This paper discusses the strategic building blocks of pension reform. The early sections set out the simple economics of pensions and discuss a series of myths which have proved remarkably persistent. Subsequent sections draw together the conclusions for policy design from earlier theoretical...

This paper highlights some key policy issues regarding the performance of public expenditure and proposes an analytical framework for its assessment. The framework distinguishes three economic objectives of policies in the pursuit of better performance of public expenditure: macroeconomic...

The economic crisis in the early 1990s prompted action on reforming the Swedish welfare state and its institutions, including deregulation of a wide range of product markets. In that way, Sweden took early action compared to other OECD countries currently struggling with how to make public...

Public spending is very high in Norway, partly reflecting an extensive coverage of the welfare system and ambitious regional development objectives. Moreover, several institutional features contribute to dampening the cost-effectiveness of many public-spending programmes. Abundant oil revenues...

The UK medium-term budgetary framework introduced in 1997 addressed a number of weaknesses of the former regime, notably a bias against capital expenditure and, more generally, poor conditions for longerterm planning adversely affecting central government spending departments, local authorities...

There is vigorous debate about reforms to address the balance between investor protection and the right to regulate in the over 3000 existing investment treaties. This paper first notes the growing trend to analyse particular treaty rules rather than treaties as a whole and the importance of...

The fair and equitable treatment (FET) provision has leapt to prominence in the last 15 years as the principal ground of liability at issue in many if not most investment treaty arbitration claims. In debates about the impact of investment treaties on the right to regulate, FET is second only to...

In recent years, analyzes about Digital Democracy have grown significantly and today it is already a field with several published studies. The objective of this work is to produce an exploratory bibliometric study with an overview of the current stage and characteristics of the empirical...

One of the difficulties of measuring performance in the deliver y of police services from surveys is the problem of reconciling views about the quality of policing of distinct groups of respondents with different prior outlook about policing. This paper suggests a method for addressing the...

The State Audit Office of Hungary has audited 100 local governments in 2012 and 2013 as for the development of internal controls - the aim of this study is to highlight the main deficiencies. According to the findings, the content of the organizational and operational rule is not properly...