This book provides an overview of the evolution and theories of the Austrian School of Economics and develops answers to current economic questions and the pressing problems of the 21st century from the Austrian perspective. Readers will learn about the fundamental ideas of the Austrian School, the current state of Austrian economics, and the intellectual figures and institutions that sustain it as a vibrant intellectual movement. International experts on Austrian economics cover topics such as the economic impact of pandemics, trade blocs, federalism and European integration, and the economic development of China. The book also discusses the influence of the Austrian School on modern economic thought and mainstream economics, as well as on policymakers. It will appeal to students and scholars of economics and to anyone interested in social and economic liberalism.

With health care reform at the top of the domestic agenda, this volume assesses the Clinton administration's proposals and several alternative plans by discussing how six other countries have organized health care finance and delivery to achieve universal access to comparable quality care at much lower costs. The six countries examined Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, and Japan reveal both the variety and fundamental similarities of medical care systems in the rest of the industrialized world.Joseph White uses foreign experience to indicate the proper direction for American reform and to identify interesting alternatives that suggest compromises for what are usually presented in the U.S. as ""either-or"" choices. Examples include the role allowed for private insurance within all national systems; exceptions to fee schedules in Australia, France, and Germany; and the complaint mechanism for malpractice in New South Wales. White begins by describing each country's system and then follows with chapters disucssing three classes of problems. ""Quality and Access"" uses the experience of other countries to establish a reasonable baseline for what the U.S. should aim to achieve. ""Collecting the Money"" discusses who pays and how. ""Controlling Costs"" explains how other countries have moderated their cost increases. The final chapter assesses American reform proposals in light of the foreign evidence. White argues that a synthesis of ""competition"" and ""regulation"" is possible and that such a synthesis is approached by the Clinton proposals. But he also identifies areas where those proposals fall short or risk collapsing of their own weight. He concludes by comparing the administration's proposals to the major alternatives. ""This book is serious scholarship at its best. Comprehensive in scope, insightful in character, and compelling in its reasoning, the book presents a balanced treatment of alternative proposals."" Choice

Why, in the last decades of the twentieth century, did industralized nations witness recurring vast public deficits, even in times of peaceful international relations and economic growth? The essays in Politics, Institutions, and Fiscal Policy chart answers sought by economists, political scientists, and government officials. This groundbreaking book looks at states within five industrialized federations Canadian provinces, Swiss cantons, Belgian regions, German lander, and American states as case studies of variation in budget balances since 1980. The work s conclusion compares deficit levels between the federations studied. Politics, Institutions, and Fiscal Policy sheds new light on the role of such factors as spending and taxation levels and electoral and partisan cycles within the budget balancing process. Neatly written and theoretically grounded, this volume contributes greatly to our understanding of public finance and public administration."

This volume contains a stimulating collection of analytical studies focusing on taxation in Mozambique. It tells a compelling story about tax systems in a low income economy increasingly integrated into the world trading system, but very much dependent on foreign trade taxes and international development assistance.

Key issues covered include:

• A better understanding of the historical background of tax reforms in a representative African economy (Mozambique) along with an assessment of taxation performance in a comparative perspective.
• Insights into the practice and implications of tax policy, both from the perspective of the consumer and the firm level.
• Discussion of the existing institutional set up in which tax policy and its enforcement operate and analyses of current tax practices.
• Taxation themes at the border and at domestic level, which are typical for low-income economies, characterized by a high degree of reliance on foreign trade taxes.

This volume is meant as a guide for developing country government officials and professional aid practitioners as well as academics, researchers and tax policy analysts working in the development field. It will also be of interest to students of development with a special interest in public finance issues in poor countries and how to improve policy-effectiveness, including tax policy, in a developing country setting.

Does the European Union need closer fiscal integration, and in particular a stronger fiscal centre, to become more resilient to economic shocks? This book looks at the experience of 13 federal states to help inform the heated debate on this issue. It analyses in detail their practices in devolving responsibilities from the subnational to the central level, compares them to those of the European Union, and draws lessons for a possible future fiscal union in Europe. More specifically, this book tries to answer three sets of questions: What is the role of centralized fiscal policies in federations, and hence the size, features and functions of the central budget? What institutional arrangements are used to coordinate fiscal policy between the federal and subnational levels? What are the links between federal and subnational debt, and how have subnational financing crises been handled, when they occurred? These policy questions are critical in many federations, and central to the current discussions about future paths for the European Union. This book brings to the table new, practical insights through a systematic and comprehensive comparison of the EU fiscal framework with that of federal states. It also departs from the decentralization perspective that has been prominent in the literature by focusing on the role of the centre (which responsibilities are centralized at the federal level and how they are handled, rather than which functions belong to the local level). Such an approach is particularly relevant for the European Union, where a fiscal union would imply granting new powers to the centre.

Decisions about "who gets what, when, and how" are perhaps the most important that any government must make. So it should not be remarkable that around the world, public officials responsible for public budgeting are facing demands --from their own citizenry, other government officials, economic actors, and increasingly from international sources --to make their patterns of spending more transparent and their processes more participatory.

Surprisingly, rigorous analysis of the causes and consequences of fiscal transparency is thin at best. Open Budgets seeks to fill this gap in existing knowledge by answering a few broad questions: How and why do improvements in fiscal transparency and participation come about? How are they sustained over time? When and how do increased fiscal transparency and participation lead to improved government responsiveness and accountability?

Contributors: Steven Friedman (Rhodes University/University of Johannesburg); Jorge Antonio Alves (Queens College, CUNY) and Patrick Heller (Brown University); Jong-sung You (University of California --San Diego) and Wonhee Lee (Hankyung National University); John M. Ackerman (National Autonomous University of Mexico and Mexican Law Review); Aaron Schneider (University of Denver) and Annabella Espa?a-Naj?ra (California State University?Fresno); Barak D. Hoffman (Georgetown University); Jonathan Warren and Huong Nguyen (University of Washington); Linda Beck (University of Maine?Farmington and Columbia University), E. H. Seydou Nourou Toure (Institut Fondamental de l'Afrique Noire), and Aliou Faye (Senegal Ministry of the Economy and Finance).

'This is one of those rare technical books which has an importance outside its own field' The Daily Telegraph.
'One of the most stimulating post-war books on public finance' The Guardian.
Part 1 examines the issue of Expenditure Tax in principle and includes chapters on the following:
* Income, Expenditure and Taxable Capacity
* The Concept of Income in Economic Theory
* Taxation and Savings
* Taxation and risk-bearing
* Taxation and the Incentive to Work
* Company Taxation
* Taxation and Economic Progress
Part 2 examines the issue of Expenditure Tax in practice, asking whether personal expenditure tax is practicable and putting forward a proposal for Surtax Reform.

The global economy has experienced four waves of rapid debt accumulation over the past fifty years. The first three debt waves ended with financial crises in many emerging and developing economies.

China's stunning record of economic development since the 1970s has been marred by an increasingly obvious gap between the country's 'haves' and its 'have-nots'. While people living in some parts of the country have enjoyed dramatically improved conditions of life, those in other districts and regions have slipped ever further behind in terms of access to health, wealth, education, security and opportunity. Paying for Progress in China is a collection of essays which trace the causes of this growing inequality, using new data including surveys, interviews, newly available official statistics and in-depth fieldwork. Their findings expose the malfunctioning of China's 'broken' intergovernmental fiscal system, which has exacerbated the disequalizing effects of emerging market forces. Whilst the government's deliberately 'pro-poor' development policies have in recent years sought to reduce the gap between rich and poor, both markets, and also state institutions and policies, are continuing to create perverse equity outcomes across the country, confounding hopes for better-balanced and more inclusive growth in China. The interdisciplinary approach of this collection, incorporating work by economists, sociologists and political scientists, makes it a valuable resource for students of contemporary Chinese political economy and social development.

Proposals to introduce broad based consumption taxes have prompted considerable political controversy and conflict in recent decades. This book explores the politics of consumption tax reform in the four countries where the political resistance to such policies has been most acute: Australia, Canada, Japan and the United States. Using an institutional approach, the analysis in this book is animated by contemporary theoretical debates. These concern the dynamics of institutional and policy change and the roles of economic forces, policy ideas and political actors in this process. The author provides an overview of existing approaches to tax policy analysis, as well as a synopsis of existing debates within institutional theory. Taxing Reforms will appeal to academics in the fields of public policy, political economy and public finance, as well as graduate and undergraduate students in policy analysis and public finance. The book will also be of interest to tax policy analysts both in government and non-government organisations and think tanks with an interest in tax policy.

This key volume explores how party and campaign finance in post-communist countries have influenced the development of the party system. Based on an analysis of nine case studies, the work examines how the implementation of public finance affects the pattern of party competition and the role of money in elections. One of the lessons from the post-communist experience is that, no matter how well-designed, public finance systems are subject to constant revision as parties, politicians and business elites exploit loopholes which can undermine the integrity of the entire system. Party and campaign finance systems must therefore be considered in a larger discussion involving party regulation and electoral rules.

When thirteen machine shop workers from Ohio won a $295.7 million lotto jackpot, the largest ever, it made headlines. But the real story is that the lottery is a losing proposition for the vast majority who play it.

Hitting the Lottery Jackpot provides the hard truth to the questions everybody asks: What are my chances of winning? Doesn't the money go to education? Isn't it harmless? This concise book explains who really profits from lotteries-advertising agencies, TV stations, and ticket vendors-and that shows only about half the money wagered is returned as prizes, the rest pocketed by state governments. Hitting the Lottery Jackpot also demonstrates who loses: lower-income groups and people of color, who spend a much higher percentage of their income on lotteries than others.

David Nibert connects the rise of lotteries, illegal in every state before the 1960s, to the economic stagnation beginning in the 1970s, when budgetary crises prompted legislatures to seek new revenues. Difficult economic times produced uncertainty and anxiety for the working class, leading many poor and middle-income people, yearning for security, to throw away huge sums on lotteries they stand almost no chance of winning. Finally, Nibert explores the ideological dimensions of the lottery-the get-rich-quick individualism that they promote among the very groups who would be better served by political action and solidarity.

Hitting the Lottery Jackpot is a powerful case for seeing lotteries as a pernicious government tax on the poor, seductively disguised as fun.

"Sensible Tax Reform Simple, Just and Effective" ("STR") offers a truly revolutionary approach to tax reform.
-Businesses will be untaxed. -Social Security and Medicare will receive much stronger financial backing.-Most individuals will no longer pay any income taxes. -Estates will no longer be taxed. -A simple broad-based federal consumption tax will be introduced as the foundation of our tax system. -The consumption tax will apply to most expenditures by individuals but will provide critical buffers to ease the impact upon healthcare, housing, transportation, and higher education. -STR" will replace the existing tax mess we all hate with a simple, just, and economically dynamic tax system that will reinvigorate American businesses, greatly increase the real income and purchasing power of most Americans, and stabilize the finances of the federal government."

The subnational dimension of infrastructure has emerged as one of the greatest challenges in contemporary public finance policy and management. Ensuring the efficient provision of infrastructure represents a challenge for all countries irrespective of their level of centralization or decentralization. This book proposes an innovative approach for the strengthening of decentralized public investment and infrastructure management. Decentralization and Infrastructure in the Global Economy: From Gaps to Solutions covers the most important aspects of infrastructure investment in a decentralized setting. It discusses infrastructure gaps and the quality of subnational spending; how functional responsibilities, financing and equalization can be designed; sector-specific arrangements in high expenditure areas, such as health, education and roads; key steps of the public investment cycle and management; and analyses the political economy and corruption challenges that typically accompany decentralized infrastructure projects. This book challenges some of the well-accepted principles of intergovernmental fiscal relations and will be useful to researchers and practitioners of public finance policy and management.

The intergovernmental fiscal issue is highly relevant given the worldwide movement toward more decentralized governance in both industrial and developing countries. Over the course of five decades Japan has developed a robust system of decentralized governance. This book investigates fiscal decentralization and local finance in Japan with a view to understanding how the process of decentralization has unfolded there and what the rest of the world can learn. The author sheds light on the drives leading up to a need for decentralization reform over the last decade and evaluates so-called 'Trinity Reform' implemented by the Koizumi administration during 2004-2006. Finally, the book considers the decentralization process in Asian developing countries and discusses what lessons might be drawn from Japanese experiences. This excellent study of an important subject area will be particularly useful for all those studying intergovernmental fiscal relations, public finance and public sector economics. It will also be of interest to specialist international organizations and policy makers who are involved in intergovernmental issues.

This book reflects the futuristic scientific view of the consequences of transition to Industry 4.0 for climate change. The authors present a systemic overview of the current negative consequences of digitization for the environment, new outlines of the energy sphere in Industry 4.0 and the change of the environment pollution level in Industry 4.0. The book also analyses the ecological consequences of growth and development of Industry 4.0, and considers Industry 4.0 as an alternative to fighting climate change. The book presents a view on fighting climate change in Industry 4.0 from the positions of shifting the global community's attention from environment protection to formation of the digital economy. A logical continuation of this book is a view from the opposite side, which would allow reflecting the contribution of Industry 4.0 into fighting climate change and the perspectives of harmonization of these top-priority directions of the global economy's development. This book will be of interest to academics and practitioners interested in climate change and development of Industry 4.0, as well contributing to a national economic policy for fighting climate change and corporate strategies of sustainable development in Industry 4.0.

This insightful book focuses on the role of fiscal policy in common markets, especially in the context of the supranational constructs in the Gulf Cooperation Council, comprising Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman. It draws on the experience of the EU and the importance of VAT, and reflects on the other main common market in Central America. Although oil windfalls have opened a window of opportunity for the Gulf States, at the same time they have created numerous problems. In particular, the uncertainty associated with periods of boom and bust in the oil market has made the formulation and implementation of sound fiscal policies a formidable task. In this study, the distinguished authors present the background to current fiscal reforms and address the critical challenges facing the Gulf States including the choice between consumption and saving (or current needs and future requirements); intra-generational equity issues; the pro-cyclicality of fiscal policy; fiscal sustainability and the prudent management of revenues from finite oil reserves. They examine the case for VAT to substantially replace customs duties, a significant source of non-oil revenue which would be lost as a result of free trade agreements between the GCC and key trading partners. They also demonstrate how an agreed design for VAT would assist in furthering economic integration, and enhance trade and exports. If properly sequenced, VAT would have a negligible impact on both inflation and the poor, and would be progressive in relation to the customs duties replaced. This highly topical book will be of great interest to academics specializing in public sector economics and public finance, and to national and international policymakers involved in fiscal reform.

In all highly industrialized countries public expenditures are a substantial and growing share of total economic activity. The authors integrate normative and positive theory and empirical analysis of public expenditure, concentrating on the optimal provision of public goods and the estimation of their costs and effects. This volume emphasizes the techniques that are available for reaching collective decisions about the provision of public goods and stresses the importance of income distribution and intergovernmental fiscal relations. In a mixed economy, where the public sector is growing faster than the private sector, the nature of public expenditures must be closely evaluated and studied. This book is designed to focus on and delineate controversies about public expenditure--to define what it is, analyze its function, show how it operates, and finally to evaluate research on this important subject.

The book considers the theories of leading economists (Kenneth Arrow, Lionel Robbins, Carl Shoup, James Buchanan, Paul Samuelson, Richard Musgrave, and others) in arriving at a clear statement of theory in its application to operational problems. Appropriate attention is paid to current techniques such as program budgeting, cost-benefit analysis, and the analysis of the determinants of public expenditure. The book is unique in its emphasis on the integration and critique of contemporary theories of public expenditure, of distributional concerns, and of the political framework of public expenditure decisions. It provides a necessary resource for professional economists required to deal with public expenditure problems in research or practice.

This two volume set includes the most influential writings on international debt. In addition to essential early material, the editors have assembled the key contributions written during the unfolding of the modern international debt drama from the early 1970s. An introductory chapter by the editors explains the context and order in which the writings are presented. In particular, the individual contributions are grouped under sequential headings which are intended to draw out key themes and relationships between the concerns of the original authors. This collection reflects clearly the interaction between the evolution of the international policy debate and the development of major analytical insights on the debt problem and its resolution.

Revenue and expenditure forecasting plays an important role in public budgeting and financial management, particularly during times of financial constraint, when citizens impose greater accountability upon government to use taxpayer dollars more efficiently. Despite its significance, revenue and expenditure forecasting is often overlooked in the budget process, and there is an imbalance between practice and research in this area. Based on the collaboration of budget scholars and practitioners, Government Budget Forecasting fulfills two purposes- Enhances the understanding of revenue and expenditure estimation both theoretically and practically Stimulates dialogue and debate among practitioners and academicians to identify good forecast practices as well as areas for improvement

Divided into four parts, this comprehensive reference first examines forecast practices at the federal, state, and local levels, utilizing case studies that include California, Texas, and Louisiana. It then explores consensus systems and risk assessment, considering political factors and the costs of forecast errors. The text concludes with a call to transparency and guidance from a code of ethics, and a look at forecasting practices in emerging countries.

Contains essays by historians of economic and financial history. It illuminates the relationships between government indebtedness and the development of financial markets in Europe from the late Middle Ages to the late twentieth century.

This book provides a theory capable of explaining the patterns of public expenditures and taxation that occur under representative government. Economists and political scientists have come to realize that issues of public policy and public finance cannot be solved on the naive assumption that these are problems tackled by a government that exists only to serve the public good. Instead, government must be understood as one of the major economic institutions of society, one that behaves like more familiar economic institutions--the household and the firm--though the market it confronts is a market for policies rather than for goods and services. Albert Breton's pathbreaking work remains important in taking us toward a theory of representative government that enables an understanding of the observed behavior of political institutions.

The author's analysis is cast in a relatively simple demand, supply and demand-supply-equilibrium framework, using the tools of marginal and stability analysis to explain the forces that influence and determine the flow of resources as they are allocated between competing ends in the public sector. The book presents a model of demand by citizens, who are assumed to be maximizing their desires for specific public policies and private goods, and a model of the supply of public policies by politicians and bureaucrats, who are assumed to be maximizing the probability of their re-election and the size of their budgets. Breton defines government policies and the institutional framework for collective choices in terms that render them amenable to further analysis.

The main accomplishment of Breton's theory is that it provides the ability to analyze the interaction of individuals and generates testable propositions about the behavior of these individuals as well as about the behavior of public expenditures and taxation in more aggregative terms. In this way the book will be useful to students of economics, economists, and those interested in economic theory.

"Albert Breton" is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Toronto. He was once director of research for The Social Research Group in Montreal. His articles have been widely published in major journals and some of his recent books include "Rational Foundations of Democratic Politics" and "Political Extremism and Rationality" (with Gianluigi Galeotti, Pierre Salmon, and Ronald Wintrobe) and "Bijuralism: An Economic Approach" (with Michael J. Trebilcock).

Some of the best writings on public budgeting and finance can be found in the journals that ASPA publishes or sponsors. For this volume editor Irene Rubin has brought together the best of these articles - emerging classics that address the most important theoretical and practical problems underlying public budgeting.The anthology is organized topically rather than historically, with an effort to delineate the issues needed to understand some of the more recent controversies in the field. Rubin's introductory essay and section openers frame the key issues and provide historical context for each article. The collection begins with descriptions of what public budgeting is, where it comes from, and what it is for. It moves on to the relationship between budget processes and outcomes, constraints on budgeting, the legal context in which it operates, and adaptations to those constraints such as contracting out.The book concludes with a discussion of the ethics and norms that underlie budgeting in a democracy. Throughout the anthology, the emphasis is on areas of disagreement and debate, so students can get involved and explore different viewpoints.

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

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