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The purpose of this study is to analyze the effect of operating expenditures consisting of research-development, marketing and general administrative items on firm performance. For that purpose, data of 16 companies for 2008-2015 operating in technology sector trading in Istanbul Stock Exchange were utilized. In the study operating expenditures items (research-development (R&D), marketingsale- distribution expenditures (MSDE) and general administrative expenditures (GAE)) were used as an independent variable and Return Of Equity (ROE) was used as a dependent variable. The relationship between firm performance and operating expenditures in the study was analyzed through Pedroni Panel Cointegration analysis. According to analysis results, there is a long term relationship between firm performance and operating expenditures items consisting of general administrative expenditures, marketing-sale-distribution expenses and researchdevelopment. When the coefficients for this long term relationship are analyzed, we can see that general administritive expenditures and firm value has an adverse, but marketing-sale-distribution expenditures and research-development has a direct relationship. i.e. while marketing-sale-distribution and research-development expenditures increase firm performance, general administrative expenditures decrease.

This paper proposes a new measure of public expenditure force that policy makers and budget analysts should track in detail over time in routine fiscal monitoring. The paper suggests that adopting the measure will not only warn policy makers of possible impending fiscal pressures, but will help them to differentiate between those budgetary pressures that are temporary and those that may require reforms. The main utility of the expenditure force measure will be in country fiscal analysis. Measuring force across the entire budget allows practitioners to monitor and decompose the micro drivers of public spending pressure, watch out for rapidly expanding spending lines, and identify priorities for reform before these pressures lead to macro fiscal problems. Yet by its construct, spending force is internationally comparable, and independent of expenditure levels or spending types. This could allow global monitoring comparisons and global research into the drivers of public spending force across particular types of country characteristics and economic conditions. In time, and as more data become available, researchers can use the force measure to compare and contrast the dynamics of expenditure types across countries. For example the measure can be used to explore what gives some spending types an initial impulse; whether underlying factors cause different public spending categories to grow faster than average, or to accelerate over time; and what successful countries have done to manage rising force without damaging public services. Since force seems to be a decent predictor of fiscal episodes, it is suggested that “speed limits” for spending might be a feasible component of fiscal rules.

This paper reviews international practices for ‘bottom-up costing’ for medium-term expenditure frameworks. Medium-term expenditure frameworks are important because they incorporate the multi-annual nature of the fiscal policy into the budget process, mitigating its short-term bias. They also allow for the incorporation of the effects of policy decisions and provide for a comprehensive fiscal sustainability picture. However, there are significant gaps in current understanding of how costing and cost information is implemented within medium-term expenditure frameworks. The objective of this paper is to assemble information on practices used in Australia, Austria, Canada, and the Netherlands to determine program costs as part of medium-term expenditure planning, and to provide preliminary observations on the strengths and weaknesses of current arrangements. The overall findings are that current costing practices fall short of the declared objectives of medium-term expenditure frameworks. The report makes some specific observations on the status of costing practices within the surveyed jurisdictions, namely that: (i) although there is no typical medium-term expenditure frameworks, some features tend to be more compatible with a greater role for bottom-up costing; (ii) where costing practices are specified, they are generally expected to be used across the entire budget, but in practice the focus is on new or expanded programs; (iii) the capacity to distinguish existing and new programs is important in utilizing cost information; (iv) the distinction between conventional program costing and forecasting helps to explain differences in costing approaches; and (v) where they are specified, costing methodologies are recommended but not mandated.

Over the review period covered by this report (2003-2012), the budget allocated to agriculture increased noticeably more than the sector’s contribution to GDP. This reflects a notable effort by the Chad authorities to increase the budget to boost this sector’s development in recent years. In this proactive context, Chad signed its CAADP compact in December 2013 to continue supporting agriculture’s revival. The CAADP is being implemented in Chad even as the terms of the National Rural Sector Investment Program (PNISR, 2014-2020) are being finalized. Within the context of the CAADP, the Government of Chad (GOC) wished to undertake a review of public agriculture expenditures to learn from past budgetary implementation in this sector with a view to improving future program performance. Following a request by the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation (MoAI), the NEPAD planning and coordination agency gave Chad it’s backing for this review. This process was undertaken by the Program for Strengthening National Comprehensive Agricultural Public Expenditure in Sub-Saharan Africa, co-financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the CAADP Multi-Donor Trust Fund. This program, implemented by the World Bank, aims to improve the impact of the still-limited public resources available to governments in Sub-Saharan Africa to foster agricultural development and reduce poverty in rural areas, where most of the poor in these countries, notably Chad, live. This study follows and builds upon a number of similar studies conducted in recent years on public expenditure management, in particular in Chad the Action Plan for the Modernization of Public Finances (PAMFIP). However, these studies have focused on budget management as a whole, and none to date has looked at the agricultural sector specifically.

The Timor-Leste health resource tracking study was undertaken in order to improve the flow of critical cash and in-kind resources to districts and health centers by identifying, and proposing how to relieve, the most critical impediments in the public financial management (PFM) cycle. The study follows these three inputs backwards through every stage of the PFM cycle in order to unearth the pertinent issues that impede the timely and sufficient delivery of inputs to frontline providers. It required the collection of data from a wide variety of sources and the use of diverse methodological approaches, including semi-structured district- and facility level surveys, one-to-one interviews, transaction analysis, document review, and analysis of the government's financial management information system (FMIS). The study findings are presented in detail, together with the supporting evidence and key related recommendations, in chapter one, operating cash, chapter two, fuel budget, and chapter three, vehicle repairs and maintenance. Chapter four presents a set of cross-cutting findings that affect all areas of the goods and service budget.

This study performs a comparative analysis of the 21 Greek Universities in terms of their public funding, awarded for covering their operating expenditure. First it introduces a DEA/MCDM model that allocates the fund into four expenditure factors in the most favorable way for each university. Then, it presents a common, consensual assessment model to reallocate the amounts, remaining in the same level of total public budget. From the analysis it derives that a number of universities cannot justify the public funding in terms of their size and operational workload. For them, the sufficient reduction of their public funding amount is estimated as a future target. Due to the lack of precise data for a number of expenditure criteria, the analysis is based on a mixed crisp-ordinal data set., {"references":["A. Charnes, W.W. Cooper and E. Rhodes, \"Measuring the efficiency of decision-making units\", European Journal of Operational Research, Vol. 2, 1978, pp. 429–444.","D. Bouyssou, \"Using DEA as a tool for MCDM: some remarks\", Journal of the Operational Research Society, Vol.50, 1999, pp. 974- 978.","M. Katharaki, G. Katharakis, \"A comparative assessment of Greek universities' efficiency using quantitative analysis\", International Journal Of Educational Research, Vol. 49, 2010, pp. 115-128.","M. Aubyn, A. Pina, F. Garcia and J. Pais, \"Study on the efficiency and effectiveness of public spending on tertiary education\", Economic Papers 390. European Commission Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs Publications, 2009, (http://ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/publications/publication16267_en .pdf).","C. Salerno, \"Using Data Envelopment Analysis to Improve Estimates of Higher Education Institution's Per‐student Education Costs\", Education Economics, vol. 14 (3), 2006, pp. 281–295.","M. Abbott M., C. Doucouliagos, \"The efficiency of Australian universities: a data envelopment Analysis\", Economics of Education Review, vol.22, 2003 pp. 89–97.","T. Sav, \"Managing Operating Efficiencies of Publicly Owned Universities: American University Stochastic Frontier Estimates Using Panel Data\", Advances in Management & Applied Economics, vol. 2 (1), 2012, pp. 1-23.","B. Casua , E. Thanassoulis \"Evaluating cost efficiency in central administrative services in UK universities\", Omega vol. 34, 2006, pp. 417 – 426.","B. Taylor, G. Harris, \"Relative efficiency among South African Universities: A data envelopment analysis\", Higher Education vol. 47, 2004, pp.73–89. [10] W.D. Cook, M. Kress, \"A multiple criteria composite index model for quantitative and qualitative data\", European Journal of Operations Research, vol. 78, 1994, pp.367-379. [11] D.K. Despotis, Y.G. Smirlis \"Data envelopment analysis with imprecise data\", European Journal of Operational Research vol. 140, 2002, pp.24–36. [12] W.D. Cook, M. Kress, \"A multiple criteria decision model with ordinal preference data\", European Journal of Operational Research vol. 54, 1991, pp. 191-198. [13] W.D. Cook , M. Kress, L.M. Sheiford, \"Data Envelopment Analysis in the Presence of Both Quantitative and Qualitative Factors\", Journal of Operational Research Society, vol. 47(7), 1996, pp.945-953. [14] Lotfi F Hosseinzadeh, GR Jahanshahloo, A.Memariani, \"Method for finding common set of weights by multiple objective programming in data envelopment analysis\", Southwest Journal of Applied Mathematics vol.1, 2000, pp.44–54 [15] C. Kao , H-T Hung, \"Data Envelopment Analysis with common weights : the compromise solution approach\", Journal of Operational Research Society vol.56, 2005, pp.1196-1203 [16] D.K. Despotis \"Improving the discriminating power of DEA: focus on globally efficient units\". Journal of Operational Research Society, vol.53, 2002, pp.314–323 [17] W.D. Cook, M. Kress, \"Characterizing an equitable allocation of shared costs: a DEA approach\", European Journal of Operational Research, 119, 1999, pp.652–661 [18] W.D. Cook, J. Zhu, \"Allocation of shared costs among decision making units: a DEA approach\". Computers and Operations Research, vol.32, 2005, pp. 2171–2178 [19] R. Lin, \"Allocating fixed costs or resources and setting targets via data envelopment analysis\", Applied Mathematics and Computation, vol. 217 (13), 2011, pp. 6349–6358 [20] Lotfi F. Hosseinzadeh, A.Hatami-Marbini, P.J.Agrell, N.Aghayi, K. Gholami, \"Allocating fixed resources and setting targets using a common-weights DEA approach\", Computers and Industrial Engineering, vol. 64 (2) , 2013, pp. 631-640"]}

Afghanistan is in a state of transition which involves the handover of security responsibilities from international forces to the Afghan government. However, at present, Afghanistan's economy is growing strongly as a result of an exceptionally good harvest this year. Real gross domestic product (GDP) growth will most likely close the calendar year at 10 percent, a significant increase from last year's 5.8 percent. The services and construction sectors continue to grow strongly, driven mostly by continued high military spending and external aid. The good harvest has also brought Afghanistan to near food self-sufficiency and slowed inflation to 4.6 percent in July 2012 (y-o-y). Progress in the mining sector is clouded by uncertainty about a new mineral law. While investor interest in the sector is encouraging, gaps in the legal and regulatory framework of the sector do not provide sufficient confidence to investors to start operations or make firm commitments. A new low is in preparation but has also been heavily debated. Afghanistan's economic growth prospects for 2012 give cause for optimism. Although real GDP growth slowed, to around 7 percent in 2011 (from 8 percent the year before), due mainly to unfavorable weather and a poor harvest, the agriculture sector rebounded strongly in 2012 and is expected to boost economic growth to over 10 percent. Agriculture is an important but volatile component of economic growth.

This report begins by documenting the Palestinian Authority's (PA's) ongoing fiscal crisis that threatens its ability to provide basic services to the population. In 2011, the PA required about US$1.5 billion dollars in budget support, of which US$200 million to cover development expenses not funded directly by donors. However, it only received about US$814 million in budget support and US$169 million in development financing, for a total of US$983 million. Ultimately, the PA can only hope to achieve fiscal sustainability through a combination of sustained private sector growth and continued internal reforms. Robust private sector growth is necessary for the PA to generate the revenues needed to sustain service delivery. Yet the private sector remains stifled as a result of Israeli restrictions on access to natural resources and markets. The West Bank has experienced a slowdown in economic growth in 2011, combined with double-digit growth in Gaza. The recovery in Gaza can be attributed to a combination of aid inflows and easing of restrictions on entry of goods from Israel-though it is important to keep in mind that the average Gaza today is worse off than s/he was back in the late nineties. The recent growth in Gaza is also driven largely by a boom in the construction sector, and Gaza infrastructure exhibits such gaps and disrepair that major investments are necessary and would generate important employment as well as future growth. The slowdown in growth in the West Bank, on the other hand, is the result of falling donor support, uncertainty caused by the PA's fiscal crisis, and lack of significant new easing of restrictions by the Government of Israel (GoI).

Afghanistan's economy is growing strongly. The growth drivers in recent years have been above-average agricultural production, strong growth in construction and transportation, and security spending enabled by large aid flows, especially in FY2009/10. Real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth reached 8.4 percent in FY2010/11. Afghanistan's fiscal position is strengthening. In the last three years revenues grew by an average of 34 percent p.a., thanks to improvements in customs and tax administration. Larger increases are expected once mining operations and with the introduction of a value-added tax in FY2014/15. However, government expenditures will also increase in the coming years due to higher security spending, the roll out of pay-and-grading reforms for the civil service, rising recurrent obligations from large donor-supported projects (including those financed outside of the core budget) and the fiscal costs of the Kabul Bank bail-out. The first phase of the handover of security responsibilities to Afghan national security forces in six locations has been completed.

This study is a product of the Africa Infrastructure Country Diagnostic (AICD), a project designed to expand the world's knowledge of physical infrastructure in Africa. Infrastructure contributed 1.8 percentage points to Cote d'Ivoire's annual per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth in the mid-2000. Raising the country's infrastructure endowment to that of the region's middle-income countries could boost annual growth by a further two percentage points per capita. Cote d'Ivoire made major strides with respect to infrastructure during the 1990s. As a result, the country has broad-reaching national backbones in the road, energy, and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) sectors, and relatively high levels of household coverage for utility services. However, much ground was lost to conflict in the mid-2000s. Very little investment has taken place in the last fifteen years, leading to recent power shortages, the deterioration of the road network, and the deceleration of progress on safe water access. Cote d'Ivoire's most pressing challenge will be to regain the financial equilibrium needed to restore a reliable energy supply. Reestablishing the prominence of Abidjan's port will require investments in terminal capacity, as well as road and rail infrastructure upgrades on hinterland linkages. The underfunding of road maintenance must also be addressed. Another challenge lies in sanitation, as it is currently unlikely that the country will meet the associated millennium development goal. This report presents the key AICD findings for Cote d'Ivoire, allowing the country's infrastructure situation to be benchmarked against that of its African peers. A social and economic crisis in Cote d'Ivoire has crippled its growth trajectory, which had been that of a middle-income country. It will therefore be compared to low-income countries (fragile and non-fragile groups) and middle-income countries, as well as immediate regional neighbors in West Africa. The study presented several methodological issues.

Infrastructure improvements contributed 0.6 percentage points to the annual per capita growth of Zambia's gross domestic product (GDP) over the past decade, mostly because of the exponential growth of information and communication technology (ICT) services. Poor performance of the power sector reduced the per capita growth rate by 0.1 percentage point. Simulations suggest that if Zambia's infrastructure platform could be improved to the level of the African leader, Mauritius, per capita growth rates could increase by two percentage points per year. Zambia's high generation capacity and relatively high power consumption are accompanied by fewer power outages than its neighbors. But Zambia's power sector is primarily oriented toward the mining industry, while household electrification, at 20 percent, is about half that in other resource-rich countries. Zambia's power tariffs are among the lowest in Africa and are less than half the level needed to accelerate electrification and keep pace with mining sector demands. Meeting future power demands and raising electrification rates will be difficult without increasing power tariffs. Zambia's infrastructure situation is more hopeful than that of many other African countries. Infrastructure spending needs, though large, are not beyond the realm of possibility, and Zambia's resource wealth and relatively well-off population provide a more solid financing basis than is available to many other countries. Zambia's infrastructure funding gap, though substantial, can be dramatically reduced through measures to stem inefficiencies and lower costs.

Infrastructure contributed 1.2 percentage points to the annual per capita growth of Malawi's gross domestic product (GDP) over the past decade, thanks mainly to the revolution in information and communication technology (ICT). Raising the country's infrastructure endowment to that of the region's middle-income countries could further boost annual growth by 3.5 percentage points per capita. Today, Malawi's basic infrastructure indicators look relatively good when compared with other low-income countries in Africa, although the performance of that infrastructure could be significantly improved. Malawi is one of the few African countries to have already reached the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for water, almost a decade ahead of the target. The private sector has made Global Management System (GSM) telephone signals widely available without public subsidy. A substantial road investment program has raised the average condition of the country's road network, and a foundation for institutional reform has been laid in the ICT, power, and road transport sectors. Even if those inefficiencies could be eliminated, Malawi will still face an infrastructure funding gap of almost $300 million a year. This could be lessened to $100 million by engaging in regional trade of electricity, using lower-cost supply modalities in water supply and sanitation, and adopting appropriate technologies for road sector development. As long as efficiency gains are captured and spending sustained at the levels of the recent past, the country's infrastructure targets could be reached within 16 years.

Despite its high economic growth, Chinas public expenditure management faces profound challenges: 1) The retrenchment of the Plan puts more of the burden for the macro and microeconomic policy on the budget. 2) Extra-budgetary funds and quasi-fiscal operations of the banking system undermine fiscal discipline, which contributed to the repeated bouts of inflation. 3) Shifting spending to the Governments priorities is slow, and is in part undone during budget implementation. Over time, this could threaten sustainable growth and equitable growth. 4) While overall social indicators are high, regional disparities remain large. Government services seem overstaffed, which could escalate costs if wages continue to rise. To address these challenges, China needs to reform its public expenditure management. Chinas first priority is restoring fiscal discipline - to delineate a clear budget constraint for every line ministry and unit, and break down the sectoral budgets into organizational budgets. To forge a stronger link between the State Councils policy priorities and the budget, China needs to revamp its budget process. The State should focus on articulating the governments strategic priorities, but leave detailed planning for achieving these priorities to line ministries. Decentralized administration can be a major asset for cost-effective service delivery, if accountability for performance is improved.