Examining the increasingly relevant topic of public sector efficiency, this dynamic Handbook investigates the context of constrained fiscal space and public funding sources using cross-country datasets in areas including China, India, sub-Saharan Africa and OECD economies. Expert contributors evaluate public sector efficiency for both national and sub-national governments, analysing important sectors such as education, health, public-private enterprises and state-owned enterprises. Given voters' requirements to be more educated and for greater accountability on the use of public spending, chapters describe methodology and measurement issues alongside the allocation of resources to ensure better efficiency and effectiveness. Forward-thinking, the Handbook provides insights into how improving efficiency can greatly assist governments when dealing with unforeseen events such as the recent Covid-19 pandemic and the conflict in Ukraine. This Handbook will be an important read for academics and students of public sector economics and public administration and management. It will also provide an excellent background for the policy makers of international institutions looking to help the general public have a better understanding of how public spending works in order for them to make informed decisions when voting.

For more than three centuries the collections of the Ashmolean Museum have occupied a position of primary importance in the history of collecting in Great Britain and an honourable position in the development of museums on a European scale. Many collection catalogues (especially those of the natural sciences), compiled by curators over the past two or three hundred years, have never before been published. This volume - a further volume, designated Part II is to follow - starts to bring these collections to a wider audience. Their independent importance is considerable, for they provide not only a record through time of the fluctuating content of the Ashmolean but also an index of the changing preoccupations of the collectors and donors who progressively enriched the museum, of the curators who tended it, and of the wider community of scholars for whom the collections represented a fundamental resource.