The concept of Quality of Public Finance has become of high importance over time. It focuses on the role that public finance and fiscal policy can play to sustain economic growth, employment and competitiveness in the context of European strategy (Lisbon strategy and, now, Europe 2020). Stemming...

Recently many European countries have incurred crises in public finance despite the fact that EU institutions have pushed the national governments toward the sustainability of public finance with compulsory and voluntary rules regarding fiscal governance. This paper investigates the relations...

The diffusion of Public Agencies seems to characterise the approach to public management in European countries. Under New Public Management, the role of politics is to provide strategic planning and economic policy target defini-tion, whereas the administration is responsible for the management...

New Public Management calls for a clear division between politics and the administration, where the former undertakes strategic planning and defines economic targets and the latter is responsible for public service management. In this context, the agency theory underlines a risk of incoherence...