Motivated by the recent proliferation of fiscal consolidation episodes in the advent of Monetary Union, this book explains the causes and consequences of fiscal policy in Europe. This book answers three related questions: What explains the timing of fiscal adjustments? What explains their different duration and composition? What are the economic and political consequences of having implemented different adjustment strategies?

The Politics of Global Debt is a detailed political analysis of the origins and consequences of the `global debt crisis' which emerged in the early 1980s. It assesses both `imperialist' and `New Right' interpretations of the crisis, and also presents a series of case studies of the effects of external debt upon Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe and Asia. The book focusses upon the `sovereign debt' of states, and its management, and examines the ways in which global economic structures, inefficient policies, weak institutions, and corrupt political leaders contribute to a global debt crisis which has both international and domestic roots.

The Financial Analyst's Guide to Monetary Policy approaches monetary policy in a straightforward manner. In each chapter, a particular monetary policy problem is addressed and analyzed. Then it considers the practical implications and strategies that are important to the business executives, financial analysts, portfolio managers, and investors in general.

This book assesses the 2008-2009 financial crisis and its ramifications for the global economy from a multidisciplinary perspective. Current market conditions and systemic issues pose a risk to financial stability and sustained market access for emerging market borrowers. The volatile environment in the financial system became the source of major threats and some opportunities such as takeovers, mergers and acquisitions for international business operations. This volume is divided into six sections. The first evaluates the 2008-2009 Global Financial Crisis and its impacts on Global Economic Activity, examining the financial crisis in historical context, the economic slowdown, transmission of the crisis from advanced economies to emerging markets, and spillovers. The second section evaluates global imbalances, especially financial instability and the economic outlook for selected regional economies, while the third focuses on international financial institutions and fiscal policy applications. The fourth section analyzes the capital market mechanism, price fluctuations and global trade activity, while the fifth builds on new trends and business cycles to derive effective strategies and solutions for international entrepreneurship and business. In closing, the final section explores the road to economic recovery and stability by assessing the current outlook and fiscal strategies.

This work is a study of the Keynes and Friedman approaches to the institutions which implement monetary and other related policies. The policy of the United States is reviewed, in part, because of the U.S.'s rather central role in developments since World War I. The exchange-rate, reserve, and capital-flow mechanisms of the central banks are discussed from an historical perspective. The major interconnections between money, credit-creating potential of central banks, and fiscal/deficit potential of government are emphasized. The principal central banks considered are the Bank of England, Federal Reserve, and Bundesbank.

"Reform of the United States tax system has become a central political issue. Assessing Tax Reform is a concise, nontechnical book to help general readers and students understand the tax reform issues Congress is now debating. Henry Aaron and Harvey Galper lay out the major alternative proposals and analyze principles of taxation that can be used for judging them. They explore the issues surrounding a move to a comprehensive income tax, a cash-flow tax, and the value-added tax or other consumption-based taxes. They show the conflicts and opportunities resulting from large current government deficits and the move for tax reform. In addition to clarifying the problems that must be solved if large-scale, long-term reform is to be achieved, the authors describe alternative strategies for increasing revenues quickly. They also present their own program for a fair, efficient, and less complex tax structure. They conclude with an examination of the political pitfalls that continue to make any major improvements in the tax system hard to enact. "

First published in 1919, Taxation in the New State explores the practical application of tax policy to the financial situation of post-World War I Britain. Hobson assesses policy according to the tax payer's ability to bear the burden and draws a distinction between 'cost' and 'surplus'. He proposes a number of reforms and considers the pitfalls of attempting the find required revenue using ordinary taxation in a post-war financial crisis.

During the last 30 years, finance has increased not only its share of economic activity but also of peoples aspirations. This has transformed society by increasingly organizing it around the search for financial efficiency. Is a society based on fundamental values of free judgment, responsibility and solidarity still possible? This book answers this crucial question.

This study of taxation in Latin America takes a novel approach to the subject, using a framework that posits three dimensions for studying taxes-historical, relational, and transnational. The book argues that: first, taxation should be understood as a relational concept and tax systems as a function of a strategic nexus between the state and society; second, that any analysis of tax systems across Latin America needs to take historical legacies of national tax systems into account; and finally, that transnational phenomena have significant implications for tax regime dynamics in Latin America. The essays included provide diverse and representative insights for a new understanding of taxation in Latin America and highlight the bottlenecks to the development of sustainable tax systems in the region, exploring new links between academic research and policy-making.

Written especially for portfolio managers, financial analysts, and corporate economists, this volume considers the practical implications of government economic policies. The contributors illustrate how incentives and disincentives affect economic behavior and the performance of the economy through an in-depth discussion of monetary, fiscal, and international economic issues. In addition, the authors present a unique top-down approach that enables the reader to trace the impact of government policies through the economy and thereby discover the investment strategies most likely to be successful within a given policy context.

The first section of the book focuses on monetary issues and explores issues related to inflation, likely government intervention mechanisms to control inflation, variants of the monetarist model, interpreting the demand curve, and the development of a portfolio strategy designed to take advantage of anticipated changes in financial variables. The next group of chapters looks at supply-side economics and analyzes the effects of the economic incentives and constraints imposed by government. Particular attention is paid to the effects of taxation policies on equity values, economic growth, and savings. In the third section, the contributors present a supply-side view of selected international economic issues including the relationship between tax rate reductions and foreign exchange rates and the trade balance. The concluding section examines the portfolio strategies that can be derived from the analyses presented in previous chapters. An indispensable resource for finance executives, this book will also be of significant value to graduate students in economics, financial management, and business programs.

"The latest in a series exploring twenty-first-century governance, this new volume examines the use of market means to pursue public goals. ! DegreesMarket-based governance!+/- includes both the delegation of traditionally governmental functions to private players, and the importation into government of market-style management approaches and mechanisms of accountability. The contributors (all from Harvard University) assess market-based governance from four perspectives: The ! Degreesdemand side!+/- deals with new, revised, or newly important forms of interaction between government and the market where the public sector is the ! Degreescustomer.!+/- Chapters in this section include Steve Kelman on federal procurement reform, Karen Eggleston and Richard Zeckhauser on contracting for health care, and Peter Frumkin. The ! Degreessupply side!+/- section deals with unsettled questions about government!-s role as a provider (rather than a purchaser) within the market system. Contributors include Georges de Menil, Frederick Schauer and Virginia Wise. A third section explores experiments with market-based arrangements for orchestrating accountability outside government by altering the incentives that operate inside market institutions. Chapters include Robert Stavins on market-based environmental policy, Archon Fung on ! Degreessocial markets,!+/- and Cary Coglianese and David Lazer. The final section examines both the upside and the downside of the market-based approach to improving governance. Contributors include Elaine Kamarck, John D. Donahue, Mark Moore, and Robert Behn. An introduction by John D. Donahue frames market-based governance as an effort to engineer into public work some of the ! Degreesintensive!+/- accountability that characterizes markets without surrendering the ! Degreesextensive!+/- accountability of conventional government. A preface by Joseph S. Nye Jr. sets the book in the context of a larger inquiry into the future of governance. "

This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) war on offshore tax evasion. The authors explain the new emerging regulatory regimes on the global exchange of information to combat offshore tax evasion and analyse why Automatic Exchange of Information (AEOI) is not a "magic bullet" solution. Chapters include coverage of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), AEOI and the Common Reporting Standards (CRS), and the unprecedented extra-territorial enforcement by the United States of its tax and reporting laws, including the FBAR provisions of the Bank Secrecy Act. These new legal regimes directly impact nearly all financial institutions and financial service providers in the U.S., U.K., EU, Canada, and each of the 132 member jurisdictions of the OECD's Global Forum, as well as 8 million U.S. expats. In light of The Panama Papers, this book offers a timely and valuable contribution on the prevalence and costs of international tax evasion for the global financial community, policy-makers, and practitioners alike.

The specific concern of this study is 'politicization' or the relationships between contests in national politics and the capacity for international cooperation. Progress towards fiscal harmonization in the European Community is selected as the substantive focus for the study, although the object is to learn from the EC rather than about it. The author argues that common EC policies usually reach fruition as complex compromises, derived from decisions based on the perceived effect on domestic politics and rivalries, rather than transnational neatness. Lack of political will is frequently blamed for delays in the acceptance of common policies, whereas the truth often lies in the fact that national governments believe that domestic political costs would be prohibitive. Politicization is studied in four major areas: 1. Identification, causes and effects 2. The effect on domestic politics and transnational cooperation in the EC 3. Effects on further 'European integration' 4. Deriving lessons from the EC for more general relationships between domestic politics and international cooperation.

Budgeting has long been considered a rational process using neutral tools of financial management, but this outlook fails to consider the outside influences on leaders' behavior. Steven G. Koven shows that political culture (moralistic, traditionalistic, individualistic) and ideological orientations (liberal vs. conservative) are at least as important as financial tools in shaping budgets.

Koven examines budget formation at the national, state, and local levels to demonstrate the strong influence of attitudes about how public money should be generated and spent. In addition to statistical data, the book includes recent case studies: the 1997 budget agreement; Governor George W. Bush's use of the budget process to advance a conservative policy agenda in the state of Texas; and Mayor Marion Barry's abuses of power in Washington, D.C.

Koven demonstrates that administrative principles are at best an incomplete guide for public officials and that budgeters must learn to interpret signals from the political environment.

Critics of referendums often lament that big money may buy success at the ballot box. But spending by interest groups may also be informative for citizens. This can only happen, however, if the financing of referendum campaigns is regulated. This book offers an overview of these regulations and presents research on their effects.

This book discusses contemporary banking and monetary policy issues from the perspective of the Austrian School of Economics. Based on the heritage of the Austrian school, leading scholars and practitioners offer a coherent diagnosis and analysis of the factors leading to Europe's current financial crisis. The first part of the book discusses Ludwig von Mises's and Friedrich August von Hayek's ideas on banking and monetary policy from both historical and economic standpoints. It includes contributions on Austrian monetary dynamics and micro-foundational business cycle theory, von Mises's concepts of liquidity and solvency of fractional-reserve banks, and liberalism of Austrian economics. The second part analyzes the measures taken by the European Central Bank (ECB) in light of the ideas of von Mises and Hayek. It includes contributions on non-neutrality of money, ECB monetary policy, and the future of the ECB. The third and final part presents discussions on monetary reforms, including contributions on Bitcoins, Cryptocurrencies and anti-deflationist Paranoia.

This is the first book to address the special rules that apply to the taxation of all property and casualty insurance companies, including life insurance companies with property/casualty insurance operations. It covers the special rules that apply to the taxation of captive insurance companies in addition to the general rules that are usually applicable to a captive insurance company. At the same time, it examines the fact that many healthcare organizations are now considered to be insurance companies and will be taxed as such under all the various healthcare reform proposals. Includes a sample tax return for property and casualty insurance companies, Form 1120PC, and guidance on how to read and review a property and/or casualty company annual report.

This book argues that in many jurisdictions free market advocates have resorted to public sector downsizing and privatization as a means of alleviating problems of unemployment and slow economic growth and that, as a consequence, the strategy of reducing public deficits, balancing budgets and achieving surpluses has become widely accepted as the only road to prosperity. The Economics of Public Spending shows in clear and simple terms that the strategy of public sector downsizing is based on a misleading conception of public finance. The book dispels several myths about public deficits and debts, offering alternative approaches to fiscal and monetary policies. The contributors argue convincingly and authoritatively that the public sector is crucial for economic growth, that budget deficits are required for improving the performance of the private sector and that there is a real need for an economic agenda based on public deficits and low stable real interest rates in order to achieve full employment with high wages, more generous social programmes and sustainable inflation. This fascinating and challenging book will be of great interest to policymakers in government, academic researchers as well as public finance experts and economists.

The 20th century will probably be regarded as a watershed in the history of taxation. The first half of the century was characterized by numerous changes to tax theory and practice that alone probably outstripped those of the previous millennium. But these developments are modest when viewed against the barrage of competing theoretical views and technical analyses of tax policy in the century's last five decades, let alone the avalanche of legislation, regulations, rulings and tax commissions that marked, first, the post-war growth of the welfare state and, second, the growing internationalization of world commerce and the ensuing competition for economic advantages. The expert papers in "Tax Conversations" review the principal themes dominating tax debate and tax reform at the end of the century. Together, they seek to explain how these issues have evolved, their current implications, and their possible or probable directions into the next century. The conversations analyze these elements of the tax debate in order to give meaning to their past and to assess the prospects for their futures. The papers in this volume are presented in honour of John G. Head, a scholar whose work has done much to educate tax theorists and those implementing policy, and considered by many to be this generation's leading figure in Australian public finance.

Despite the success of policymakers and the European Central Bank in calming down financial markets since the summer of 2012, European leaders are still facing formidable challenges in making the single currency work in a complex environment. This book starts with a review of the necessary elements of a currency union and highlights the reasons why the system has run into its present troubles. It points to important policy recommendations to be drawn from a structural analysis of the currency union, achievements and failures of the currency union and ways to improve fiscal sustainability and arrive at stable macroeconomic performance for the union. It highlights the importance and the effectiveness of structural reforms that have to accompany fiscal consolidation and discusses the appropriate tools of crisis management and why a restructuring of the Eurozone is not the right step. Based on these considerations, a long-term target picture for the Eurozone as a part of the EU is outlined, providing a valuable contribution to a hopefully intense public debate in the coming years.

This book was prepared mainly for specialists on the assumption that it would provide the background to an important neglected field of discussion in public finance. Since it was first published in 1958, the theory of public goods and its implications for public policy have become incorporated in the main body of the economic analysis of public finance in the literature. A glance at the footnotes of some of the standard textbooks on public finance indicates that this assembly of articles has not been in vain. Probably the most influential part of this collection has been the papers concerned with the theory of public expenditure, which contains two closely related elements. The first is as a part of welfare economics: under what conditions can Pareto optimality be achieved in an economic system in which some goods supplied are indivisible? The other strand of thought is concerned with the positive theory of the public sector: how can economic analysis be used in order to explain how the size and composition of the budget is actually determined?

The events of the last decade have challenged the contemporary neo-classical synthesis in all branches of economics, but particularly public finance. The most notable feature of the 2nd edition of Public Finance in Theory and Practice is the infusion of behavioral economics throughout the text, with an end of chapter question inviting the student to apply a behavioral lens to some question or issue. There continues to be an emphasis on the importance of the institutional context, drawing on examples from many countries and emphasizing the role of lower level governments in a federal system. The first five chapters establish this context by reviewing the role of government in a market system, the description of government structure from an economic perspective, the basic data about revenue and expenditures, the elements of public choice, and the distributional role of government. The book has been substantially reorganized to put more emphasis on public expenditure. Expanded treatment of public goods includes common property resources and congestible or club goods. Expanded discussion of budgeting and cost-benefit analysis provides some practical application of the theory. Updated discussions of social security, public education and health care address these three major contemporary public finance issues. The traditional emphasis on revenue (taxes, fees and grants) has been retained but follows rather than precedes the discussion of expenditures.

This book focuses on the impact on financial regulation and examines the impact of financial regulation on bank performances from different perspectives. More specifically, this study investigates how bank sector reforms and bank regulation and supervision affect the competition, stability and risk-taking behavior in banking system.

The last several decades have seen major advances in the ways in which public economists investigate behavioural responses to taxation. Recent research has utilized new data sets and has applied new empirical methods, including laboratory experiments and natural and controlled field experiments. The application of behavioural economics has contributed insights from other disciplines, especially psychology. Here James Alm and Sebastian Leguizamon discuss the lessons from all this work. Covering such topics as labour supply, charitable giving, savings, capital gains realisations, mobility, bequests, family structure, reported income and tax evasion, they highlight the current state of knowledge in this area. They present new thinking about the relevant issues and an analysis of useful policy options.

Throughout his long career as a professional scholar, Paul Dale Bush has been a cogent theorist, a model practitioner and an ardent defender of academic freedom and of democratic practices. Institutionalist Theory and Applications is the second of two volumes celebrating his career and his contribution to neo-institutional economics.This volume presents contributions by a distinguished group of institutionalist scholars: Edythe S. Miller, Philip A. Klein, James A. Cypher, F. Gregory Hayden, John Groenewegen, Peter Soderbaum, Charles M.A. Clark, Catherine Kavanagh and Janice Peterson. The book explores the interdependence of theory and policy and applies institutional theory to several problem areas of governance and performance. This book will be of great interest to postgraduate students and academics in the field of institutional economics, evolutionary economics, political economy, history of economic theory, methodology, social economics, social policy and social value theory.