Domestic violence in Australia: interim report

One in three Australian women have experienced physical violence since the age of 15 and almost one in five have experienced sexual violence.  A study of Victorian women demonstrated that domestic violence is the leading preventable contributor to death, disability and illness in women aged between 15 and 44, and is responsible for more of the disease burden than many well-known risk factors such as high blood pressure, smoking and obesity.  The emotional and personal costs of domestic violence in our community are enormous. Violence affects the victims themselves, children who are exposed6 to violence, extended families, friends, work colleagues and the broader community. The committee acknowledges these emotional and personal costs as well as the enormous economic cost of domestic violence. A study commissioned by the commonwealth government notes that the yearly cost of domestic violence in Australia in 2008-09 was $13.6 billion and the cost is increasing.   Senate Finance and Public Administration Committee Members Senator the Hon Kate Lundy (Chair) Senator Cory Bernardi (Deputy Chair) Senator John Faulkner (until 6 February 2015) Senator Claire Moore (from 12 February 2015) Senator Joseph Ludwig Senator Dean Smith Senator Janet Rice Substitute Member Senator Larissa Waters (replaced Senator Janet Rice) Participating Members Senator Claire Moore (until 12 February 2015) Senator Penny Wong Senator Nova Peris Secretariat: Ms Lyn Beverley (Secretary) Ms Ann Palmer (Principal Research Officer) Mr Nicholas Craft (Senior Research Officer) Ms Margaret Cahill (Research Officer) Ms Sarah Brasser (Administrative Officer

Infrastructure finance in Europe: Composition, evolution and crisis impact

This article is the first attempt to compile comprehensive data on infrastructure finance in Europe. We decompose infrastructure finance by institutional sector (i.e. public versus private) into its main components, which consist of traditional public procurement, project finance and finance by the corporate sector, and analyse how the roles of the public and private sectors in financing infrastructure have evolved over time, especially during the recent economic and financial crisis. In contrast with government finance that is slightly up, private finance, in particular project finance through Publi-Private Partnerships, has fallen substantially during the recent crisis, reversing, at least temporarily, the longer-term trend of more private and less public financing of infrastructure.Infrastructure investment; Public-Private Partnerships; Project finance; Crisis impact

Public Finance in China since the Late Qing Dynasty

How is "public finance" organized in China? Is China’s public finance system different from that of other countries? Can we detect features which link today’s system to the past?Public finance refers to more than annual state budgets and constitutional procedures. It includes foreign debt, state monopolies or monetary policies, all of which played a crucial role in China’s public finance during the last hundred years. A purely legislative definition obscures the fact that changes in public finance have contributed to the collapse of political regimes such as Imperial China (1911), Republican China (1927), and KMT-China (1945), as well engendered regime changes in 1949, 1961 and 1978. From a more comprehensive economic perspective public finance in China encompasses institutions, organizations and policies.public finance;China;KMT-China;imperial China;republican China

Public Opinion and Campaign Finance: A Skeptical Look at Senator McCain's Claims

Sen. John McCain of Arizona and other advocates of additional regulations on campaign finance argue that spending on elections has caused public cynicism about and mistrust of American government. They also believe that public opinion indicates that Congress should move immediately to pass new campaign finance regulations. This paper uses public opinion data to test both claims. McCain and his allies are wrong on both counts. The data show that campaign spending could not have caused increases in public mistrust of government--indeed, rising soft money spending has been followed by increases (not decreases) in public trust in government--and that there is no statistical relationship over time between campaign spending and public trust in American government. The data also show that the public assigns a low priority to altering campaign finance regulations. Both findings militate against the current attempt in Congress to pass the McCain-Feingold regulations on campaign fundraising. New regulations on campaign finance will not increase public trust in government because campaign spending did not cause public cynicism. Moreover, contrary to Senator McCain's opinion, the low priority given campaign finance regulations by the public suggests that the McCain-Feingold bill should be dealt with much later in the 107th Congress, after more pressing issues have been addressed

Estimate of revenues from the value added tax in the Republic of Croatia

This Occasional Paper is part of a research project undertaken by the Institute of Public Finance and financed by the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Croatia. The research project and the presented paper are published in Croatian in the Institute’s journal “Financijska praksa”, Volume 20, Number 2 (August 1996). Part I of the paper is written by Danijela Kuliš (Institute of Public Finance, Zagreb), and Part II is written by Žarko Miljenović (then, State Bureau for Macroeconomic Analyses and Forecasts, Zagreb; and now Zagrebačka banka, Zagreb). The project’s lead researcher was Dr. Katarina Ott (Institute of Public Finance, Zagreb)

Essays in Local Public Finance

The first essay, "Producers and Predators in a Multiple Community Setting" investigates how different ways of organizing the provision of local policing services in a multi-community setting affect the level of criminal activity, the spatial distribution of the population, the cost of policing, and overall productivity across all communities. Our analysis shows that if individual local governments are boundedly rational, in the sense that they do not anticipate the effects of their own defense activity on the equilibrium predator/producer ratio and distribution of producer activity, then competition among local governments never achieves a first-best outcome and sometimes yields a lower consumption per capita in equilibrium than would be achieved if there were no local governments and each agent who chose to be a producer also chose his own level of defense. The second essay, "Discriminatory Taxation in a Model of Local Community Competition," analyzes tax competition for new economic resources among local communities within the context of a dynamic, overlapping generations model. We show that in a simple model of discriminatory tax competition, allowing communities to compete for new entrants via the use of entry bonuses and entry taxes does not produce a 'race to the bottom,' does not reduce overall efficiency, and can prevent the economy from getting stuck in an inefficient allocation of resources across communities. The third essay, "A Note on the Effects of Tax Increment Financing on the Path of Land Development," shows that TIFs introduce distortions in the early use of property even as they reduce tax distortions on later use of property. The net effect of a TIF on the dynamic efficiency of land use depends on the magnitude of the TIF subsidy

Separability and public finance

In a second best environment, the optimal policy choice sometimes follows the first best rules. This note lays down the information structure and separability assumptions under which this property holds in a variety of setups.separability, second best optimality, indirect taxes, Samuelson rule, Pigovian taxation

Comparison of the Tax Structure in Central European and European Union Countries: Tax Reform Goals and the Current Situation

The paper provides an analyses of the public finance reform in Central European Countries during the economic transition. The process of reforming public finance (covering both tax and expenditure reforms) is a long lasting one with specific features in individual countries. Nevertheless, some common, general features to the restructuring of CEC public finances can be identified.economic transition, public finance, Central Europe, taxation

Are foundation grant programs a panacea or a problem? (Accountability and education reform, part 3)

Local finance ; Local government ; Finance, Public ; State finance

Government expenditure and theory of efficient private and public finance

The efficient government finance will increase economic growth and thereby income distribution. This research has been formulated an efficiency theory of production and finance. This research compared the government expenditure patterns into two situations. One, when a government borrows and accordingly allocates resources for productive expenditures for private and public finance. Another situation is that when a government borrows and fixed the resources for productive expenditure for only public finance. A comparative efficiency theory of production and finance are being formulated to test the general equilibrium of production of goods and services. This general equilibrium theory of efficient production of a firm has been made a conclusion that government resource allocation in both for private and public finance is efficient and never creates economic distortion even if these resources are borrowed form domestic sources. These domestic sources might be private commercials banks or any other financial institutions. The government resource allocation is not efficient when the government borrowing is fixed only for increasing public finance. This process implies diminishing return and thus increases public expenditure implicitly. Increasing nonproductive government expenditure will expand the size of the government and accordingly reduce economic growth in the long run. But both the private and public finance from borrowing will not hamper the efficiency of the production of a firm and accordingly reduce economic distortion. The tendency of reducing economic distortion will ultimately increase economic growth and economic welfare as well.Keywords: Finance; Government Expenditure