over the centuries, and is based both on the local archives and on the Imperial Ottoman archives located in Istanbul. Originally published in 1962. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Research for the developing world can generate evidence on the effectiveness of foreign aid, invent new technologies that serve poor people, and strengthen research capabilities in poor countries. How do countries determine which of these policy goals to pursue? Examining the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia reveals how each country established a unique approach to research funding. Programs and grantmaking evolved in response to various expectations across government, tempered by the need to remain credible in the scientific community. This book explores the histories of the UK Department for International Development (DFID), Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC), and the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR). Looking back, changes in research governance encouraged a shift towards whole-of-government priorities, shorter timeframes for realizing results, and performance predicated on academic productivity and research impact. Whereas funders used to encourage 'small is beautiful' with local experiments in development, today the emphasis is on 'getting to scale' delivering innovation through self-financing models. Looking forward, research for the developing world is fading as part of development assistance, yet rising as collaboration on common global challenges. Funders are adopting new definitions of performance and actively shaping policy to connect science and international development. Leaders are brokering partnerships that connect research governance at home and abroad, bridging the incentives towards academic productivity and research impact. In short, the future of research for the developing world is moving from foreign aid to science diplomacy.

Much has been written and spoken about the lessons learned from the financial crisis of 2009. This book deals with the lessons not learned before the financial crisis. Dr Trimbath demonstrates that an existing framework for regulating financial systems, available since at least 2001, could have prevented the systemic failure in the US that led to the collapse of global credit markets in 2008. Step by step the book guides you through what could have been done to prevent the crisis and what investors can do to protect themselves from the next one, and concludes with a key idea for making financial services businesses stand out from the crowd ensuring future success. The list of 10 Steps is quite straight-forward and simple. Have private, independent rating agencies. Provide some government safety net but not so much that banks are not held accountable (""Too Big to Fail"") Allow very little government ownership and control of national financial assets. Allow banks to reduce the volatility of returns by offering a wide-range of services. Require financial market players to register and be authorized. Provide information, including setting standards, to enhance market transparency. Routinely examine financial institutions to ensure that the regulatory code is obeyed. Enforce the code and discipline transgressors. Develop policies that keep the regulatory code up to date. Encourage the creation of specialized financial institutions. For each step the reader will find: the legislative and regulatory background on the existing rules; a review of academic research on the theory behind each step; and the facts and data connecting each step to the financial crisis of 2008.

For effective program evaluation, it is necessary to specify a counterfactual state, i.e., what would have happened without the program. Conventional approaches to program evaluation, preoccupied with technical and value issues, fail to address directly the need for counterfactual arguments. They also fail to recognize the indispensable role of positive theories of technical and behavioral processes in making these arguments. In order to understand the impact of the General Revenue Sharing (GRS) program on the fiscal behavior of municipal governments, Patrick Larkey develops and demonstrates an unconventional approach to program evaluation that overcomes these failures. Drawing on the positive theories of budgetary decisionmaking processes as well as longitudinal revenue and expenditure data from primary sources, the author specifies, estimates, and tests four "bureaucratic process" models for each of five city governments receiving GRS funds. Using these models to generate complex, counterfactual hypotheses, he then compares the counterfactual patterns with observed patterns to understand the fiscal effects of GRS. Originally published in 1979. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The European Union (EU) has emerged as a central actor in financial governance. Hardly any corner of European financial markets remains untouched by EU rules, and key regulatory competences have been shifted from national authorities to supranational ones. At the same time, the global context has become ever more important for how and to what effect the EU regulates its financial markets. On the one hand, EU policymaking is embedded in global initiatives such as the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. On the other hand, the EU now rivals the USA in its ability to shape global rules. Scholars and practitioners cannot make sense of EU rulemaking without studying its links to global financial governance, just as to understand how global initiatives evolve they have to appreciate the rise of the EU as a global regulatory force. This book charts and analyses this centrality of the European-global link in financial governance for the first time. Its chapters, written by experts in the specific fields, cover the whole breadth of financial markets. They range from banking, auditing and accounting to derivatives trading, money laundering, and tax governance. This book offers comprehensive coverage of: how and why global and European financial governance have co-evolved over time; how global and European rules, institutions, and actors are linked today; and what this implies for future global and European financial governance. It is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the dynamics of either global or European financial regulation.

Restoring Public Debt Sustainability: The Role of Independent Fiscal Institutions represents the first comprehensive survey of a new generation of independent fiscal institutions, established to promote transparency in public finances through real-time monitoring of the soundness of budgetary policymaking. The chapters, authored by heads of the institutions, as well as distinguished policy analysts and academics, explore the rationale and experience of these fiscal watchdogs. Consequently, useful lessons and implications are drawn for the design and practical operation of such institutions. The timeliness of the volume is underscored by the potential role of fiscal watchdogs in containing the public debt crisis that has engulfed a number of countries. Indeed, the recent proliferation of these institutions has been in response to the need for enhancing policy credibility of highly indebted governments in financial markets and, more generally, for strengthening the quality of economic governance. The first part of the book deals with key analytical and institutional issues: the political environment, the scope and limits of these institutions, the delegation of monetary policymaking to an independent body, and the implications of rising public indebtedness. The second part contains case studies of institutions that, for the most part, were born as a result of domestic political developments. The third part presents the experience of institutions whose origins can be traced directly or indirectly to an earlier or a recent financial crisis. The chapters are written from a multidisciplinary - economic, financial, political, legal - perspective, intended for academics, researchers, and practitioners alike.

Government spending has increased dramatically in the United States since World War II despite the many rules intended to rein in the insatiable appetite for tax revenue most politicians seem to share. Drawing on examples from the federal and state governments, "Rules and Restraint" explains in lucid, nontechnical prose why these budget rules tend to fail, and proposes original alternatives for imposing much-needed fiscal discipline on our legislators.
One reason budget rules are ineffective, David Primo shows, is that politicians often create and preserve loopholes to protect programs that benefit their constituents. Another reason is that legislators must enforce their own provisions, an arrangement that is seriously compromised by their unwillingness to abide by rules that demand short-term sacrifices for the sake of long-term gain. Convinced that budget rules enacted through such a flawed legislative process are unlikely to work, Primo ultimately calls for a careful debate over the advantages and drawbacks of a constitutional convention initiated by the states--a radical step that would bypass Congress to create a path toward change. "Rules and Restraint" will be required reading for anyone interested in institutional design, legislatures, and policymaking.

At the turn of this century, the American national debt stood at just under $6 trillion and the deficit at a mere $86 billion. Today, the national debt has topped $15 trillion, and the yearly deficit for 2012 is projected at a whopping $1.2 trillion. This new, second edition of Deficits: Why Should I Care? updates all the statistics, charts, and forecasts, while adding a new chapter on how global economies now, for better or worse, affect the U.S. debt and the annual budget deficit. It also includes a new appendix detailing how the U.S. political parties view the debt issue. According to the U.S. Treasury Department's Annual Report on the Public Debt, the debt is estimated to hit $19.6 trillion by 2015. The federal government has borrowed roughly 40 percent of its total budget for the last several years, a trend that could leave the U.S. in an economic crisis. Astronomical interest payments, a debt burden to your children and grandchildren, and an increased reliance on foreign creditors are just a few of the problems. Although the U.S. has experienced soaring unemployment, stagnant production, and a crippled housing market, foremost on many economists' minds are rising deficits and ballooning debt.Others feel fears of the national debt are overblown or pale in comparison to today's economic problems. This clear, concise book will give you the need-to-know on the debt. You will learn: * How to calculate deficits and the national debt * The history of U.S debt and its recent unparalleled growth over the years * How and why the government borrows money * The economic arguments for, and against, accruing a debt * Could we become like Greece if we don't cut our deficit? * The impact of the debt on interest rates and inflation * The impact of the debt on the value of the dollar and U.S. economic power This book also answers key questions: Can the government go bankrupt? Why have there seemingly been no repurcussions of the large debt to date and is that likely to change? When the interest on the debt becomes higher than the revenue of the government, what happens? And many more practical insights into the government debt controversy. Business professionals, parents, retirees, and students are all concerned about the debt. This quick read will provide an understanding of the ramifications of the rising debt and what the consequences may be.What you'll learn * Why the debt now could be a problem when people have been crying wolf about it for for the last 40 years * How the world economy affects the U.S. debt and deficit * What the government can do to reduce the debt and the implications--especially for such programs as Medicare and Social Security * The long-term implications of the debt * Methods and tactics for balancing the budget * When accruing a debt makes sense and when it does not * Action steps for monitoring the debt Who this book is for Deficit: Why Should I Care? is written for the busy business professional, concerned parent, retired worker, or student. While academic and theoretical texts on the subject lack brevity, this book will help you understand the seriousness of the debt issue in a clear, concise format. This work has been condensed into eight need-to-know chapters, each containing the key points necessary for understanding this complex economic issue affecting the economic future of all Americans.Whether you are a businessperson concerned about the economy, a parent anxious about the debt burden of your children and grandchildren, a retiree fretful about programs like Social Security, or a student who needs additional information to supplement a textbook, this is the book for you. The appendix provides a website selection covering government agencies, economic sources, and academic sites to assist you in finding the most up-to-date information on the debt drama.

The global financial crisis triggered severe shocks for developing countries, whose embrace of greater commercial and financial openness has increased their exposure to external shocks, both real and financial. This new edition of Development Macroeconomics has been fully revised to address the more open and less stable environment in which developing countries operate today. Describing the latest advances in this rapidly changing field, the book features expanded coverage of public debt and the management of capital inflows as well as new material on fiscal discipline, monetary policy regimes, currency, banking and sovereign debt crises, currency unions, and the choice of an exchange-rate regime. A new chapter on dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models with financial frictions has been added to reflect how the financial crisis has reshaped our thinking on the role of such frictions in generating and propagating real and financial shocks. The book also discusses the role of macroprudential regulation, both independently and through its interactions with monetary policy, in preserving financial and macroeconomic stability. Now in its fourth edition, Development Macroeconomics remains the definitive textbook on the macroeconomics of developing countries. * The most authoritative book on the subject--now fully revised and expanded* Features new material on fiscal discipline, monetary policy regimes, currency, banking and sovereign debt crises, and much more* Comes with online supplements on informal financial markets, stabilization programs, the solution of DSGE models with financial frictions, and exchange rate crises

This new edition restructures and updates the political economy view of the responsibilities and limitations of government. Public-choice and behavioural concepts are prominent. Gender issues are included. Technical concepts are explained from first principles. Economic theory is rigorously applied. Excessive technicality is avoided. The book integrates traditional public finance topics - taxation, public goods, externalities, and income redistribution - with political self-interest, bureaucracy, voting, rent seeking, corruption, and the common-pool problem of public spending. Social justice is viewed as income equality, equality of opportunity, or the right to benefit from one's own effort. Public policies studied include the environment, education, health insurance, welfare payments and entitlements under moral hazard, unemployment insurance, paternalistic impositions, and defence and public safety. This book is ideal for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses that combine economic theory with a real-world perspective on the politics of public finance and public policy. A broad scope makes the book suitable for students in all countries.

'Carrera and Dunleavy provide a crystal clear and comprehensive account of the complex issues involved in how best to improve the productivity of government services. They offer a nuanced but powerful explanation of productivity puzzles, conundrums and dilemmas in the public sector. But they also offer solutions to many of these problems. Finally, I have found a text on public economics that makes sense, gives genuine management insights and offers real suggestions to practitioners as to what to do next.' - Barry Quirk, Chief Executive, London Borough of Lewisham, UK'This book presents a welcome and sobering analysis of productivity performance in UK central government - a subject that has received remarkably little serious academic attention up to now, in spite of decades of general commentary on managerialism.' - Christopher Hood, All Souls College, UK 'Leandro Carrera and Patrick Dunleavy have performed an amazing feat in this book through their rigorous examination of a thorny topic that has dogged pundits and academics alike. Just how efficient is government and how well does it do its job? As a result of an impressive - but accessible - set of data analyses, the authors make an authoritative attack on the proponents of the New Public Management, and offer some clear recommendations for reform based on better use of new technology.' - Peter John, University College London, UK Productivity is essentially the ratio of an organization's outputs divided by its inputs. For many years it was treated as always being static in government agencies. In fact productivity in government services should be rising rapidly as a result of digital changes and new management approaches, and it has done so in some agencies. However, Dunleavy and Carrera show for the first time how complex are the factors affecting productivity growth in government organizations - especially management practices, use of IT, organizational culture, strategic mis-decisions and political and policy churn. With government budgets under stress in many countries, this pioneering book shows academics, analysts and officials how to measure outputs and productivity in detail; how to cope with problems of quality variations; and how to achieve year-on-year, sustainable improvements in the efficiency of government services.

In the light of better and more detailed administrative databases, this open access book provides statistical tools for evaluating the effects of public policies advocated by governments and public institutions. Experts from academia, national statistics offices and various research centers present modern econometric methods for an efficient data-driven policy evaluation and monitoring, assess the causal effects of policy measures and report on best practices of successful data management and usage. Topics include data confidentiality, data linkage, and national practices in policy areas such as public health, education and employment. It offers scholars as well as practitioners from public administrations, consultancy firms and nongovernmental organizations insights into counterfactual impact evaluation methods and the potential of data-based policy and program evaluation.

This study paper examines the economic consequences of immigration for public finances in Denmark. Using new figures for the period 2004-2008, net transfers are calculated and presented as an extension to the figures that already existed for the period 1991-2001. The net transfers are calculated from a marginal perspective, which means that the included public expenditures and incomes can be traced to each individual person in the sample. The study is therefore suited for analyzing the economic consequences if more/less people immigrate. A consistent pattern to emerge throughout the study is that net transfers from Western first- and second-generation immigrants to state funds are positive, while those from non-Western first- and second-generation immigrants are negative. The new calculations show that net transfers from non-Western first- and second-generation immigrants fell from DKK (Danish Kroner) -12.8 billion in 2004 to DKK -9.1 billion in 2008, largely due to the improved employment situation in Denmark. However, the results also show that the composition chosen of the group of non-Western immigrants has a significant effect on the calculation of net transfers, in that these transfers are reduced to DKK -2.2 billion if refugees are excluded from this group.