Service Alert
Delay in delivery of Direct to Player materials
You may experience a delay in delivery of Direct to Player materials. All requests for materials will be delivered as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience.
You may experience a delay in delivery of Direct to Player materials. All requests for materials will be delivered as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience.
Showing 21 - 40 of 1727 items
By Raoul Beunen, Martijn Duineveld, Kristof Van Assche. 2014
This short books offers the reader a remarkable new perspective on the way markets, laws and societies evolve together. It…
can be of use to anyone interested in development, market and public sector reform, public administration, politics & law. Based on a wide variety of case studies on three continents and a variety of conceptual sources, the authors develop a theory that clarifies the nature and functioning of dependencies that mark governance evolutions. This in turn delineates in an entirely new manner the spaces open for policy experiment. As such, it offers a new mapping of the middle ground between libertarianism and social engineering. Theoretically, the approach draws on a wide array of sources: institutional & development economics, systems theories, post-structuralism, actor- network theories, planning theory and legal studies.By P. K. Rao. 2015
This short book integrates the imperatives of public debt sustainability with those of socioeconomic sustainability in the context of budget…
austerity measures. It is argued that poverty, inequality and unemployment problems should be integral aspects of policy frameworks for austerity and fiscal stability. The economics of austerity in much of economic analysis remains narrowly focused and lopsided, since the implications on the role of human capital and loss of prosperity base are usually ignored. This book argues that various misapplications of policies of government austerity can be avoided if greater attention is accorded to the imperatives of maintaining the win-win approaches for socioeconomic resilience and sustainability in conjunction with debt sustainability and/or fiscal stability.By Francesco Paolucci. 2011
As a contribution to the search for suitable and sustainable solutions to finance rising medical care expenditures, the book proposes…
a typology of healthcare financing and insurance schemes, based on the dimensions of basic vs. supplementary services and mandatory vs. voluntary coverage, to analyse the design and the complex interactions between various financing and insurance arrangements in several OECD countries. This study provides a better understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the financial and organisational structures of different countries' healthcare financing and insurance schemes. Its main contributions are the development of a novel and rigorous theoretical framework analysing the economic rationales for the optimal design of healthcare financing and insurance schemes, and an empirical and institutional analysis investigating the consequences for efficiency and affordability of the complex interactions between basic and supplementary sources of financing.By Mark Aesch. 2016
National polling indicates that, for the first time in American history, people believe their children will not be as well…
off as they are. Even more alarming, is that many Americans believe the biggest problem facing our nation today is government itself. The public sector receives trillions of taxpayer dollars every year, and yet because of its inability to operate effectively, government fails to deliver the quality of service we are paying for. It is clear the American people are weary of paying Ritz Carlton-level taxes for Bates Motel-quality government. In Saving America, Mark Aesch tells us where government--at the local, state, and federal level--is falling short and offers a coherent, non-partisan, seven-step plan for rebuilding our nation's public agencies. The book is not a political broadside nor is it theoretical; instead, it's an inspirational and instructional framework that will help citizens, elected officials, and public administrators make American government great--and provide taxpayers with real value. The 7 Steps to Success will lead to measurable gains for organizations large and small, including school systems, municipal governments, entire states, and even the federal government itself, producing real results for taxpayers and consumers.By James Mann. 2007
What are our ideas and hidden assumptions about China? Does America's policy toward China make sense? In this vigorous look…
at China's political evolution and direction, Mann offers a startling vision of our future with China that will have a profound impact for decades to come.By Daniel Alpert. 2014
The invisible hand of capitalism is broken. Economic and political forces are preventing markets from correcting themselves, and we're now…
living in an unprecedented age of oversupply.Governments and central banks across the developed world have tried every policy tool imaginable, yet our economies remain sluggish or worse. Howdid we get here, and how can advanced nations compete and prosper once more?In this bold call to arms, economic policy expert Daniel Alpert argues that a global labor glut, excess productive capacity, and a rising ocean of cheap capital have kept the economies of the first world, and notably the United States, mired in underemployment and anemic growth.Distracted by a technology boom and a massive debt bubble in the 1990s and early 2000s, advanced nations failed to assess the ultimate impact of the torrent of labor and capital unleashed by formerly socialist economies. After the financial crisis of 2008, the United States and Europe joined an already sclerotic Japan in dire economic straits. Today, as the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) and others poach jobs from Western Europe, the United States, and Japan, household incomes in the developed world continue to decline. Many policymakers believe in outdated supplyside economic remedies. They miss the connection between global oversupply and the lack of domestic investment and growth. But Alpert shows how they are intertwined: We cannot understand the housing bubble and the financial crisis without appreciating how the rise of the emerging nations distorted the economies of rich countries. And we can't chart a path for growth in the developed world without recognizing that many of these distorting forces are still at work.The Age of Oversupply offers a bold, fresh approach to fixing the West's economic woes through large-scale fiscal stimulus measures, investments in infrastructure, and an aggressive private debt reduction plan. It also delivers a vigorous challenge to proponents of austerity economics.By Henry Cisneros, Nelson W. Wolff. 2008
San Antonio boasts one of the country's fastest-growing metropolitan regions, thanks to visionary personalities, key politicians, a vibrant citizenry, and…
a bit of luck. In this lively behind-the-scenes account, former mayor Nelson Wolff focuses on four major developments - the San Antonio Spurs' AT&T Arena, Toyota, the PGA Village, and the River Walk expansion - that transformed the city. This intriguing, highly readable journey through the contemporary life of one American city offers hope to all cities striving to recreate themselves.By Melissa Rossi. 2008
A guide to the politicos, money men, lobbyists, and deal makers who really run America What foreign country has the…
power to send America crashing into a recession? Why is the USA still dangerously dependent on oil, when viable energy alternatives have existed for decades? Who made the call that we should return to nuclear energy--and then took a high-paying position with a nuclear company? Which youth group was a spawning ground for many contemporary power mongers? What lobbyists and special-interest groups are running the show on Capitol Hill--and exactly what tools of persuasion are they using? Melissa Rossi answers these questions and more in this timely and topical guide to who's pulling the strings behind the scenes of American politics. This latest edition of Rossi's popular What Every American Should Know. . . series puts the spotlight on our own backyard, covering topics like: * Which groups ensure that Americans pay more for drugs than any other nation * How our immigration laws are damaging the U.S. economy * Who's telling the school boards what your child will learn * Who really benefits from U.S. foreign policy * How corporations and government agencies are spying on us * Why we should avoid electronic voting * Who killed the electric car and who exposed it Organized by topic for easy reference, What Every American Should Know About Who's Really Running America shows Americans what is going on behind the scenes and how they can counterbalance the influence of a small, powerful elite to put the power back where it should be--in the hands of the people.By Henry Cisneros, Nelson W. Wolff. 2008
San Antonio boasts one of the country's fastest-growing metropolitan regions, thanks to visionary personalities, key politicians, a vibrant citizenry, and…
a bit of luck. In this lively behind-the-scenes account, former mayor Nelson Wolff focuses on four major developments - the San Antonio Spurs' AT&T Arena, Toyota, the PGA Village, and the River Walk expansion - that transformed the city. This intriguing, highly readable journey through the contemporary life of one American city offers hope to all cities striving to recreate themselves.By Ian Bremmer. 2010
Understanding the rise of state capitalism and its threat to global free markets The End of the Free Market details…
the growing phenomenon of state capitalism, a system in which governments drive local economies through ownership of market-dominant companies and large pools of excess capital, using them for political gain. This trend threatens America's competitive edge and the conduct of free markets everywhere. An expert on the intersection of economics and politics, Ian Bremmer has followed the rise of state-owned firms in China, Russia, the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, Iran, Venezuela, and elsewhere. He demonstrates the growing challenge that state capitalism will pose for the entire global economy. Among the questions addressed: Are we on the brink of a new kind of Cold War, one that pits competing economic systems in a battle for dominance? Can free market countries compete with state capitalist powerhouses over relations with countries that have elements of both systems-like India, Brazil, and Mexico? Does state capitalism have staying power? This guide to the next big global economic trend includes useful insights for investors, business leaders, policymakers, and anyone who wants to understand important emerging changes in international politics and the global economy.By Xenophon, H. G. Dakyns.
By Jeffrey Delmon. 2011
Investment in infrastructure is critical to economic growth, quality of life, poverty reduction, access to education, healthcare, and achieving many…
of the goals of a robust economy. But infrastructure is difficult for the public sector to get right. Public-private partnerships (PPPs) can help; they provide more efficient procurement, focus on consumer satisfaction and life cycle maintenance, and provide new sources of investment, in particular through limited recourse debt. But PPPs present challenges of their own. This book provides a practical guide to PPPs for policy makers and strategists, showing how governments can enable and encourage PPPs, providing a step-by-step analysis of the development of PPP projects, and explaining how PPP financing works, what PPP contractual structures look like, and how PPP risk allocation works in practice. It includes specific discussion of each infrastructure sector, with a focus on the strategic and policy issues essential for successful development of infrastructure through PPPs.By International Monetary Fund. 2014
By Chicago Tribune Staff, Wgn-Tv Staff. 2012
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn, and former Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley have something in common that…
could easily become each of their undoing: Chicago's severely underfunded public pension system. Pension Games is a series of investigative reports on the broken, corrupt system that provides retirement payments to Chicago's many public service workers. Beginning in 2010, the Tribune has tracked this crisis from its birth to its current state of crisis roiling political and business figures from Cook County to Springfield. Through its in-depth research and watchdog reporting, the Chicago Tribune has exposed mismanagement and corruption within the pension system by public officials past and present.Pension Games is a hard-hitting expose that reveals how former mayor Richard M. Daley used pension funds to make political deals and give oversized pensions to all sorts of city workers--himself included. By looking at the history of the pension system, the nature of the laws themselves, and a trove of primary materials, investigative journalists have uncovered rampant corruption and uncorrected failures that have led to an attempt at state-wide pension reform.This book clearly details the exact makeup of arcane pension laws that have allowed this crisis to cripple public finances, while never before examined primary documents and pension records reveal the complex nature of this problem. Pension Games helps explain the origins, cause, and nature of the issues afflicting the residents of Chicago and Illinois in straightforward, aboveboard terms, making the convoluted ins and outs of pensions quite accessible. Complementing this analysis of public records and finances are profiles and case studies of specific individuals, bringing the results of the system's misuse and abuse to life.As the Tribune continued to investigate the issues at the heart of the pension problem, it eventually triggered an official look into pension reform in Illinois, as well as a new federal investigation of several union officials' pensions in Chicago. The immediate and long-term crises posed by a pension system unhinged are at the forefront of public officials' minds, not the least of whom include Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Governor Pat Quinn. If they cannot reform these public finance systems, it may easily be their own political careers that will pay the price. What's more is that many of any convictions or revelations that come out of the reformation process and federal investigation may taint if not undo the largely positive legacy of Richard M. Daley.For the first time ever, one book examines the breadth and depth of the pension problem in Illinois and Chicago, and it is a problem that will only continue to be in the news until major reforms can be enacted. Even after, the fallout from decades of pension abuse will not only affect the Midwest's largest hub of political and economic activity in Chicago and Illinois, but it will have major repercussions for cities and states across the nation struggling with the same issues.By Manuel Pedro Rodríguez Bolívar. 2017
This book analyses the methods used to assess financial sustainability as defined by the International Federation of Accountants IFAC…
Recently there have been calls to consider sustainability as a fundamental guiding principle in public management The financial and economic crisis has spurred a demand for greater financial sustainability in public administrations Although the concept of sustainability has been traditionally associated with three dimensions environmental social and economic this book is focuses on the metrics used to evaluate financial sustainability and explores the concept of financial health It will be of interest to researchers and academics in the field of financial sustainabilityBy Richard C. Feiock, John T. Scholz. 2009
This book investigates the self-organizing responses of governments and interests to the institutional collective action (ICA) dilemmas of particular concern…
to students of federalism, urban governance, and regional management of natural resources. ICA dilemmas arise in fragmented systems whenever decisions by one independent formal authority do not consider costs or benefits imposed on others. The ICA framework analyzes networks, joint projects, partnerships, and other mechanisms developed by affected parties to mitigate ICA decision externalities. These mechanisms play a widespread but little-understood role in federalist systems by reshaping incentives in order to encourage coordination/cooperation. The empirical studies of urban service delivery and regional integration of regional resource management address three questions: How does a given mechanism mitigate costs of uncoordinated decisions? What incentives do potential members have to create the mechanism? How do incentives induced by the mitigating mechanism affect its sustainability in a changing environment and its adaptability to other ICA dilemmas?By Jorge Martinez-Vazquez, Stanley L. Winer. 2014
Although coercion is a fundamental and unavoidable part of our social lives, economists have not offered an integrated analysis of…
its role in the public economy. The essays in this book focus on coercion arising from the operation of the fiscal system, a major part of the public sector. Collective choices on fiscal matters emerge from and have all the essential characteristics of social interaction, including the necessity to force unwanted actions on some citizens. This was recognized in an older tradition in public finance which can still serve as a starting point for modern work. The contributors to the volume recognize this tradition, but add to it by using contemporary frameworks to study a set of related issues concerning fiscal coercion and economic welfare. These issues range from the compatibility of an open access society with the original Wicksellian vision to the productivity of coercion in experimental games.By Jacqueline Best, Alexandra Gheciu. 2014
Many international relations scholars argue that private authority and private actors are playing increasingly prominent roles in global governance. This…
book focuses on the other side of the equation: the transformation of the public dimension of governance in the era of globalization. It analyses that transformation, advancing two major claims: first, that the public is beginning to play a more significant role in global governance, and, second, that it takes a rather different form than has traditionally been understood in international relations theory. The authors suggest that unless we transcend conventional wisdom about the public as a distinct sphere, separate from the private domain, we cannot understand the dynamics and consequences of its apparent return. Using examples drawn from international political economy, international security and environmental governance, they argue that 'the public' should be conceptualized as a collection of culturally-specific social practices.By Rudiger Dornbusch, Mario Draghi. 1990
This book from the Centre for Economic Policy Research collects theoretical, applied and historical research on the welfare economics of…
public debt; how inappropriate debt management can lead to funding crises; capital levies; debt consolidation; U. S. public debt history; political influences on debt accumulation; trade-offs between indexation and maturity; and confidence effects in a stochastic rational expectations framework.By Naseer Ahmed Khan. 2018
This book discusses various dimensions of Indian fiscal federalism focusing on the current fiscal imbalances - both vertical and…
horizontal - and their correction Throwing light on different angles of this subject it presents well-researched papers which are divided into three sections The first section Fiscal federalism and resolving the fiscal imbalances includes five chapters that discuss this theme and also explain the various strategies to remove the existing imbalances in India Fiscal decentralization for high growth which is the second section explains how decentralisation leads to high economic growth and showcases empirical evidence from a few Indian states that are flourishing due to this policy The third section Emerging issues offers six chapters describing several existing key concerns in fiscal federalism that have a major impact on achieving India s development goals Including contributions from leading academics in this field the book will be of great interest to research scholars and policy makers alike Besides addressing the core issue of fiscal imbalances and ways to correct them the chapters touch on several issues confronting the Indian fiscal system at the centre state and local levels The chapters are well researched and well argued The book is a valuable addition to the literature on Fiscal Federalism - Dr C Rangarajan Ex-Governor of Reserve Bank of India Chairman Madras School of Economics Chennai India