The Politics of Global Debt is a detailed political analysis of the origins and consequences of the `global debt crisis' which emerged in the early 1980s. It assesses both `imperialist' and `New Right' interpretations of the crisis, and also presents a series of case studies of the effects of external debt upon Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe and Asia. The book focusses upon the `sovereign debt' of states, and its management, and examines the ways in which global economic structures, inefficient policies, weak institutions, and corrupt political leaders contribute to a global debt crisis which has both international and domestic roots.

This collection of essays deals with aspects of the recent fiscal crisis in developing countries. Macro aspects cover theoretical underpinning of fiscal policy, the size of the required adjustment and the link between internal and external transfers. Micro aspects cover the relation between private and public investment, the experience of tax and expenditure reforms and the impact of fiscal adjustment on the poor. The essays are by applied economists, who analyze real-life issues.

In recent years, workers earnings have hardly grown, violence and crime have plagued the inner cities, homelessness and public begging have become commonplace, and family life has greatly deteriorated. With governments facing large deficits and slowly growing revenues, and public distrust in the efficiency of government and elected officials at all-time highs, the authors ask, ""What can government do for you?""This book brings together a prominent group of experts to answer this critical question. Edited by Henry Aaron and Charles L. Schultze, two of the nation's most noted and experienced economists, the book focuses on the crucial domestic and social issues confronting America today. Seven vital areas are discussed by the following contributors: Henry Aaron on health care; Gordon L Berlin and William McAllister on homelessness; Linda R Cohen and Roger G. Noll on research and development; John J. DiIulio, Jr., on crime; Frank Levy and Richard J. Murnane on education and training; Isabel V. Sawhill on children and families; and Clifford M. Winston and Barry P. Bosworth on infrastructure. In each problem area, the authors use the results of research and analysis to identify existing or proposed governmental interventions that are likely to work, as well as some that are likely to fail and some that need to be reformed. They then present a budget proposal that not only pays for suggested changes in domestic policy, but brings the budget into virtual balance in ten years.

This book describes the complex of economic processes which sustains inflationary pressure in nations with severe inflation problems. Paul Beckerman uses an innovative approach to study the strategies inhabitants of economies with lengthy inflation experience use to maintain their purchasing power despite inflation. He examines how these tactics function as 'feedback mechanisms', economic processes by which inflation in any given time period generates inflationary pressure in subsequent periods, and how they complicate the efforts of policy-makers to achieve stabilization.

These two volumes bring together key articles in the field of modern public finance, a field which has seen a major revival of interest in the past 20 years. The articles reprinted are among those which have shaped its recent development, and include contributions by no fewer than seven Nobel Prize-winners. A.B. Atkinson - widely recognized as a leading authority in the field - has carefully selected a representative coverage of the most important articles and papers and has also included readings which help relate the subject to other areas of economics. The result is a reference collection which will be an essential companion for the specialist and non-specialist alike.

Provides descriptions, instructions, and exercises to help readers master government budgeting as it is actually practiced.

Our growing national debt has dropped out of the headlines recently - but that doesn't mean that the problem has gone away. The national debt recently topped $17.5 trillion, and is projected to reach $27 trillion by 2024. Worse yet, if you include the unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare, the U.S. real indebtedness exceeds $83 trillion. Despite these undeniable facts, politicians from both parties continue to avoid making the difficult decisions that must be made. Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid alone account for 48 percent of federal spending today, a portion that will only increase more rapidly with the newest entitlement program, Obamacare. The truth is that there is no way to address America's debt problem without reforming entitlements. Going for Broke provides a critical, in-depth analysis of these entitlement programs and lays out much needed solutions for real reform.

Understanding the governance of nations is a key challenge in contemporaneous political economy. This book provides new advances and the latest research in the field of political economy, dealing with the study of institutions, governance, democracy and elections. The volume focuses on issues such as the role of institutions and political governance in society, the working of democracy and the electoral performance in several case studies. The chapters involve cutting edge research on many different countries, including the USA, Great Britain, Germany, Spain and the Third World. The authors of the chapters are leading scholars in political economy from America, Europe and Asia.

Since it was first published Public Sector Economics has become the most widely adopted undergraduate textbook in its field. Major revisions have been made to this fourth edition while preserving the central objective of the book, which is to explain the relevant principles and the relationships between public expenditure, taxation and the behaviour of economic agents such as individuals, households and firms.* A thoroughly revised edition of the standard UK text in the area * All statistics bought up to date * A wealth of new material, particularly on taxation

A compilation of papers given at a Conference of the International Economic Association analyze the world-wide experiences of incomes policy when, in the 1970s and early 1980s, this was seen as a crucial target for government.

This collection of essays presents new insights into the analyses of public debt theory, recent historical episodes, econometric analyses of public debt and policy dilemmas and options. The subjects covered include optimal debt policy, the role of deficits as a temporary stimulus in the course of disinflation, the intergenerational equity aspects of public debt, public debt problems in developing countries, indexing public debt for inflation and various conceptual, accounting and measurement issues in obtaining accurate information on deficits and public debt as well as their impact on aggregate economic activity. The studies document the explosion of public debt, the potential benefits and costs associated with this explosion and the perceptions of the debt problems from the viewpoints of various national economies as well as the world economy. Professor Arrow was awarded the Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science in 1972.

This textbook offers a unique approach to macroeconomic theory built on microeconomic foundations of monetary macroeconomics within a unified framework of an intertemporal general equilibrium model extended to a sequential and dynamic analysis. It investigates the implications of expectations and of stationary fiscal policies on allocations, on the quantity of money, and on the dynamic evolution of the economy with and without noise. The text contrasts and compares the two main competing approaches in macroeconomics within the same intertemporal model of a closed monetary economy: the one postulating full price flexibility to guarantee equilibrium in all markets at all times under perfect foresight or rational expectations, versus the so called disequilibrium approach where trading occurs at non- market-clearing prices and wages when these adjust sluggishly from period to period in response to market disequilibrium signals.

State and local governments are at a financial crossroads. As the federal government attempts to reduce its deficits, state governments will have to provide a greater share of support for mandatory social programs. Local governments face demands for new initiatives in education and for civic improvements. Both have obligations to employee pension plans that are large and still relatively untested. Running counter to these claims on state and local budgets is a voter effort to limit the amounts that governments may tax or spend.This fourth edition of James A. Maxwell's classic and widely acclaimed book will help both layman and lawmaker understand the choices open to their governments. It provides a lucid, nontechnical analysis of state and local finance. It gives concise descriptions of the taxes, grants, debt issues, and user charges that finance state and local government and discusses their relative virtues and drawbacks. It traces the history of state and local finance and presents statistical data on expenditures, federal aid, revenue from taxes and user charges, debt, and pension funds. The new edition, in recognition of changes since the mid-1970s, also includes a separate chapter on financing education and broadened analyses of federal grant programs, employee retirement systems, and nonguaranteed municipal debt.

The social security system affects people throughout most of their lives, at work and in retirement. The supposed effects of social security on saving, labor supply, and the distribution of income figure prominently in current debates about whether and how to change the system. Theorists have developed alternative analytical frameworks for studying social security, but all involve extreme assumptions introduced for the sake of analytical tractability. Each study seems to describe the behavior of some, but not all or even most people. The shortcomings of available data have created additional roadblocks. As a result, the effects of social security on saving and labor supply are difficult to measure, and how such a complex system influences behavior is not at all well understood.Yet decisions on social security cannot be avoided. If analysts cannot agree, policymakers are likely to increase the weight they attach to perceptions of equity, adequacy of benefits, fairness of taxes, and similar qualitative considerations. Hence it is desirable for lay observers to understand the framework that analysts use and the reasons why there is so much uncertainty. This book sheds light on social security issues by examining evidence from economic studies about how the system affects saving, labor supply, and income distribution. It shows that these studies provide little evidence to support or refute assertions that social security has reduced saving, but they do indicate that it has contributed to the trend toward early retirement. The author finds that the aged are now about as well off on the average as the general population and that social security has played a considerable role in bringing about this equality. This volume is the sixteenth in the second serioes of Brookings Studies of Government Finance.

This final volume in the series Studies in the Modernization of the Republic of Korea, 1945-1975, is an analysis of the contribution of tax and expenditure policy to Korea's rapid economic development during the 1953-1975 period. Based upon specially compiled and comprehensive revenue and expenditure data, the authors first trace the history of Korean fiscal policy during the modernization period and then examine how Korea's fiscal development has differed from that of other countries. The results of the analysis show that Korea did not follow the traditional path of a steadily increasing tax effort, reliance on direct taxes, and emphasis on income distribution. Instead, through improved tax administration and expenditure control, the savings rate was increased dramatically.

A volume in Conducting Research in Education Finance: Methods, Measurement, and Policy Perspectives Series Editors David C. Thompson, Kansas State University and Faith E. Crampton, University Wisconsin-Milwaukee There is a void in the literature on how to conduct research in the finance and economics of higher education. Students, professors, and practitioners have no concise document that examines the field, provides history, definitions of terms, sources of data, and research methods. Higher Education Finance Research: Policy, Politics, and Practice fills that void. The book is structured in four parts. The first section provides a brief history and description of the general organization of American higher education, the sources and uses of funds over the last 100 years, and who is served in what types of institutions. Definitions of terms that are unique to higher education are provided, and some basic rules for conducting research on the economics and finance of higher education are established. Although in some ways, conducting research in higher education funding is similar to that for elementary/secondary education, there are some important distinctions that also are provided. The second section introduces guiding philosophies, sources of data, data elements/vocabulary, metrics, and analytics related to institutional revenues and expenditures. Chapters in this section focus on student oriented revenues, institutionally-oriented revenues, and funding formulas. The third section introduces accountability-related concepts by first examining the accountability movement in higher education and performance-based approaches applied in budgeting and funding, then looking at methods to determine public and private returns on investment in postsecondary education, and closing with an examination of finance from the perspective of the primary consumer: students. The fourth and last section of the book focuses on presenting postsecondary finance research to policy audiences to assist in connecting academic research and policy making. Chapters focus on accounting for time considerations in analysis, the placing of data in context to make the data and findings relevant, and ways to effectively communicate findings to various policy-making audiences.

The worldwide deployment of wind power plants is soaring. Yet the availability of their construction materials could be a potential bottleneck. As rare earth elements represent the most critical materials, Anja Brumme provides a market analysis of rare earths, ascertaining that geological scarcity is not the main problem. Instead, the author identifies four kinds of market failure: market power, co-production, by-production and negative externalities. It becomes apparent that the market for rare earth metals is in a state of severe disequilibrium. Subsequently, her estimate of future rare earth demand patterns based on the wind power industry by 2050 reveals that the current level of supply is unlikely to be sufficient in the long run. To allow for a more elaborate analysis, the author suggests two options of including a rare earth side condition in an integrated assessment model.

Economic globalization is a complex phenomenon where the links between social security expenditures and globalization are not well understood so far. This study summarizes new key findings and highlights new theoretical insights in the field of social security systems, labor standards, taxation and economic globalization. Moreover, new thoughts on the links between social security systems and migration as well as between free trade areas and social market economy development are presented. The book analyzes the role of a changing age dependency using a Branson model and it derives implications for the stock market price index, the exchange rate and the interest rate. Economic globalization needs to be politically managed and through the Transatlantic Banking Crisis and the Euro Crisis the need to more carefully draw the rules of the game for financial globalization has been highlighted. Unstable financial markets have a large potential to undermine social market economies and social security systems. The rising income inequalities within countries raise more policy challenges for Europe than for the US.

This book investigates the causes of inequalities that have developed in the European Union, analyzes their social and economic consequences, and assesses the political measures taken to address these issues - also on the basis of public survey results.

The detailed analyses presented focus on structures of inequality to be found in the areas education, culture, labor market, Internet access, families and children, gender, and the regions of the EU. The book also critically examines both the legal framework conditions and financial / taxation policy as instruments that can be used to either produce or combat inequality.

Alexander von Kotzebue investigates the interdependency of charitable giving, fundraising, and governmental intervention. His study comprises a literature survey, a model of the donor-fundraiser relation, and finally, an econometric analysis of the impact of fundraising on giving behaviour. The survey introduces theoretical approaches to donor motivation, groups them according to their central assumptions, and assesses their empirical relevance. The theoretical analysis takes for granted that fundraising is an integral part of the giving process, and models the potential conflict concerning the amount of fundraising exerted. Fundraising typically displays an ambiguous effect on donor utility. The empirical analysis employs two extensive datasets to investigate this complex donor-fundraiser relation, while establishing a convincing link of donor-level data to non-profit financial data.

Bank panics have always mattered because they create serious disruptions in economic and financial activity, depressing national economies. But they matter even more now, as information and communications technologies have stitched together a global financial system that is more vulnerable to crisis on a large scale. For example, the global bank panic of 2007-08 froze up the national economies of the U.S., England, France, Iceland, Ireland, and Germany -- all at the same time. And each of their governments had to act to bail out their own banks, without a consistent international regulatory framework.

In this volume, Fred Betz takes a unique, cross-disciplinary approach to understanding bank panics, with an emphasis on the U.S. Bank Panics of 1857, 1907, 1930-33, 2007-08 and the European Bank Panics of 2010-2013. Despite over a hundred years of modern economic theory and many excellent historical studies about bank panics, they are still poorly understood and certainly not yet preventable. Partly this has been a function of the limitations of modern economic theory, which cannot interpret bank panics as complex societal phenomena. All societal phenomena are, in reality, multi-disciplinary in scope and cross-disciplinary in connections. Bank panics can best be understood through the collective lenses of sociology, political science, psychology, management science, management of technology, among other disciplines. Through this dynamic approach, the author identifies five key underlying triggers of bank panics: (1) funding excessive leverage in speculation, (2) lack of proper banking regulation, (3) bad banking practices, (4) lack of banking integrity, (5) corrupt banking practices. In so doing, he suggests new strategies for avoiding and recovering from bank panics and other financial crises."

This is the thirty-fifth volume in the Brookings Studies of Government Finance series. In the first of its four essays, "Analytical Foundations of Fiscal Policy," Alan S. Blinder of Princeton University and Robert M. Solow of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology survey the theoretical and empirical underpinnings of fiscal policy. After discussing how the influence of fiscal policy on macroeconomic activity ought to be assessed, the authors examine and find inadequate the dictum that government should balance the budget rather than the economy. They defend again both theoretically and empirically the efficacy of fiscal policy against the monetarist challenge. From an examination of the lags and uncertainties in the operation of fiscal policy and an analysis of the 1968 70 income tax surcharge, they conclude that, although much remains to be learned about the econometrics of policy multipliers, the post-surcharge experience in no way undermines the theoretical foundations of fiscal policy. Where the burdens of various taxes fall has been a matter of intense interest to economic theorists in the last twenty years. As public expenditures (and taxpayer resistance) rise, not only must policy makers try to distribute the burdens of taxation equitably, but they must also attempt to move toward national goals by judicious use of tax instruments. George F. Break of the University of California at Berkeley, in "The Incidence and Economic Effects of Taxation," a comprehensive review of recent tax literature, focuses on the theoretical studies that have helped to expand knowledge of tax incidence and the empirical studies that support newly developed hypotheses. In each area he surveys the design of theoretical and general sales and income taxes; the effect of economic choices, both of individuals and businesses, on the national well-being Break indicates the ground still to be covered and the potential benefits of further inquiry. In "Public Expenditure Budgeting," Peter O. Steiner of the University of Michigan explores the literature dealing with the hard questions underlying public expenditures. What is the public interest? How does the community decide whether the government should undertake or finance a given activity, instead of leaving it to a private action or inaction? On what basis should incremental expenditure decisions of governmental units be made? Steiner reviews the various approaches scholars have taken to the difficult questions surrounding the appropriateness of governmental provision of particular goods and services. Although he finds none of the models fully satisfactory, his work contributes to the debate concerning the process by which collective values are articulated and collective decisions come to be accepted as binding. Dick Netzer's "State-Local Finance and Intergovernmental Fiscal Relations" clarifies the debate that centered around the initial proposals for revenue sharing. The author, Dean of New York University's Graduate School of Public Administration, explores the appropriate distribution of responsibility for public services among federal, state, and local governments, the appropriate revenue systems for the subnational governments, and the appropriate means of coordinating the systems with the responsibilities.