The privatisation of the British railway industry was a unique political and economic event. An integrated industry was broken-up into numerous component parts and sold off to private sector interests. The result was a highly fragmented industry that was structurally unsound and operationally dysfunctional. This authoritative volume presents an enlightening portrait of an industry that is less efficient, more costly and still more dependent on state subsidy today than its nationalised predecessor. The nine chapters in this work present a comprehensive and rigorous evaluation of how and why the industry has become so dysfunctional and costly, supported by detailed financial analysis and industry examples. Seven chapters comprise a series of peer-reviewed academic papers by Professor McCartney and Dr Stittle and published in leading international journals over the period 2004–2017 which analyse selected key segments of the privatised industry: where appropriate, updates are provided at the end of these chapters outlining developments since initial publication relevant to the analysis therein. Two chapters are published here for the first time: Chapter 7 reviews the performance of the freight sector, while Chapter 1 ‘bookends’ the volume by providing first, an account of how rail privatisation was conceived and implemented in the 1980s/90s, and then reviews the impact of the pandemic and the proposals of the Williams-Shapps White Paper of 2021 which, if enacted, will effectively end the Major government’s experiment. Going far beyond the usual superficial analysis of the topic, this volume will be of significant interest to researchers and advanced students of accounting, economics, business history, transport studies, as well as industry and specialised business interests in transport and privatisation.

This book explores the potential for public banks to help finance the expansion, democratization and sustainability of public water services in Europe, with implications for public water financing elsewhere in the world. Financing the UN's Sustainable Development Goal 6 for water and sanitation will be enormously expensive and will also depend largely on public water operators. Where will this money to fund public water services come from? One option is public banks. These state-owned institutions constitute just under 20% of global banking assets, holding close to $50 trillion in assets. Many public banks have explicit mandates to finance public water management and related public goods, and they have been doing so for decades. And yet, despite a resurgence of interest in public banks, their roles and potential in funding public water services have been largely ignored by researchers and policy makers. This book aims to measure the scale and nature of interactions between public banks and public water operators in the European region; identify challenges and opportunities for deeper engagement between public banks and public water operators; recognize promising practices and how these might be transferred elsewhere in the world; and assess possibilities for more democratic forms of public bank and public water interactions. This volume will be of great use to students and researchers interested in political ecology and economy, development and cooperation, public policy as well as water governance and management. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Water International.

Economic development depends heavily on the growth of social sectors like education, healthcare, gender equality, as well as factors like income, consumption, investment and trade. This book examines the interlinkages between development, good governance and spending on social growth. The book focuses on different areas of social growth, public welfare and poverty reduction including managing human resource, corruption in public institutions, public spaces as well as health and welfare measures. The chapters in the volume highlight the role of government interventions in boosting human development - particularly in developing countries in Asia and Africa and many developed countries in the post-COVID scenario. The book also examines the foundations of government spending on development and effective governance while underlining the impact which social growth has on the economy. Rich in theoretical and empirical perspectives, this book will be useful for students and researchers of economics, sociology, political studies, public finance, development studies as well as for policy makers and think tanks working in the areas of human development.

The importance of public financial management for the health and wellbeing of citizens became dramatically apparent as governments sought to respond to the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. Now, governments and other public sector organizations face the challenge of recovering from the pandemic whilst also seeking to achieve Sustainable Development Goals, with squeezed budgets and ever-increasing demands for public services.

Public sector managers are confronted daily with targets and demands that are often set in confusing accounting and financial language. In Financial Management and Accounting in the Public Sector, Gary Bandy employs a clear and concise narrative to introduce the core concepts of public financial management to help those managers to deliver programmes, projects and services that are value for money. As the author puts it, managing public money is an art, not a science.

This third edition has been revised and updated throughout, offering:

a structure that is more clearly linked to the stages of the public financial management cycle

greater coverage of transparency and accountability issues

a broader view of public procurement to include goods, works and services and effective contract management; and

an increased focus on public spending in the context of a post-COVID environment.

With a glossary of terms to help managers understand and be understood by accountants, as well as learning objectives, discussion questions and exercises, this practical textbook will help students of public management and administration to understand the financial and accounting aspects of managing public services.

Table of Contents

CONTENTS

List of illustrations

Foreword

Preface to the third edition

About the author

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

1 The context of public financial management

2 Public sector budgeting

3 Taxation and other sources of income

4 Budget execution

5 Using financial information to make decisions

6 Public procurement

7 Measuring performance and value for money

8 Accountability and financial reporting

9 Audit

Appendix A Budgeting in public enterprise: the State Social Security Fund of Sri Lanka

Suggested answers for exercises

Glossary of terms

Index

* The only book that offers a new, easily understandable conceptual framework with which to identify, assess, and help remedy inequities in public funding. * Addresses both the inequities in public school funding and the wider societal and cultural issues that make it "normal" to underfund high-poverty schools and to expect low-income children and children of color to perform poorly in school. * Introduces a new theory with practical application and is grounded in contemporary research. * Explores how school district leaders, building principals, and policy makers can conduct meaningful "equity audits" in their schools and districts to determine equitable resource allocations.

Current inquiries into the political economy of financial policymaking in Malaysia tend to focus on the high-level drama of crisis politics or simply point to the limited impact of post-crisis financial reforms, given that politico-business relations have remained close. In so doing, pundits ignore a number of intriguing questions: what is the relationship between financial development and financialisation and how has it played out in the Malaysian context? And more generally: how can a country like Malaysia become significantly more financially developed, yet fail to emancipate the financial system from political control; a core element of the financial development discourse? To unravel the complexities of this puzzle, this book subjects the history and contemporary practices of financial policymaking in Malaysia to scrutiny. It argues that to understand financial development in Malaysia, its progress and reversals, it is important to conceptualise it as a political, rather than a merely technical process. In so doing, the book echoes a more profound concern in the political economy literature, namely the evolving relationship between states and markets, and the supposed retreat or reassertion of the state at a time of increasing (financial) globalisation. The book can generate further insights into the evolving role of the state with regard to broader processes of development and marketisation, as they relate specifically to finance.

The fourth industrial revolution, characterized by digitization, artificial intelligence and augmented reality, and megatrends such as globalization, urbanization, demographic changes, and the knowledge-based economy, will trigger a series of profound technological, economic, social and environmental changes that will permanently and irreversibly change the role of the state in meeting social needs. Industry 4.0 will also change the type, nature, and scope of public goods and how they are produced, financed, delivered, and consumed. This book redefines the current paradigm of public goods. It proposes a model of production and distribution of public goods that acknowledges the participation of entities from the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. The authors argue that these entities would participate in the production, financing, distribution, and consumption of such goods. From a theoretical point of view, such an inclusive approach involving the expansion of the classical state - market dichotomy with new entities, including citizens themselves, leads to a new conceptualization and approach towards public goods. The model assumes shared responsibility, subsidiarity, and paternalistic libertarianism, and it allows the state to create new entities of an educational or fiscal nature, while remaining the regulator of public services and distribution. Additionally, the book analyzes changes regarding the perception of public goods, in the era of the fourth industrial revolution, across selected sectors such as healthcare and pension systems, education, local public goods, and public utility services. The book is primarily addressed to researchers, scholars, and students across social and technical sciences, and it will also be a useful guide for central and local administration bodies responsible for public policy. Chapters 4, 5 and 6 of this book are available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual product page at www.routledge.com. They have been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

This book tackles political, social, and behavioural aspects of public finance and fiscal exchange. The book combines conventional approaches toward public finance with new developments in economics such as political governance, social and individual aspects of economic behaviour. It colligates public finance and behavioural economics and gathers original contributions within the emerging field of behavioural public finance. The book addresses public finance topics by incorporating political, social, and behavioural aspects of economic decision-making, assuming the tax relationship is shaped by three dimensions of decision-making. Thus, it aims not only to reflect the interdisciplinary nature of public finance by bringing together scholars from various disciplines but also to examine public finance through the lens of political, social, and behavioural aspects. The book scrutinizes the relationship between political institutions, governance types, and public finance; it investigates the impact of social context, social capital, and societal cooperation on public finance; it explores behavioural biases of individual fiscal preferences. This book is of interest to scholars, policymakers, tax professionals, business professionals, financers, university students, and researchers in the fields of public policy and economics.

State-owned enterprises (SOEs) combine economic activities resulting from their position on the market with non-economic functions determined by the state owner. In many of the world's major economies, SOEs play an important role, and in some, such as China, India, Russia and Brazil, they are outright dominant. At the same time, the existence of SOEs is largely ignored by economic theory and the current figures on SOEs on a global scale available in the literature are questionable in terms of their methodological validity and thus they do not allow for a proper cross-country analysis. This book fills this research gap. It focuses on the scope and importance of SOEs in a broad group of the largest economies, primarily on a variety of quantitative estimates. It contains the results of an extensive and unique empirical study of 37 of the world's largest economies over the period from 2009 to 2018. The findings showed that the average share of SOEs - measured by operating revenues and total assets - in the group of the largest 100 enterprises (Top 100) of a given country is nearly 30%, while in the Top 20 group it is even slightly higher. The authors present an econometric analysis showing the relationship between the scope of SOEs and the various economic and non-economic characteristics of the studied set of countries. The book also contains an in-depth discussion of selected key issues, such as the functions of SOEs in various types of economies, the role of SOEs in capital markets and the phenomenon of SOEs with foreign capital. This work is addressed to both academic economists, dealing with macroeconomics and economic policy, as well as researchers and analysts from various international organizations and think-tanks.

Japan has many unique strengths, but it also faces numerous challenges, many of which are related to population ageing. Rapid demographic change is projected to reduce Japan's population by one-quarter by 2060 while increasing the share of elderly people from 29% of the total population to 38%, which would be the highest share among advanced countries. This book analyses the Japanese economy and the challenges it faces, and suggests policies to promote wellbeing, high living standards, fiscal sustainability, social inclusion and environmental sustainability. The book's 24 chapters focus on key aspects of Japan's economy, including the labour market, innovation, education, women in the workforce, corporate governance, small and medium-sized enterprises, the service sector, agriculture, fiscal and monetary policy, income distribution and policies to address climate change. The volume aims to increase understanding of Japan, the world's third-largest economy and a key player in the global economy. It will assist policymakers and serve as a resource for academics and students of economics and public policy. As Japan is a front-runner in population ageing, the book's analysis and policy recommendations are highly relevant to other countries that are, or soon will be, facing similar challenges.

* Universally regarded as the most readable and student friendly school finance book on the market. * Includes strong explanations of budgets and budgetary processes. * More manageable and accessible than other texts, while maintaining comprehensive coverage * Authored by three of the nation's top school finance scholars with elite credentials and widespread name recognition. * Rich cases and point-counterpoint feature

This book considers the theoretical and empirical claims of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) in developed and developing countries. It is structured as a debate between leading MMT theorists and MMT critics. MMT threw down a challenge to mainstream economics and forced it to respond, above all in the USA. This is a rare occurrence, almost unknown, for heterodox economics during the last few decades. It is not surprising, therefore, that MMT has attracted strong attention from a broad swathe of researchers. It is even less surprising that it has become the theoretical vehicle of choice for political activists opposing austerity. Its influence is remarkable and has gradually spread to other social disciplines, including even cultural theory. Furthermore, the policy responses to coronavirus by several governments, particularly the extraordinary expansion of central bank balance sheets in 2020, appears to support MMT in practice. This volume takes into account the rising popularity of MMT and considers its theoretical claims in depth, since popularity does not necessarily equate to being right in theory. It also considers MMT claims regarding fiscal and monetary policy in view of the implications of the pandemic crisis for public spending and public debt. It is not accidental that the strongest support for MMT, in both theory and policy, is to be found in the USA, since MMT conclusions rely heavily on close institutional analysis of US government financing mechanisms. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of The Japanese Political Economy.

This book reveals the surprising role that credit, money created ex nihilo by financiers, played in raising the British government's war loans between 1793 and 1815. Using often overlooked contemporary objections to the National Debt a startling paradox is revealed as it is shown how the government's ostensible creditors had, in fact, very little "real" money to lend and were instead often reliant for their own solvency upon the very government they were lending to. By following the careers of unsuccessful loan-contractors, who went bankrupt lending to the government, to the triumphant career of the House of Rothschild; who successfully "exported" the British system of war-financing abroad with the coming of peace, the symbiotic relationship that existed between the British government and their ostensible creditors is revealed. Also highlighted is the power granted to the (technically bankrupt) Bank of England over credit and the money supply, an unprecedented and highly influential development that filled many contemporaries with horror. This is a tale of bankruptcy, stock market manipulation, bribery and institutional corruption that continues to exert its influence today and will be of interest to anyone interested in government financing, debt and the origins of modern finance.

This book examines the origins and consequences of so-called pension fund capitalism, which has spread around the world since 1981, when the pension system was completely privatized in Chile. The author highlights the driving forces behind the privatization of pensions, its forms and tools used in practice, and the risks and costs related to private pensions. The reader can also learn about the experiences of various developed countries (including the USA, Canada, Australia, and Germany), as well as Latin American (including Chile) and Eastern European countries, related to the privatization of pensions. Particular attention is paid to Poland as an example of a country where such privatization failed completely. This book provides a source of serious reflection on what this privatization has led to, what its real economic and social consequences are and what the likelihood is of reversing it and strengthening the public pension system. Academic researchers and students of economics and finance, as well as social and political sciences, will find the book invaluable in understanding the problems arising from the privatization of pensions. It will also be of interest to professionals: institutions that shape or influence economic and social policy, including political parties, trade unions, non-governmental organizations, the media, and institutions operating on the financial market.

This book investigates the policies of the Thatcher, Major and Blair governments and their approaches towards concentration of economic and political power. The 1979-2007 British governments have variously been described as liberal or, to use a political insult and a favourite academic label, neoliberal. One of the stated objectives of the Thatcher, Major and Blair governments-albeit with differing focal points-was to disperse power and to empower the individual. This was also a consistent theme of the first generation of neoliberals, who saw monopolies, vested interests and concentration more generally as the 'great enemy of democracy'. Under Thatcher and Major, Conservatives sought to liberalize the economy and spread ownership through policies like Right to Buy and privatisation. New Labour dispersed political power with its devolution agenda, granted operational independence to the Bank of England and put in place a seemingly robust antitrust framework. All governments during the 1979-2007 period pursued choice in public services. Yet our modern discourse characterises Britain as beset by endemic power concentration, in markets and politics. What went wrong? How did so-called neoliberal governments, which invoked liberty and empowerment, fail to disperse power and allow concentration to continue, recur or arise? The book will be of interest to students and scholars of contemporary British history, political economy and politics, as well as specific areas of study such as Thatcherism and New Labour.

Dig to the root of public fraud with deep exploration of theory, standards, and norms Preventing Fraud and Mismanagement in Government identifies common themes in public fraud and corruption, describes the forces that drive them, and provides an objective standard of good practices with no political bent. From Bridgegate to Iran-Contra, this book walks through the massive scandals that resulted from public mismanagement and fraud to illustrate how deeply-entrenched, entity-specific norms can differ from actual best practices. The discussion includes the theoretical underpinnings of public fraud, and how intense corporate culture and limited exposure to outside practice standards can lead to routine deviation from normal behavior and moral standards. You'll find a compendium of practices that illustrate actual norms, allowing you to compare your own agency's culture and operations to standard practice, and contrast the motivations for fraud in the public and private sectors. Public agencies and governmental entities are generally driven by a pubic benefit or goal, but are widely varied in the ability and desire to deliver value while retaining best practices. This book explicitly explores the common patterns of agency practices and cultural norms, and describes how they can easily cross over into illegal acts. * Understand why fraud exists in the public sector * Discover how your agency's mindset diverges from the norm * Review cases where agency practices diverged from best financial practices * Learn good practices in an objective, nonpolitical context The government/public sector provides some of the most basic services that are critical to a functioning society. Lacking a profit motive, these agencies nonetheless show a pattern of fraud and borderline behavior that could be mitigated with the adoption of standards and best practices. Preventing Fraud and Mismanagement in Government shares a canon of knowledge related to public operations and fraud, providing deep insight into the causes, solutions, and prevention.

Concise expert guide to a key research topic Unique shortform premium literature review Essential reading for early career researchers and established scholars new to the topic

This book uses a revised version of Kingdon's multiple-streams framework to examine health financing reforms in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the Republic of Korea (ROK) as well as long-term care insurance (LTCI) reforms in Japan and Singapore. It shows that the explanatory power of the multiple-streams framework can be strengthened through enriching the concepts of policy entrepreneurs, ideas, and windows of opportunity in the original framework as well as bringing the theoretical lens of historical institutionalism into the framework.

Inflation plays a central role in macroeconomic and financial policy regulation, and its dynamic formation has gradually become a popular research topic in this field. This book comprehensively studies the dynamic mechanism of inflation in China from the perspective of New Keynesian economics. By combining the dynamic trajectory of price changes since China's reform and opening-up under Deng Xiaoping as well as the underlying economic operating characteristics, the book deploys a multifaceted approach to understand the mechanism of inflation dynamics. The author explores the microfoundations of inflation dynamics, and underlines their importance in the context of modern monetary policy. In particular, he builds upon the traditional New Keynesian Phillips curve to include factors of globalization and financialization within the inflation formation regime of modern China. As the book explores the dynamic mechanism of China's inflation from different perspectives including inflation cycle theory, price index internal conduction, price index chain transmission, capital rotation, and industry inflation mechanisms, international readers will gain a full understanding of China's inflation, monetary policy, and economy.

Public procurement affects a substantial share of world trade flows, amounting to 1000 billion euros per year. In the EU, the public purchase of works, goods and services has been estimated to account on average for 16 percent of GDP. The novelty of this book is that it focuses on the new European Union Directives approved in 2014 by the EU Parliament. The book consists of original contributions related to four specific themes of interest to the procurers' day-to-day role in modern public purchasing organizations - both economists and lawyers - allowing for relevant exchanges of views and "real time" interaction. The four sections which characterize the book are Life-cycle Costing in Public Procurement; Calculating Costs and Savings of Public Procurement; Corruption and Probity in Public Procurement and Public Procurement and International Trade Agreements: CETA, TTIP and beyond. These themes have been chosen for their current relevance in relation to the new European Public Procurement Directives and beyond. The original format features, as is the case with the first three volumes, an introductory exchange between leading academics and practitioners, from differing disciplines. It offers a series of sequential interactions between economists, lawyers and technical experts who supplement one another, so as to enrich the liveliness of the debate and improve the mutual understanding between the various professions. This essential guide will be of interest to policymakers, academics, students and researchers, as well as practitioners working in the field of EU public procurement.

An Economic Philosophy of Production, Work and Consumption presents a new transhistorical framework of defining production, work and consumption. It shows that they all share the common feature of intentional physical transformation of something external to the agent, at some point in time. The book opens with a discussion of various theoretical traditions within economics, spanning mainstream and heterodox perspectives, and problems with production definitions in use today. Next, the author outlines various definitions in a more formal manner and provides a discussion on measurement and the production boundary. Unproductive work is redefined as socially reproductive, i.e. such that would not be performed on a Robinson Crusoe Island. Finally, the volume applies the new conceptual framework to various historical cases and discusses the future of production, work and consumption. This essential volume will be of interest to scholars of economic philosophy and methodology, the history of economic thought, economic history and national accounting. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

* "How to provide adequate and equal funds to meet the increasing demand of higher education" is of great interest to scholars and policymakers both from China and abroad * The basic methods in forecasting higher education finance can be used in similar analysis in other countries * Covers teaching grant and research grant in higher education finance, and the idea of setting non-competitive search grant from teachers is novel in many ways * Researches Chinese higher education's recent development from a financial perspective

1. This book is unique in its analysis of a little-considered aspect of contemporary policing, based on rigorous research across 100 North American cities. 2. Policing remains a popular area of study on Criminology and Criminal Justice degrees, and this book will also be of interest to those engaged with Public Policy and Public Management.

Intended as a successor to Monetary Policy and Credit Control (Croom Helm, 1978; Routledge Revivals, 2013), this book, first published in 1982 with a revised edition in 1984, traces the changes in approach to monetary control in the U.K. throughout the 1970s, and the consequences for policy and the British economy. The book considers the widely-publicised proposals for 'reserve base' or 'monetary base' control of the financial system, including a critique of the 1980 Bank of England Green Paper. David Gowland concludes with an analysis of the 1979 Conservative Government's monetary policy. This is a very interesting title, of great relevance to students and academics researching recent British economic history and varying governmental approaches to monetary policy.

In the past China's capital market featured prevalent state ownership and a weak legal environment. It has, however, achieved very substantial development in the past two decades. China has surpassed Japan as the world's second-largest stock market and has also emerged as a leading player in green bonds and Fintech markets. The chapters in this book provide insights on Chinese listed firms and advance the understanding of China's unique institutions. Some important questions are covered including the governance role of foreign investors in partially privatized firms, the financial implications of political connections, the "Chinese model" of commercial banks and regulatory reforms that promote the marketization of the stock markets, among others. These studies have important implications for other emerging economies, on the recent China-US trade conflicts and about the Trump administration's complaints about the role of the Chinese government in capital markets. This book selectively includes the most influential articles from two special issues of The European Journal of Finance, which were based on selections of papers presented at a series of conferences on the Chinese Capital Markets.