Teaching Benefit-Cost Analysis provides detail and inspiration that extends and clarifies standard textbooks. Each short, self-contained module includes guidance to additional sources while many also provide class exercises. Classes for advanced undergraduates, practitioners, or Masters students could especially apply these tools of the trade.
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The Ecology of Tax Systems
Factors that Shape the Demand and Supply of Taxes
Vito Tanzi
This groundbreaking book analyzes how the ecology of taxation is fundamental for the success or failure of tax systems. It specifically focuses on the role of the ecological environment on taxation; the factors that determine the ecology of taxation; and how the ecology of taxation has changed and may continue to evolve. The implicit, important conclusion is that there are no permanent or universal optimal tax theories: all theories are related to this ecology.
Fiscal Decentralization and Local Finance in Developing Countries
Development from Below
Roy Bahl and Richard M. Bird
This book draws on experiences in developing countries to bridge the gap between the conventional textbook treatment of fiscal decentralization and the actual practice of subnational government finance. The extensive literature about the theory and practice is surveyed and longstanding problems and new questions are addressed. It focuses on the key choices that must be made in decentralizing, on how economic and political factors shape the choices that countries make, and on how, by paying more attention to the need for a more comprehensive approach and the critical connections between different components of decentralization reform, everyone involved might get more for their money.
The Reform of Network Industries
Evaluating Privatisation, Regulation and Liberalisation in the EU
Edited by Massimo Florio
Network industries such as electricity, gas, rail, local public transport, telecommunications and postal services are recognised by the EU as crucial for fostering European social and territorial cohesion. Providing an overview of key policy reforms in these industries and an empirical evaluation, this thought-provoking book offers a critical perspective on the functioning of the networks that provide vital services to EU citizens.
Public Banks in the Age of Financialization
A Comparative Perspective
Edited by Christoph Scherrer
This book asks the important question of whether public banks are a better alternative to profit-seeking private banks. Do public banks provide finance for development? Do they serve as stability anchors in financial markets? What kind of governance keeps public banks accountable to the public? Theoretically the book draws on the works of Minsky for the question on stability and on interpretative policy analysis for the issue of governance. It compares empirically three countries with significant public banks: Brazil, Germany, and India.
Edited by Benton E. Gup
Anyone trying to understand finance has to contend with the evolving and dynamic nature of the topic. Changes in economic conditions, regulations, technology, competition, globalization, and other factors regularly impact the development of the field, but certain essential concepts remain key to a good understanding. This book provides insights about the most important concepts in finance.
Global Developments in Public Infrastructure Procurement
Evaluating Public–Private Partnerships and Other Procurement Options
Darrin Grimsey and Mervyn K. Lewis
There is widespread acceptance of the importance of infrastructure, but less agreement about how it should be funded and procured. While most public infrastructure is still provided in-house or by traditional procurement methods – with well-researched strengths and weaknesses – the development of service concession arrangements has seen a greater emphasis on lifecycle costing, risk assessment and asset design as featured in a variety of public private partnership (PPP) delivery models. This book examines the various procurement approaches, and provides a framework for comparing their advantages and disadvantages. Drawing on international experience, it considers some of the best and worst examples of PPPs, and infrastructure projects generally, along with the lessons for improving infrastructure procurement processes.
Financial Underpinnings of Europe’s Financial Crisis
Liberalization, Integration, and Asymmetric State Power
Nina Eichacker
This book analyzes how financial liberalization affected the development of the financial crisis in Europe, with particular attention given to the ways in which power asymmetries within Western Europe facilitated financial liberalization and distributed the costs and gains from it. The author combines institutional narrative analysis with empirical surveys and econometrics, as well as country-level studies of financial liberalization and its consequences before and after the 2008 Global Financial Crisis.
Central and Local Government Relations in Asia
Achieving Fiscal Sustainability
Edited by Naoyuki Yoshino and Peter J. Morgan
Sustainable and inclusive growth in emerging Asian economies requires high levels of public investment in areas such as infrastructure, education, health, and social services. The increasing complexity and regional diversity of these investment needs, together with the trend of democratization, has led to fiscal decentralization being implemented in many Asian economies. This book takes stock of some major issues regarding fiscal decentralization, including expenditure and revenue assignments, transfer programs, and sustainability of local government finances, and develops important findings and policy recommendations.
The Green Market Transition
Carbon Taxes, Energy Subsidies and Smart Instrument Mixes
Edited by Stefan E. Weishaar, Larry Kreiser, Janet E. Milne, Hope Ashiabor and Michael Mehling
The Paris Agreement’s key objective is the strengthening of the global response to climate change by transitioning the world to an increasingly green economy. In this book, environmental tax and climate law experts examine carbon taxes energy subsidies, and support schemes for carbon and energy policies. Chapters reflect on the underlying policy dynamics and the constraints of various fiscal measures, and consider the harmonisation of smart instrument mixes.