Raising the effectiveness of Italy’s public sector is more urgent than ever. It will be key to revive investment and productivity and improve access to quality public services for the most vulnerable. The quality of public goods and services is variable, weakening Italy’s resilience to...

Studies a number of aspects of the reform of public finance and public management in France (LOLF), with special attention to science and technology policy, using a pragmatist approach to the sociology of the state.

The underlying logic of the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) suggests that federal programs should be evaluated based on empirical evidence that they actually produce the intended outcomes. This study applies the same logic to GPRA itself, investigating empirically whether GPRA may...

We examine the determinants that shape the spending preferences of public sector employees on several budgetary appropriations. Following Niskanen?s (1971, 1975, 1994) budget maximising theory, we test whether these employees prefer larger budgetary appropriations rather than less. We measure...

For more than 25 years, the Social Security Trust Fund has been projected to run out of money in 2033 (give or take a few years), potentially causing benefits to be severely reduced in the absence of corrective legislative action. Today (February 2024), projections are made by the Social...

Public Accounts Committees (PACs) has significant role to play in enhancing oversight and accountability for the use of public funds. This paper discusses the role of PACs in promoting effective, efficient and economic (EEEs) use of public resources for the benefit of the public. It also...

Austerity is a concept that is often used in the public debate. It refers to fiscal policy measures that reduce government spending and raise taxes for the purposes of closing a government budget deficit. This paper analyzes the concept in the context of the current European economic crisis and...

Most party systems have seen a considerable rise in polarization during the past decades. We show that fiscal policies have contributed to this development. Our macro-level analysis of 166 elections since 1980 finds that austerity increases both electoral abstention and votes for non-mainstream...

The existing empirical literature on the US federal revenue-expenditure nexus has had mixed findings. Amongst those papers presenting evidence in favor of causation running from taxes to expenditures, support for the conventional, Friedman-type tax-spend hypothesis is nearly ubiquitous. Evidence...