This volume provides a fascinating look at the anti-tax avoidance strategies employed by more than fifteen countries in eastern and western Europe, Canada, the Pacific Rim, Asia, Africa, and the United States. It surveys the similarities and differences in anti-avoidance regimes and contains detailed chapters for each country surveying the moral and legal dimensions of the problem. The proliferation of tax avoidance schemes in recent years signals the global dimensions of a problem presenting a serious challenge to the effective administration of tax laws. Tax avoidance involves unacceptable manipulation of the law to obtain a tax advantage. These transactions support wasteful behavior in which corporations enter into elaborate, circuitous arrangements solely to minimize tax liability. It frustrates the ability of governments to collect sufficient revenue to provide essential public goods and services. Avoidance of duly enacted provisions (or manipulation to secure tax benefits unintended by the legislature) poses a threat to the effective operation of a free society for the benefit of a small group of members who seek the privilege of shifting their tax burden onto others merely to compete in the world of commerce. In a world in which world treasuries struggle for the resources to battle terrorist threats and to secure a decent standard of living for constituents tax avoidance can bring economies close to the edge of sustainability. As tax avoidance is one of the top concerns of most nations, the importance of this work cannot be overstated.

This book provides a self-contained presentation of the statistical tools required for evaluating public programs, as advocated by many governments, the World Bank, the European Union, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. After introducing the methodological framework of program evaluation, the first chapters are devoted to the collection, elementary description and multivariate analysis of data as well as the estimation of welfare changes. The book then successively presents the tools of ex-ante methods (financial analysis, budget planning, cost-benefit, cost-effectiveness and multi-criteria evaluation) and ex-post methods (benchmarking, experimental and quasi-experimental evaluation). The step-by-step approach and the systematic use of numerical illustrations equip readers to handle the statistics of program evaluation. It not only offers practitioners from public administrations, consultancy firms and nongovernmental organizations the basic tools and advanced techniques used in program assessment, it is also suitable for executive management training, upper undergraduate and graduate courses, as well as for self-study.

This book is an introduction to the history of - and current measurement practice of - inflation for the United Kingdom. The authors describe the historical development of inflation measures in a global context, and do so without using formal mathematical language and related jargon that relates only to a few specialist scholars. Although inflation is a widely used and quoted statistic, and despite the important role inflation plays in real people's lives - through pension uprating, train tickets, interest rates and the work of economists - few people understand how it is created. O'Neill, Ralph and Smith mix historical data with a description of practices inside the UK statistical system and abroad, which will aid understanding of how this important economic statistic is produced, and the important and controversial choices that statisticians have made over time.

Some goods and services are normally left to the market mechanism. Health care is often described as an exception to the rule. Society wants care to be allocated equitably; it wants the financial burden to be kept within bounds; it wants treatments to be both medically effective and economically efficient. These shared concerns lead to a demand for State intervention which this book seeks impartially to appraise and evaluate.

This book discusses the evolution of the third tier of the Indian federal system, with a focus on rural local governance (commonly known as Panchayati Raj) against the backdrop of important theoretical and empirical literature on the relevance and effectiveness of service delivery in the decentralized system. It evaluates the quintessence of the functioning of the Panchayati Raj in the past two decades of its existence. This pioneering book also discusses the treatment of the third-tier government in the inter-governmental fiscal transfer framework and the delineation of the unique institution of local self-government in the Northeastern Indian States. In the light of the loosely evolved fiscal relations between three levels of government, it has been observed that local self-governments in the bottom tier have not been truly empowered yet. The book argues in favor of integrating the third-tier government into the Indian federal system and suggests how this could be achieved.

This important volume tackles the potential problems of international military disarmament. Distinguished scholars across several disciplines discuss possible negative economic and social consequences, including unemployment, conversion costs, and the related hampered growth of research and development, associated with the conversion from a military industrial economy to a civilian complex. The authors present techniques for managing sectoral and regional economic imbalances and conclude that disarmament would ultimately release resources for foreign aid to close the gap between the world's haves and have-nots.

Divided into three parts (Models of Disarmament and Conflict Analysis, Economic Conversion, and Management of Peace), this volume addresses specific topics such as techniques of management conflict, factors affecting military expenditures, new prospects for an East-West relationship, American strategic policy and NATO, defense expenditure and economic conversion, Third World arms production, and regional conflict in the wake of superpower convergence. These analyses and discussions will be of particular interest to scholars of Peace Studies, Political Science, Economics, Sociology, and Military Studies.

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

The 38th annual edition of the leading guide to taxation in Britain. This practical and user-friendly guide is a bestseller with students, professionals, accountants and private individuals, explaining in simple terms how the UK tax system works and how best to minimise tax liabilities

Tracing the origins of recent Latin American debt problems to the financial politics of the immediate post-independence period, Thomas Millington argues that the failure of Latin American states to fund their internal debts made them dependent on foreign credit. Negative political and social consequences remain today, he says, and suggests that debt management should move toward a funded debt goal and away from the floating debt framework that is endemic in Latin America. He uses the funding experience in Bolivia to illustrate his thesis. Millington's work draws on the history of economic ideas and modern debt analysis and applies them to Latin American financial practices in their historical, social, and political contexts. By emphasising the politics of debt funding, he seeks to challenge other concepts of dependency and neocolonialism that dominate study of the immediate postindependence period. The book emerged from the author's experience of working on financial policy in the Bolivian Ministry of Finance in 1977-78 and on his extensive research in the Bolivian Archives, where he discovered evidence of the conflicts between liberal constituencies, as opposed to the external obstacles often cited in other studies.

In an era of unprecedented budget problems, can Congress establish legislative procedures to facilitate making politically difficult budget decisions? If we keep fixing the process, why are the policies and politics so fouled up? This book provides an extensive answer to these questions. Focusing exclusively on the House of Representatives, the author assesses whether current congressional budget procedures, namely the 302 process and reconciliation, have been created, designed, and maintained to achieve greater budget restraint. He defines the critical concept of procedural budget restraint as a procedural outcome in which spending decisions are less than what would have occurred in the absence of the procedure.

The European economy is still in recession, even though there are some weak indications of stabilization. This book examines important aspects of the crisis in selected countries of Southern Europe, the Balkans and Eastern Europe. The intensity of the crisis and its economic and social repercussions have varied from country to country, generally impacting the core countries less than those on the periphery. The countries in the latter group currently face significant structural challenges with regard to improving productivity and competitiveness, including the areas of investment, climate, the labour market, and the public sector. The book not only illustrates the scope of the problem, but also informs readers on the policies implemented to address it, and discusses the progress some of the economies have already made. Special topics include the convergence hypothesis, agriculture and growth, Public-Private Partnership in Infrastructure (PPPI), and the labour market.

Angus Maddison has made a major contribution to our understanding of the comparative, historical and quantitative aspects of economic growth. This important collection of his work - including a number of original new essays - offers an authoritative analysis of the economic performance of nations. Drawing extensively on quantitative and qualitative evidence, Professor Maddison provides a clear view of why growth rates differ, why real income and productivity spreads are so wide, and why the pace of growth has varied over time. The first section features essays which provide an analytical framework for causal analysis of growth performance, this is followed by papers on investment and capital stock estimation, savings behaviour and measurement of economic performance levels. There are three essays on the roots of economic 'backwardness' and the final section deals with the effect of economic and social policy on the performance of advanced capitalist countries. These essays offer a depth of historical and interspatial perspective which is unrivalled. In addition to focusing on the influences of institutions, ideology and colonialism, Professor Maddison's analysis makes sophisticated use of the growth accounting approach. A specially-written autobiographical essay has also been included.

For undergraduate and graduate courses in Taxation, and for professional use. Get clarity on UK taxation rules and policies in this up-to-date guide for year 2020 Taxation, 26th Edition, by Alan Melville, updated with 2020's Finance Act, is the definitive, market-leading text on UK taxation and is known for its up-to-date coverage of the changes introduced by the annual Budget. Featuring clean, well-structured prose and a wealth of immensely practical examples, this comprehensive guide serves as both a core textbook if you are studying taxation for the first time and a reference text that clearly explains the UK tax system and taxation regulations. Additionally, a free to access Companion Website features opportunities for extra practice, plus chapter appendices and a range of useful links to explore taxation rules and the tax system further. Pearson, the world's learning company.

In this ambitious book, the authors challenge mainstream economic theory by reconsidering the principle of individualism as its foundation. They refer to that version which fails to recognize the existence of the interests of society as such, and thus excludes the role of the state as an independent market player seeking to realize these interests. The outcome is a new theoretical concept called "Economic Sociodynamics." The book reveals this concept in detail, in particular its key notions of the sociodynamic multiplier and the rational behavior of the state.

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

Starting point of this book is the observation that an increase in public debt must be accompanied by a rise in the primary surplus of the government to guarantee sustainability of public debt. The book first elaborates on that principle from a theoretical point of view and then tests whether empirical evidence for that rule can be found. Additional tests are implemented to gain further evidence on sustainability of public debt. In order to allow for time varying coefficients penalized spline estimations are performed. The theoretical chapters present endogenous growth models and assume that the primary surplus rises as public debt increases so that sustainability of public debt is given. Implications of public deficits and debt are studied assuming full employment and for unemployment. The conclusion summarizes the findings and compares the results of the different models. Finally, policy implications are given showing how governments should deal with high public debt to GDP ratios.

Restructuring the balance sheets of Western governments, banks and households is an important issue in the recovery after the recent crisis. Chorafas' latest book focuses on sovereign debt, sovereign risk and the developing economic and financial business climate and explains why the year of the big crisis may fall in the middle of this decade.

The amount collected in taxation, the items which have been taxed, and the classes of people on whom the tax burden has fallen, have all changed greatly in the period from the Restoration to the present. This book considers how and why these changes took place, and some of the consequences which have flowed from them.

The aim of this volume is to encourage comparative explorations of the links between economic regionalism and government behaviour. At present, the relation between government and the economy is in a state of flux. In the old "developed" world, supranational organizations such as the EU and the WTO, are exerting more influence over economic life. Simultaneously, regional governments have emerged to provide public services to local populations. In some European countries, economic decision making is no longer in the power of the nation state, but has been transfered to international and local organizations.
The papers in this volume have been contributed by a broad range of policy makers, journalists, and academics. Theories of the public sector are reviewed, restructured and extended, in order to cover the new spatial and dynamic situation. The volume provides historical and institutional perspectives on the public sector, and presents empirical case studies of the public sectors in Sweden, USA, Belgium, Malaysia, England and Singapore.

This book analyzes the revenues from the creation of currency by a central government. Adopting an institutional perspective, it develops a general theory of seigniorage by identifying three monetary regimes in economic history and the history of economic thought: a commodity currency, a fiat currency and a credit currency regime. As such it provides a modern analytical framework to analyze the nature of revenues from the creation of currency and their optimal height, whether currency is issued by means of minting coins, by printing and spending paper notes, by crediting private entities, or combinations thereof. The results of this analysis stretch beyond the immediate topic. The book establishes a relationship between the theory of seigniorage and government debt, the theory of the interest rate, the optimal rate of inflation, or the effectiveness and inflationary limits of outright monetary transactions.

This work is written out of a conviction that development economics needs to draw more heavily and systematically on recent advances in knowledge made in public economics - especially where the formulation and analysis of development policy are concerned. The central questions - how to raise and spend revenues well, in the sense of promoting development - are surely normative; but whether something is done "well" must also be judged in relation to what is actually feasible. With unrestricted lump-sum transfers ruled out in practice, the design of policy is inherently concerned with considerations of the second-best. This awkward fact besets the analysis of interventions in all areas of economic activity, from international trade to small-scale finance. Debates over whether and how to promote particular sectors or activities at the expense of others, when viewed from this perspective, draw attention away from the humdrum, but decidedly more important goal of raising revenue efficiently and with due regard for equity.

This book provides an insightful, and in-depth analysis of the fiscal reform process experienced in Spain over the last 30 years. The authors initially focus on the political economy of tax reform in Spain, and the fact that political and economic bodies were able to form alliances at key junctures during the process in order to push reforms forward. A comprehensive analysis of the main instruments of the Spanish tax system, including the introduction of VAT upon Spain's accession to the European Common Market, is presented. The rapid fiscal decentralization process that led Spain from being one of the most centralized countries in the world to being one of the least centralized is also discussed, as is the modernization of the Spanish tax administration system. Written by a select group of scholars with deep knowledge of the Spanish fiscal system, this book will be of great interest to students, tax policymakers and researchers all over the world and especially in Latin America.