Search

Many South African municipalities suffer servicedelivery problems that can usually be ascribed to inadequate management, skills, and budgets. The reasons for these, in turn, invariably include weak economic base, unwise spending of available funds, and difficulty in recruiting and retaining skilled staff. The White Paper on Local Government of 1998, to which Valli Moosa, the then Minister for Provincial Affairs and Constitutional Development, referred as "almost [being] regarded as a 'mini- Constitution' for local government", together with the Municipal Demarcation Act of the same year, spelled out the framework in terms of which the local government system would be transformed. Municipalities, covering the entire country "wall-towall", were thereafter established and powers and functions were assigned to them. After more than two decades, there can no longer be any doubt that many municipalities are, to a significant extent, failing in their primary duty of delivering services. The author sought to investigate to what extent this failing is due to flaws in the 'mini-Constitution'. By examining aspects of the performance of municipalities, the article assesses key assumptions made by the drafters of the White Paper in respect of a number of key attributes for service delivery. These attributes include sufficient skills and funding, prudent budgeting and effective spending, good leadership, adequate systems and data, stability of the senior leadership, and the presence of trust and credibility. The article finds that many of the assumptions were flawed, with severe consequences for service delivery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the theoretical foundations of fiscal sustainability and the policy prescription that when the trajectory of public debt is above a certain threshold, priority should be given to fiscal consolidation. The author contends that the assumption that the government sector is subject to an intertemporal budget constraint can be validated only within a real-exchange economy where money is neutral and public debt entails the absorption of private savings. Conversely, when the economy is viewed as a system of interlocking balance sheets under a paper standard, public debt may prompt higher prices but not an inflation overhang forcing monetization or default. Another justification regards the quality of spending when policymakers' incentives create a deficit bias, but this must be balanced against the need to flexibly provide safe financial assets to offer fiscal support when needed. In conclusion, limiting fiscal action within an intertemporal budget constraint is unwarranted under a paper standard and generates deflationary effects, underlining the urgent need that Europe move decisively toward the creation of a coordinated fiscal policy joined to a permanent capacity to issue EU debt. This is today's most urgently needed reform for the economic, social, and political sustainability of the European Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on ways to create an effective budgeting process for companies in the paper industry. Impact of assets with high cost on profit; Importance of considering the exposure time to risk in budgeting; Effect of reinvesting less than full depreciation on manufacturing operations.

Copyright of Defense & Strategy / Obrana a strategie is the property of Institute for Strategic Studies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper examines state level lobbying data to determine how budgeting affects the timing, intensity and composition of lobbying expenditures. Using a database of all available lobbying expenditures in the U.S. states ranging up to 25 years, the paper shows interest group lobbying increases substantially during the budgeting process, and the budgeting process is unlike other issues lobbyists face. Spikes in lobbying during budgeting are driven primarily by business groups, and these business groups account for most of the changes on the margin in lobbying activity. Moreover, even groups relatively unaffected by budgets lobby more intensely during legislative budgeting, consistent with the "Christmas tree" effect of appropriations and budget bills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aimed at a systematic review of the role of FinTech in enhancing the digital transformation of Saudi Arabian banks. Google Scholar was searched with related search terms to finally select 28 papers using the PRISMA process of screening and selection. There were very few papers directly dealing with the use of FinTech as a tool for digital transformation in banks, not specifically in traditional banks. There were a few papers on digital tools used in FinTech. Overall, the digital transformation of any kind of bank using FinTech tools had been slow and a small percentage of the total. The situation was worse in the case of Saudi banks despite the large amounts of budgetary allocations for technologies in banking as a part of its Vision 2030. This was because of the late entry of Saudi Arabia into these concepts. The need for Islamic banks to follow Sharia rules was not found to be a great problem. All these points indicate to the need for greater acceleration of using FinTech tools for the digital transformation of Saudi traditional banks. Some limitations of this review are the low rigour of the available papers due to methodological limitations, discussion papers without empirical data dominating and a wide range of aims provided in the papers. The need for substantially more work on Saudi banks has been highlighted. The validity of the conclusions from this review needs to be verified using empirical research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper presents a review of literature, aimed at analyzing and understanding the nexus of knowledge on the topic of government budgetary responses to COVID-19 and identifying gaps for future research directions on crisis budgeting. Design/methodology/approach: A systematic literature review approach was conducted by considering scientific journal articles written in English and published through 2020–2022. The databases used for the literature search in this paper were Scopus and Web of Science, resulting in 41 articles for final review. Findings: This review found that in a crisis, budgetary responses were greatly determined by perceived uncertainties. In the case of the COVID-19 crisis, governments seemed to prioritize economic recovery. While many studies have documented budgetary responses to the crisis, most were written in the beginning of the crisis through documentary content analysis, leaving significant research gaps. Thus, this review offers directions for future research concerning governmental response to perceived uncertainty, logic behind governments' budgeting strategies, sustainable development principles within crisis budgeting and the prioritization of economic considerations in a health crisis. Originality/value: This paper is one of the first to present insights into the state of research regarding the topic of government budgeting during the COVID-19 crisis. In addition, it provides insights from the literature for anticipating future shocks and crises, along with directions for future researchers in developing their research agenda. Peer review: The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-01-2023-0057 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The traditional aim in transportation planning is to maximise gains associated with vehicular travel distances or times, indirectly prioritising populations that live near existing or proposed roads—remote populations that first require hours of walking to reach roads are overlooked. In this paper, rural roads optimisation is performed using a new model that estimates proposed roads' accessibility gains, considering reductions in vehicular travel time and reductions in walking time required by remote populations to reach them. This ensures that even the most remote populations that may benefit from new roads are included in their evaluation. When presented with a large number of proposed roads and the requirement of determining a plan within a suitable budget, it is often infeasible to construct all proposed roads. In such instances, subsets of well-performing road-combinations that are evaluated with respect to multiple objectives need to be identified for analysis and comparison–for which multi-objective optimisation approaches can be employed. Traditional optimisation approaches return a small number of road-combination plans only, limited to user-specified budget levels and objective weight sets. This paper presents an innovative heuristic solution approach that overcomes such limitations by returning thousands of well-performing solutions scattered across a budget span, and not limited in number to user-specified objective weight sets at fixed budget levels. The heuristic is employed along with a more traditional weighted-sum integer-linear programming approach to determine high-quality road-combination plans selected from 92 roads recently proposed for construction in Nepal's remote Karnali province. Using these two approaches with inputs from the new multi-modal accessibility model, it is illustrated how rural roads planning can be performed to the benefit of rural populations regardless of their proximity to roads. New planning and analysis benefits of the heuristic are demonstrated by comparing its solutions to those determined by the weighted-sum approach, providing a level of detail and sophistication not previously possible for rural roads planning and analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper aims to investigate how embedding accounting techniques of cost and budgeting within the Australian National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) potentially perpetuates colonial practices for Australian First Nations people living in remote areas. Further, the paper aims to explore how accounting might help to integrate the unique modes of accountability First Nations people have over disability care into the NDIS funding system. Ultimately, the aim is to discern whether accounting practices can be mobilised as a means to decolonising the NDIS framework. Design/methodology/approach: This study uses a qualitative methodology to analyse public hearings from the Australian Disability Royal Commission. Drawing on Bhabha's (1994) concept of the "third space", this study investigates how accounting techniques can be used to potentially decolonise the NDIS. This study also borrows Bhabha's (1994) concept of the third space to explore the potential for decolonising the NDIS through accounting techniques. Findings: Findings show that the accounting techniques pertaining to funding and costs embedded within the NDIS contribute to displacing and disconnecting First Nations people from their cultural practices and ways of life. Further, the analysis reveals that the NDIS funding system could help to decolonise the NDIS space if it were modified to incorporate First Nations' perspectives on accountability for disability care. Originality/value: The case of the NDIS exposes glimpses of colonisation in contemporary Australia, where Western institutional and economic systems dominate over the structure and authority of the practice. In this paper, this study demonstrates that the accounting system used by the NDIS plays a role in marginalising First Nations people. However, accounting, as a technology of negotiation, could also be mobilised to enhance accountability for disability care outcomes and pave the way for decolonising public policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the growth-enhancing and growth-retarding effects of different budgetary fiscal variables using a balanced panel of 32 middle-income countries for the time period of 2000–2017. Much of previous research requires to be re-evaluated as it ignores the biases associated with either incomplete or wrong specification, or both, of the budget constraint and the money supply. This paper addresses these gaps and obtains more unbiased, consistent and efficient estimates for the fiscal variables, using both static and dynamic panel econometric techniques. Specifically, this paper finds that (1) larger tax and non-tax revenues retard economic growth; (2) higher allocation to public capital expenditure appears to have positive and significant effect on growth; (3) fiscal deficit appears to have neutral-growth effects; and (4) controlling broad money supply corrects for biases in the orthogonal specification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Zeszyty Prawnicze Biuro Analiz Sejmowej is the property of Kancelaria Sejmu and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering is the property of Canadian Science Publishing and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)