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Books > Business & Economics > Finance & accounting > Finance > Public finance > General
Economic Development is but one facet of Human Development. This
forces us to ask - how do humans develop? Man is a social animal
and the growth of our humanity requires various social
institutions, such as bureaucracy. The paradox of capitalism is
that it is a system ostensibly based on self-interest yet wholly
dependent on non-market values for its success. These non-market
values are shaped by two much-neglected factors, religion and
ethnicity. Economic Development is an applied field; whatever it
claims as a conclusion should be an applicable conclusion. This
requires attention to all those non-economic factors which
translate economic decisions into practice - such as the forces of
nationalism versus the pressures of such global powers as US
foreign policy and the advice of the IMF/IBRD. Since policy is our
goal, theory whose intellectual basis is inaccessible to policy
makers or which fails to have application should be minimized.
Mathematical models are best avoided and, if they are to be used,
the burden of proof must be placed upon their proponents. As
insights about the market are limited neither by time nor space,
poor countries can learn from rich ones, and vice versa. It is most
fruitful to focus on examples of success, such as the East Asian
economies. They are the clearest illustration of the fact that
rapid economic development is possible even to those who have
suffered through imperialism, and possess few natural resources,
but have their work and their determination intact. `One good
example is enough.'
This book examines the role of uncertainty on financial decisions -
and, consequently, on financial markets - in the buildup to and
aftermath of the Great Recession. It tracks the significant growth
and important structural changes in the financial sector during the
past few decades, both of which made the economy more vulnerable to
perceptions of risk in the markets. Halperin argues that
conventional economic models have lost relevance by failing to take
these developments into account appropriately, and also explains
that because of financial globalization we can no longer understand
what happens in the economies of major countries by relying on
"closed-economy" thinking. The book concludes with a list of policy
recommendations designed to increase the resilience of the
financial markets to negative economic developments and to reduce
incentives for risk taking, including a proposal to eliminate the
double taxation of dividends.
The Papers collected in this volume are those presented at the
tenth Collo- quium arranged by the Societe Universitaire Europeenne
de Recherches Fi- nancieres (SUERF), which took place in Vienna in
April 1982. The Society is supported by a large number of central
banks, commercial banks, and other financial and business
institutions, as well as by academics and others interested in
monetary and financial problems. Since its estab- lishment in 1963
it has developed as a forum for the exchange of informa- tion,
research results and ideas, valued by academics and practitioners
in these fields, induding central bank officials and civil servants
responsible for formulating and applying monetary and financial
policies. A major activity of SUERF is to organise and conduct
Colloquia on sub- jects of topical interest to members. The titles,
places and dates of previous Colloquia for which volumes of the
collected Papers were published are noted on page 421. Volumes were
not issued for Colloquia held at Tar- ragona, Spain in October 1970
under the title "Monetary Policy and New Developments in Banking"
and at Strasbourg, France in January 1972 un- der the title
"Aspects of European Monetary Union".
Environmental economics addresses the issues that arise on the
boundaries between economic systems and natural systems, such as
pollution and natural resource de pletion and degradation. Like any
other branch of applied economics, it has drawn its tools and
techniques from the wide range already available in economics gener
ally, selecting, adapting and extending these to meet its own
particular requirements in its own particular context. Here, as
elsewhere in economics, public policy analy sis requires
quantitative assessments of the economic impact of different policy
choices. Perhaps the most distinctive contribution of environmental
economics has been the development of techniques for the economic
valuation of environmental goods and services in the absence of
markets for such goods and services, or in the presence of markets
that are at best imperfect or incomplete. Nevertheless policy
analysis still relies on one or another of three broad groups of
methods used in eco nomics generally. One is project appraisal,
which at the micro level provides an evaluation ofthe costs and
benefits ofinvestment options to inform the choice among them,
while at the macro level policy analysis rests either on computable
general equilibrium (CGE) models or on economy-wide
macroeconometric models. All models are simplifications, designed
to focus attention on the important fea tures ofthe problem at
hand, and neglecting other features that might for a different
problem assume greater importance.
C. B. TILANUS, EDITOR This book tries to strengthen the ties
between, on the one hand, the business administration and
accounting world and, on the other, the operational research and
management science world. The readership for which it is intended
consists ofthe following categories: managers and professionals in
organizational departments of business administration, management
science, automatic data processing, etc.; management and
operational research consultants; and students in academic
departments of business administration, business economics,
operational research, information systems, industrial engineering,
etc. The book deals with the quantitative approach. to budgeting
problems. Budgeting in this text is defined as the making of a
financial, short-term plan for an organization. The budget is
financial. Although volumes and prices play their part, the budget
is finally expressed in terms of amounts of money thus allowing of
the well-known two-way counting and balancing of double
bookkeeping. (Whether items appear twice on the assets and liabili
ties sides of balances, or are counted twice in the rows and
columns of a matrix is immaterial. ) The budget is short-term. It
is a detailed, quantitative plan of action in the near future. In
this sense, budgeting is opposed to strategic planning which
considers the course of action to be taken in the medium and long
term. Strategic planning is of a more aggregative, qualita tive
nature than is budgeting. The budget is a plan for an organization,
and as such it is complete."
Monetary Policy in a Converging Europe covers the most important
monetary issues in the transition towards an Economic and Monetary
Union in Europe, containing contributions from renowned experts in
relevant research and policy areas. Among other things, the
contributions discuss the scope for inflation targeting, monetary
interdependencies within the core' ERM countries, money demand
within the European Union, the difference between the monetary
transmission mechanisms in the various European countries, and the
preferred exchange rate policy in Stage Two of EMU. The book
provides an excellent overview of current issues for anyone
interested in monetary policy in a converging Europe.
The character of economic life] in a society is dependent upon,
among 2 other things, its political-legal-economic institutional
setting. Within that institutional structure, the individuals who
comprise that society attempt to cooperate with one another to
their mutual advantage so as to accommodate their joint
utility-maximizing endeavors. In addition, these same individuals
call upon certain societal institutions to adjust the con flicting
claims of different individuals and groups. In this regard, a
society is perceived as both a cooperative venture for mutual
advantage where there are an identity of interests and, as well, an
arena of conflict where there exists a mutual interdependence of
conflicting claims or interests. The manner in which a society
structures its political-legal-economic institutions 1) to enhance
the scope of its cooperative endeavors and 2) to channel internal
political-legal-economic conflicts toward resolution, shapes the
character of economic life in that society. In contemplating the
structure of its institutions intended to promote cooperation and
channel conflict, a society confronts several issues. At the most
general level an enduring issue is how a society both perceives and
then ideologically transmits (perhaps teaches or rationalizes),
inter nally and/or externally, its perceptions of so-called
"cooperative en deavors" and "arenas of conflict." There can be no
doubt that the resultant structure of a society's institutions will
reflect that society's perception as to what cooperation entails
and what conflict constitutes."
Essays on Money, Banking and Regulation honors the interests and
achievements of the Dutch economist Conrad Oort. The book is
divided into four parts. Part 1 - Fiscal and monetary policy -
reviews a variety of topics ranging from the measurement of money
to the control and management of government expenditures. Part 2 -
International institutions and international economic policy -
looks at the international dimension of monetary and fiscal policy,
with extensive discussion of the International Monetary Fund and
the European Monetary Union. Part 3 - The future of international
banking and the financial sector in the Netherlands - is an
insider's view of the strategic choices facing financial
institutions in the near future. Finally, Part 4 - Taxation and
reforms in the Dutch tax system - is closest to Oort's research and
practice since he has become known as an architect of the 1990
Dutch tax reform; this part is dedicated in particular to the tax
reforms suggested by Oort.
A wide-ranging review of the issues and opportunities in the
transfer of technology between advanced industrial countries and
the countries of the Former Soviet Union. A major theme is the
complex socio-technological aspects of the process, together with
the related human factors and leadership requirements. The book
presents a very open exchange of views on the difficult obstacles
that the countries of the Former Soviet Union need to overcome and
the market economy countries of the west need to understand. Issues
of patents, intellectual property, personnel training,
reorganization of formerly centralized economies, incentives,
information exchange, and possible models for effective transfer
are highlighted, together with specific examples and discussions of
the most up-to-date knowledge about technology transfer. Audience:
All individuals and organizations concerned with the transfer of
technology, particularly those interested in a candid appraisal of
the issues and opportunities for the transfer of technology and
industrial and scientific cooperation between industrialized market
economies and the countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
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.
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.
By now it has become obvious that Federal Reserve actions have an
immense impact on the functioning of our economy. As a result, a
great deal of research has been done on the Fed and on monetary
policy. Much of this work is normative; it tells us what the Fed
should do. Positive work on the Fed has usually tried to elucidate
particular Fed policies, and has not tried to present a theory of
why the Fed behaves the way it does. The dominant theory of Fed
behavior is that the Fed does what it believes to be best for the
public welfare. This theory - usually left implicit - is so simple,
and seemingly so obviously correct, that it has received widespread
credence without extended discussion or tests. When thinking about
govern ment in general many observers doubt that it nearly always
acts in the public interest. However, they ascribe this unfortunate
state of affairs mainly to political pressures. Since the Fed is
relatively removed from such pressures, the public interest theory
of government seems more applicable to it."
Originally published in 1974, this is a detailed study of the
financial administration of the Chinese government during the Ming
dynasty (1368-1644), with particular attention to the sixteenth
century, a topic about which very little has been published either
in Chinese or any Western language. Professor Huang has worked
through an enormous quantity and variety of source material - in
particular the 133 substantial volumes of the Ming Veritable
Records - and has compared the documents on financial matters with
the entries in local gazetteers. The complicated workings of
government finance present great difficulties to all specialists in
Chinese financial and administrative history and in different
branches of local Chinese history from the fifteenth century
onwards. Professor Huang's study will provide all such researchers
with an authoritative work of reference.
R. H. Coase Duncan Black was a close and dear friend. A man of
great simplicity, un worldly, modest, diffident, with no
pretensions, he was devoted to scholarship. In his single-minded
search for the truth, he is an example to us all. Black's first
degree at the University of Glasgow was in mathematics and physics.
Mathematics as taught at Glasgow seems to have been designed for
engineers and did not excite him and he switched to economics,
which he found more congenial. But it was not in a lecture in
economics but in one on politics that he found his star. One
lecturer, A. K. White, discussed the possibility of constructing a
pure science of politics. This question caught his imagination,
perhaps because of his earlier training in physics, and it came to
absorb his thoughts for the rest of his life. But almost certainly
nothing would have come of it were it not for his appointment to
the newly formed Dundee School of Economics where the rest of the.
teaching staff came from the London School of Economics. At
Glasgow, economics, as in the time of Adam Smith, was linked with
moral philosophy. At Dundee, Black was introduced to the analytical
x The Theory o/Committees and Elections approach dominant at the
London School of Economics. This gave him the approach he used in
his attempt to construct a pure science of politics."
Decentralism of political power to regions and local government
occurs worldwide in response to demands from the periphery. Such
devolution of power raises a number of problems - political,
financial, and legal. By gathering together important papers from a
series of workshops sponsored by the SNS Constitutional Project and
the Center for European Integration Studies, this volume presents a
number of these problems from a truly interdisciplinary
perspective. The authors believe that fiscal federalism, while
originating in formally federal states, is relevant also to the
analysis of state-local relationships in unitary states with some
degree of regional or local authority. Among the topics they cover
are the division of responsibilities and powers of taxation,
bailouts, systems of equalization, and state grants, as well as
problems related to democracy and citizens' rights. While the
book's primary focus is Nordic, its international perspective is
enhanced by contributions from Europe, Canada, and the U.S.
This chapter has set out in detail the models which are employed
below in order to analyse the labour market effects of changes in
tax rates and in alterations in the tax structure. The fundamental
mechanisms underlying the different approaches have been pointed
out. Moreover, vital assumptions have been emphasised. By
delineating the models which are used for the subsequent analyses,
implicitly statements have also been made about topics or aspects
which this study does not cover. For example, all workers and firms
are identical ex ante. However, ex-post differences are allowed
for, inter alia, if unemploy ment occurs or if some firms have to
close down. These restrictions indicate areas of future research
insofar as that the findings for homogeneous workers or firms yield
an unambiguous proposal for changes in tax rates or the tax
structure in order to promote employment. This is because it would
be desir able for tax policy to know whether the predicted effects
also hold in a world with ex-ante heterogeneity. Furthermore, the
product market has not played a role. Therefore, repercussions from
labour markets outcomes on product demand - and vice versa - are
absent. 55 Moreover, neither the process of capital accumulation,
be it physical or human capital, nor substitution pos sibilities
between labour and capital in the firms' production function are
taken into account. Finally, international competition is not
modelled.
CLAUDEJEANRENAUD NILS SOGUEL Smoking is a very common habit all
over the world. The prevalence rate ranges from 20% - 40% in
industrialised countries, and is dramatically increasing in the
developing world. Smoking is risky and there is ample scientific
evidence to support this statement. We know that smoking is a major
cause of disease and premature death, in view of the fact that 3
million people die each year worldwide as a result of their smoking
habit. Twenty years ago, the U. S. Surgeon General identified
smoking as the single most important cause of morbidity and
premature death (USDHEW, 1979). Tobacco consnmption reduces life
expectancy vastly. Epidemiological research shows that people who
have died from a smoking-related disease would, on average, have
lived for an additional 15 years had they not been smokers (Warner,
1987). The economic analysis of tobacco consumption is a complex
and challenging issue, which entails addressing many different
questions. What is the economic burden of smoking and do smokers
"pay their way"? How do individuals perceive their own health
risks? What is the effect of the addicting properties of nicotine
on the behaviour of a rational, utility maximizing individual?
Lastly, what is the most effective way to discourage tobacco
consumption? In this context, the assessment of the social burden
of smoking using a cost-of-illness framework has played a central
role since the beginning of the seventies."
Foreign aid has been an area of active scholarly investigation
since the end of the Second World War, but particularly since the
early 1950s when a large number of the erstwhile colonies became
independent. Few areas of public policy involving the developed and
developing countries have aroused more passion and ideological
debate than foreign aid. In spite of the massive amount of research
in the field, there is still not enough work in two areas: the
first involves the mechanisms through which aid influences the
economies of the donor and the recipient countries; and the second,
country-specific assessments of the effectiveness of foreign aid.
Foreign Aid: New Perspectives is aimed at making a contribution in
these two areas. The contents of this volume are divided into four
parts. Part I deals with some theoretical aspects of foreign aid,
while the second part analyzes some general policy aspects. Part
III turns to the donor experience and includes one paper on the
Danish experience. The last part considers the recipient experience
and consists of five case studies.
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.
As the demand for environmental quality is increasing and as the
current GATT rules monitored by the WTO are not very suitable for
environmental protection, either a new international environmental
organization may be formed soon or new environmental regulations
may be added to GATT. In either case, understanding of the
interactions between trade and the environment will be vital. Trade
and the Environment presents both the theoretical and empirical
exposition of (i) the impact of trade liberalization on
environmental quality; (ii) the impact of environmental regulations
on international competitiveness; and (iii) strategic trade and
environmental policies. An important feature of Trade and the
Environment as compared to earlier books is that it brings together
the reciprocal interactions between trade and the environment. It
can be used as the main or complementary textbook for a course on
trade and the environment.
Public Technology Procurement and Innovation studies public
technology procurement as an instrument of innovation policy. In
the past few years, public technology procurement has been a
relatively neglected topic in the theoretical and research
literature on the economics of innovation. Similarly, preoccupation
with 'supply-side' measures has led policy-makers to avoid making
very extensive use of this important 'demand-side' instrument.
These trends have been especially pronounced in the European Union.
There, as this book will argue, existing legislation governing
public procurement presents obstacles to the use of public
technology procurement as a means of stimulating and supporting
technological innovation. Recently, however, there has been a
gradual re-awakening of practical interest in such measures among
policy-makers in the EU and elsewhere. For these and other related
measures, this volume aims to contribute to a serious
reconsideration of public technology procurement from the
complementary standpoints of innovation theory and innovation
policy.
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.
Investment is crucial to the development of a nations economy and
welfare. In contrast to the situation in the United States,
investment activity in Europe has been quite modest over the past
few years. This volume gathers together a number of papers by
prominent researchers in the field of investment. It provides an
overview of recent developments in this area and presents new
empirical findings on the determinants and implications of the
investment process in European countries. Among the topics examined
are the role played by taxation, uncertainty and the financial
systems, as well as the relevance of corporate governance to the
investment process. Two chapters are dedicated to infrastructure
investment and foreign direct investment.
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