This open access book offers a critical perspective on intra-European mobility and migration by using new empirical data and theoretical discussions. It develops a theoretical and empirical analysis of the consequences of intra-European movement for sending and receiving urban regions in The Netherlands, Sweden, Austria, Turkey, Poland and Czech Republic. The book conceptualizes Central and Eastern European (CEE) migration by distinguishing between different types of CEE migrants and consequences. This involves a mapping of migration corridors within Europe, a unique empirical analysis of consequences for urban regions, and an analysis of governance responses. Next to the European and country perspectives on this phenomenon, the book focuses on the local perspective of urban regions where most mobile citizens settle (either permanently or temporarily). This way the book puts the analysis of intra-European movement in the perspective of broader theoretical debates in migration studies and beyond.

This book examines budgeting by analyzing the local government budget as a complex system, thus adding a new dimension to traditional budget textbooks. It is designed to complement existing texts-not replace-by putting the budget in a complex system, general equilibrium framework. A complex systems framework adds to conventional budget analysis in at least four ways: It looks at the budget as the result of many variables that are outside the finance department's purview; it understands that there are multiple interdependences among these variables; it suggests analysis of non-obvious relationships among actions in the budget process in order to optimize results; and it argues that the actors in the process must understand that their budgetary behaviors have indirect and far-reaching implications that go beyond the budget document. This book also uses concepts seldom discussed in the budgetary literature-that of governance, including concepts of the facilitative state, with adjustments for exogenous shocks; the forms of decision making; and the political climate of the jurisdiction. This framework notes methods of success of firms in the private sector that operate in environments of rapid technological change. While becoming a popular theoretical framework for how private sector firms change, dynamic capability analysis has received little attention in the public management field. This book utilizes DC since public sector organizations also face rapidly changing environments. Lastly, the book discusses the potential relationship between the local budget and local community welfare maximization.

"A Guide to SME Finance" is a brief guide to designing and implementing an SME finance program within a commercial bank or other financial institution, such as an NGO. This work covers the rationale behind SME finance - why it makes sense for a bank to enter this market sector, followed by a step-by-step approach to designing and implementing the program. Munro highlights the need to automate the lending process, and offers a lengthy description of how this can be accomplished. Examples of loan application, analysis, and approval forms and templates are included along with instructions for use. Additional formats are provided for loan officer goals and periodic reviews, portfolio and relationship profitability management, as well as a model credit score card to use as a 'sift' for loan applicants.

Public sector organizations are in one of the most challenging environments they have ever had to face as they bear much of the cost of the recession. More than ever before, public sector leaders need to instil strong performance improvement disciplines into their organizations that enable these leaders to fully understand: key outcomes and priority deliverables, how to allocate reduced financial resources and where to reduce costs and improve efficiencies without jeopardizing service delivery.
Written in an accessible and practical style, this fully-updated second edition addresses the efficiency drive using models, tools and ideas more commonly found in the corporate world, such as balanced scorecard and Lean. It also includes new case studies and real-life examples, from Audit Scotland, Belfast City Council, Brisbane City Council, City of Charlotte, Civil Service College (Singapore) FBI, NHS, Ministry of Works (Bahrain), Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the US Postal Service.

Non-communicable diseases have surpassed infectious diseases as the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in developed countries. Prevention and treatment of the causes and consequences of lifestyle-related diseases forms an important part of health policy in the twenty-first century. Public health economics - from quantifying the problem, to evaluating interventions and developing toolkits to assist decision makers - is an essential area for any postgraduate student and researcher with an interest in applied economics to understand. There are a wide range of techniques from mainstream economics and health economics that can be applied to the evaluation of public health policy and public health issues. In this book, Brown presents examples from developed countries to illustrate how economic tools can be applied to public health. Further, cross-country comparisons illustrate how contextual factors related to healthcare systems, demographics and environmental factors may impact on outcomes and the cost-effectiveness of public health policies, in order to aid understanding and help students apply theory into practice.

This book compares urban finances in cities located in two different South Asian countries and assesses their fiscal health. It uses simulation to estimate the required augmentation in financial resources by the urban local bodies (ULBs) to reach a level of city development that is significantly better compared to existing levels. The book provides a systematic analysis of the fiscal health of two city corporations in Bangladesh, viz. Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC) and Dhaka South City Corporation (DSCC); and one city corporation in the Indian state of West Bengal viz. Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC). The choice of city corporations was based on the shared history and the similarity of heritage, culture, topography and socio-economic conditions. Both DNCC and DSCC as well as the KMC have a high population density, which puts immense pressure on the service delivery provided by these corporations of basic services such as water supply, sanitation facilities, street lighting, drainage and sewerage and waste disposal. This is compounded by poor fiscal health of the ULBs. Using primary data collected through surveys and personal interviews and information obtained from official documents, the book estimates fiscal gaps of the ULBs and undertakes simple simulations to estimate potential revenue enhancements and expenditure requirements to deliver services at the internationally acceptable standards. It highlights under-exploited sources of revenue which can be better realized and also identifies untapped revenue sources that can be easily introduced, in order to significantly enhance city revenues. The book is an excellent resource not only for researchers studying this topic, but also for policy makers and urban planners, particularly those from developing countries having to deal with burgeoning cities with high migrant population density.

This volume examines the properties of statistics on household behavior in Japan. This work is an essential guide for all researchers who are interested in household decision making and the Japanese economy. Many household surveys are conducted in Japan reflecting the fact that household activities have various aspects such as income earning, timing and pattern choice of expenditure and consumption, asset portfolio choice, labor supply decision, time use, and health status. Moreover, the contents of each survey overlap in a complex manner to present a serious obstacle for potential survey users. In this book, the basic information from each survey such as sampling methods, survey techniques, and available variables is provided and then compared to check the consistency across the same variables reported in different surveys. Exploring strengths and weaknesses of each survey, this book is highly recommended to readers who seek comprehensive, up-to-date information about Japanese surveys and want to use appropriate data for their analysis.

Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834) was a leading figure in the British classical school of economics, best-known for extending the insights of Adam Smith at a time of revolutionary improvements in agriculture and industry. This book explores the way in which he accounted for the tendency to overpopulation, the exhaustion of arable land and the deficiency of effective demand. Malthus relied on historical and empirical evidence in the spirit of Bacon and Hume, but also backed up his data with a priori hypotheses that link him to his contemporary, David Ricardo. Malthus was strongly in favour of free trade, the minimal State, the gold standard and the abolition of poverty relief. Always a pragmatist, however, he was just as much in favour of public education, contra-cyclical public works and a safety net of tariffs and bounties to encourage national self-sufficiency with regard to food. He was both an economist and a clergyman and saw the two roles as interconnected. Malthus believed that a benevolent Deity had created vice and misery in order to shake human beings out of their natural indolence that would otherwise have condemned them to still greater distress. This title provides a clear and comprehensive examination of Malthus's economic and social thought. It will be of interest to students and scholars alike.

This book sheds new light on the Greek economic challenges and helps readers understand the current debt crisis. Chapters from leading experts in the field identify and outline potential solutions to the on-going decline of the Greek economy by considering both Eurozone-adopted current policy framework explanations and potential alternative explanations. In contrast to the standard chronological approach toward the Greek debt crisis typically adopted by other texts, this book draws on the experience and views of specialized economists and offers divergent opinions that could potentially form alternative solutions. It will be of interest to researchers and academics interested in the Greek economy, modern financial modelling, and risk management.

This book analyzes how the EU referendum in the United Kingdom came to pass and what the foreseeable consequences are for the UK, Europe, US and world economy. The Brexit decision represents a momentous event for Europe, which weakens the EU and shifts the global balance of power. Welfens argues the EU has lost its appeal and is not in keeping with the twenty-first century, which is being shaped by Asia and digital innovations. The subject of immigration from EU countries played a key role in the Brexit decision, with an anti-EU campaign that was profoundly biased. The estimated impact of the referendum was deeply distorted by the broadly inadequate information produced by the Cameron government, which omitted the expected 10 percent loss in income caused by leaving the EU. With this this information, there could have been a clear pro-EU majority. In the absence of a second referendum, one cannot know what the British electorate really wants. Both the Brexit decision and new President of the United States Donald Trump's approach to European disintegration dynamics also raise serious questions about the future of transatlantic relations.

This is a study of Malaysia's new political economy, with a focus on ownership and control of the corporate sector. It offers a pioneering assessment of government-linked investment companies (GLICs), a type of state-owned institution that has long prevailed in the corporate sector but has not been analysed. Malaysia's history of government-business ties is unique, while the nature of the nexuses between the state and the corporate sector has undergone major transitions. Corporate power has shifted from the hands of foreign firms to the state to the ruling party, and well-connected businessmen, and back to the state. Corporate wealth is now heavily situated in the leading publicly-listed government-linked companies (GLCs), controlled through block shareholdings by a mere seven GLICs under the jurisdiction of the Minister of Finance. To indicate why these GLICs are important actors in Corporate Malaysia, this study provides a deep assessment of their ownership and control of Bursa Malaysia's top 100 publicly-listed enterprises.

This book explores two recent crises in British political economy: the crisis of 1976-9, for which the trade unions were impugned, and the 2007 economic crisis, for which bankers were (at least initially) blamed. The author argues that the "crisis resolution" of the former - principally the Thatcherite reforms of the 1980s - led to the emergence of the banking crisis. Further, Kirkland demonstrates how narratives of blame have emerged and were used in both instances to promote specific agendas. Narrations of blame and crises were used to curb the trade union powers in the 1980s, whilst the 2007 crisis was quickly reframed as one of excessive government spending, which in turn has led to policies of austerity.

In this time of acute financial pressure on public budgets, there is an increasing interest worldwide in alternative ways for governments to raise money, and how public authorities can develop the capacity to administer revenues efficiently and effectively. Taxation, the primary source of public revenue, is exposed to various threats, while alternative sources of public revenues have much potential but are rarely carefully designed and harnessed. Public Sector Revenue: Principles, Policies and Management sets itself apart from other textbooks through its exclusive focus on the revenue side of public financial management. It provides the reader with the theoretical foundations and practical tools to understand the generation and management of revenues in the public sector, and it weaves a wide range of international examples throughout the text. Students will also benefit from a companion website with supplements including test questions and answers to the end-of-chapter discussion questions inside the book. This textbook will be essential reading for students, managers and policymakers within the areas of public financial management, public sector accounting and public administration.

This book upturns many established ideas regarding the economic and social history of Quebec, the Canadian province that is home to the majority of its French population. It places the case of Quebec into the wider question of convergence in economic history and whether proactive governments delay or halt convergence. The period from 1945 to 1960, infamously labelled the Great Gloom (Grande Noirceur), was in fact a breaking point where the previous decades of relative decline were overturned - Geloso argues that this era should be considered the Great Convergence (Grand Rattrapage). In opposition, the Quiet Revolution that followed after 1960 did not accelerate these trends. In fact, there are signs of slowing down and relative decline that appear after the 1970s. The author posits that the Quiet Revolution sowed the seeds for a growth slowdown by crowding-out social capital and inciting rent-seeking behaviour on the part of interest groups.

This book identifies and explores the mechanisms linking political institutions and variation in capitalist systems. A strong correlation exists between varieties of political regimes and varieties of capitalism: majoritarian political regimes are correlated with liberal market economies (LMEs) and consensus political regimes are correlated with coordinated market economies (CMEs). Still, correlation is not causation. Empirical findings illustrate that partisanship and policy legacies, the number of political parties, electoral rules, and constitutional constraints are significant indicators of LMEs and CMEs. Arsenault finds that majoritarian institutions create an environment of adversarial politics and strong competition between actors, which makes credible commitment to nonmarket coordination mechanisms unlikely. Consensus institutions, on the other hand, promote an atmosphere of cooperation and coordination between actors, thus encouraging credible commitment to nonmarket coordination mechanisms. Qualitative case studies of Germany, Britain, and New Zealand confirm the quantitative findings and suggest that political regimes were instrumental in shaping the economic adjustment paths of these countries during the era of liberalization in the 1980s.

This book probes the hollow rhetoric of debt, deficits and austerity. It explores the decisions of parties of the left which have attempted to deflect criticisms of economic mismanagement and gain trust by depoliticising the budget process and financial management with various rules, albeit with elements of discretion. The book argues that this is a perverse form of trust as it is premised on the belief that political leaders and the public sector cannot be trusted to make appropriate decisions given the economic circumstances of the time and need rules, but at the same time that they can be trusted to follow the rules. The book also explores parties of the right, which often advocate stricter rules and which tend to be the least effective. The book describes how few conservative governments have admirable records on sustained surpluses, given a propensity for unsustainable tax cuts, and the future opportunities this provides to advance a political program of deeper spending cuts.

This book provides insight into current research topics in finance and banking in the aftermath of the financial crisis. Expert authors authoritatively analyse how banks finance their activities and resolve funding issues. Chapters specifically discuss financial instruments such as corporate bonds, IPOs, sukuks and microfinance investment vehicles (MIVs) in light of the importance of institutional funding gaps. The decision-making process within the banking industry with regard to long-range financial decisions and dividend policies is also discussed.

Optimal tax design attempts to resolve a well-known trade-off: namely, that high taxes are bad insofar as they discourage people from working, but good to the degree that, by redistributing wealth, they help insure people against productivity shocks. Until recently, however, economic research on this question either ignored people's uncertainty about their future productivities or imposed strong and unrealistic functional form restrictions on taxes. In response to these problems, the new dynamic public finance was developed to study the design of optimal taxes given only minimal restrictions on the set of possible tax instruments, and on the nature of shocks affecting people in the economy. In this book, Narayana Kocherlakota surveys and discusses this exciting new approach to public finance.

An important book for advanced PhD courses in public finance and macroeconomics, "The New Dynamic Public Finance" provides a formal connection between the problem of dynamic optimal taxation and dynamic principal-agent contracting theory. This connection means that the properties of solutions to principal-agent problems can be used to determine the properties of optimal tax systems. The book shows that such optimal tax systems necessarily involve asset income taxes, which may depend in sophisticated ways on current and past labor incomes. It also addresses the implications of this new approach for qualitative properties of optimal monetary policy, optimal government debt policy, and optimal bequest taxes. In addition, the book describes computational methods for approximate calculation of optimal taxes, and discusses possible paths for future research.

Nobody who has even a passing acquaintance with economics could fail to realise that Western governments are highly indebted. Current generations have been consuming at the expense of future generations. However, just how indebted are we? The government measures how much it has borrowed to meet past spending commitments, but it does not measure how much money it needs to meet all the future pensions and healthcare promises it has made to tomorrow s older generations. Furthermore, no funds have been set aside to provide for these costs. Governments are allowed to produce accounting information in such a cavalier fashion, using methods that would be illegal for private sector companies. Fortunately, though, scholars have been able to examine the detail of government policy and the financial commitments of future governments in order to determine just how indebted we are. This IEA publication brings such calculations to life by showing by how much spending will need to be cut and taxes raised in order to make the government s fiscal position sustainable. This work should be of interest to politicians, to students and teachers of economics and, indeed, all who are interested in public policy and the sustainability of Western economies.

The proceedings of the 1st AAGBS International Conference on Business Management 2014 (AiCoBM 2014), held in Penang, Malaysia, gathers 57 refereed papers. They cover areas relating to various aspects of business management and reflect the conference's three main themes (management and marketing, economics and finance, and entrepreneurship) and present original papers contributed by researchers, scholars, professionals and postgraduate students. They address a range of disciplines that encompass each of the main themes. Using basic and applied research findings together with case studies they provide valuable information on current research trends in business management, international business, marketing, economics, finance, Islamic finance and economics, and entrepreneurship.

A critical analysis of public policy decisions requires a far greater depth of knowledge than can be received from news reports and political speeches. Issues such as how best to reduce traffic congestion, reduce acid rain, improve airline safety or develop a parcel of land are better understood by organizing, measuring and weighing the effects of alternative policies. The Economic Analysis of Public Policy, now in its second edition, is the ideal introduction to benefit-cost analysis, the economics of efficiency, risk analysis and present value, and is suitable for those with only a modest background in mathematics and economics. This brand new edition of the book has been rigorously updated throughout in terms of examples and data references, issues covered, and layout and pedagogical features. Key concepts are reinforced through multiple problems and discussion questions within each chapter. This latest edition contains extra material on loss aversion, global warming, technology, and US health care reform, as well as a wider range of international examples. Extra tables have been included in order to clarify more complicated issues. Instructors will also benefit from the new companion website, which will offer power point presentations, answers to end of chapter questions, and a test bank. This textbook encourages its readers to understand and apply key concepts whilst also learning to appreciate policy analysis as part of an interdisciplinary, analytical, and political process that can lead to better government policy decisions. It is an ideal teaching tool for undergraduate and postgraduate students engaged in Public Administration, Public Economics, and Public Policy.

The main objective of this book is to develop a strategy and policy measures to enhance the formalization of the shadow economy in order to improve the competitiveness of the economy and contribute to economic growth; it explores these issues with special reference to Serbia. The size and development of the shadow economy in Serbia and other Central and Eastern European countries are estimated using two different methods (the MIMIC method and household-tax-compliance method). Micro-estimates are based on a special survey of business entities in Serbia, which for the first time allows us to explore the shadow economy from the perspective of enterprises and entrepreneurs. The authors identify the types of shadow economy at work in business entities, the determinants of shadow economy participation, and the impact of competition from the informal sector on businesses. Readers will learn both about the potential fiscal effects of reducing the shadow economy to the levels observed in more developed countries and the effects that formalization of the shadow economy can have on economic growth.

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 book presents the economic policy model known as "Social Market Economy" in Germany, the country where it originated. Although the model has since been adopted as core objective in the EU Treaty of Lisbon, experts still disagree on its exact nature. The author contributes to this debate by presenting the German economic system from an external perspective and looking at the extent to which it enabled the country increase its weight in international relations. The systems history, identity, political and economic concepts, including ordoliberalism, are analyzed. Its potential and shortcomings are assessed by comparing it to other forms of capitalism. A brief enquiry is made into whether the "Social Market Economy", or aspects of it, are applicable to other countries, including in Eastern Europe. Providing both theoretical and practical aspects, the book offers a valuable resource for researchers, public administration professionals, and policymakers.