This symposium examines recent developments in public financial management in the European Community (EC). Prior to 1994, this community had twelve country members. It is almost impossible to cover all aspects of the public financial management development of all EC country members. Moreover,...

Before 1980 accountability was hardly addressed in Dutch politics. Illustrative is that full-fledged internal audit units at most government departments were not established until the late 1970s and early 1980s. As a result, accountability was weak in the central government sector, at least...

Budgets have to meet a number of principles in order to fulfil their functions properly. This paper focuses on two of these budget principles. First, it addresses the principle of unity and universalism, and in particular, discusses the issue of earmarking receipts. It is concluded that most of...

The rapid growth of Chinese tax revenues in the past decade is often considered “unnatural” relative to GDP growth. In this paper we investigate this seemingly unnatural growth by presenting different models of the relationship between the annual growth of tax receipts and GDP. The models...

Most countries have established a General Accounting Office (GAO) to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of central government’s policies. A similar office on the local government level is usually lacking. From early 2006, however, local governments in the Netherlands have been legally...