Public Finance Sources and Road Network Development in a Transition Country--Hungary （1990-2018）

This article reviews the history of the Hungarian public road network in the thirty years that has passed since the change of the political and economic regime up to the present from the aspect of financing. In the context of the neighboring countries that today are also members of the European Union, this writing outlines the growth-public finance course that this country, formerly belonging to the Soviet type planned economy mechanism, followed during the past nearly three decades after breaking away from that system. It provides insight into the specific public finance positions determined by the macroeconomic course since 1990 and the opportunities offered by this course for infrastructural developments. In connection with the above, the article outlines the main characteristic features of the social expectations, the financing solutions that could be linked to the various governmental concepts regarding road matters, focusing primarily on motorway development. It shall touch upon the respective starting points and life cycles of those concepts and the role of the EU supports in the developing of the domestic public road system. In light of expenditures, it is illustrating the development by some servicing indicators.

Theory of Risk in Conventional Public Finance and Islamic Finance

The research objective of the article is to extend the theoretical basis of risk management in the public and Islamic finance. The author hypothesizes that the existing theories of finance, the public choice theory, and the concept of New Public Management create insufficient conditions for risk management in the public finance sector entities and associated international structures of public-private partnership. As shown by the experience of recent years, the theory of financial markets as regards its operators has not yet developed a widely accepted model of risk management. In addition, the public choice theory and the concept of New Public Management do not fully illustrate the essence of risk management in the public sector, especially in capital structures where a private entity （Islamic investor） partners a public one. In Islamic finance, Sharia complaint instruments cannot be based on gharar, which is usually translated as risk, deception, delusion, and excessive uncertainty. The research methods mostly used in the article are analysis and critique of scientific literature with respect to risk of operation of public entities and risk in Islamic finance as well as public-private partnerships. The basic conclusion is that the adopted interpretations of risk in selected theories of conventional finance and the foundations of Islamic economy indicate that joint projects related to infrastructure are feasible.

Exploring Public Finance Management Reform and Building up Model of General State Accounting （GSA）： The Case of Vietnam

There is no doubt that public finance and accounting have been playing a pivotal role in supporting the government＇s aspirations in the development in any countries. Through the receipt of funds from the state budget, the organizations in the public sector use country＇s resources towards the implementation of objectives as well as social policies set by national government. Therefore, most countries will aim to gradually improve the management of public finance, but control of public finance has faced challenges because of the existing limitations As a result, the public finance management needs to be reformed. In Vietnam, this process has been performed in recent years. To enhance the effectiveness of improvement, public finance has to combine with the transformation of public sector accounting. In fact, there are a lot of researches in public sector accounting together with financial management. However, in the world, from the past to present, very little research has been conducted to examine the change in management to the public finance and relationship to public accounting, especially to the model of general accounting. Because of the significance of above matters, the main purposes of this paper are to identify the role of public finance and the process of reforming it and to build up the new model in Vietnam, called as General State Accounting （GSA） which is applied for Vietnamese government in the near future. By using the mixed method for research, the author will analyze the figures of last budget data, administer the described statistics, and collect information about the budget from Vietnamese experts.

The power of the public purse: financing of global health partnerships and acienda setting for sustainability

Public-private partnerships(PPPs) have reshaped the institutional structure of global governance.They have advanced collaboration on core issues such as health, clean energy, the rights of women and children, and access to infrastructure, among others. But which actors create and finance public-private partnerships in global governance to advance such objectives? What are the implications of the agency behind such collaboration for influencing the global agenda on sustainable development? While some scholars and advocacy groups see the growing role of private actors as a powershift away from public institutions, others argue that such arrangements tend to be complementary to public mandates and indeed may provide a new means for international institutions to pursue such mandates. The article probes this debate by analyzing the type of actors that finance global health partnerships, an area in which the influence of hybrid initiatives is particularly prominent. It reveals that public financing remains a core and necessary condition for the emergence and functioning of PPPs. The growing share of private financing,nonetheless, has important implications for shaping partnerships agendas and steering global health and sustainability governance. Rather than a powershift or abdication of responsibilities by the state, there is rather a tendency of deliberate diffusion of power by donors toward hybrid structures.

Investigating Challenges in Financing Contractors for Public Sector Projects in Ghana

Contractors working with the Public sector encounter numerous challenges in financing projects in Ghana. The challenges which have persisted over the years are both financial and managerial. This paper seeks to ascertain the extent to which contractors’ challenges in acquiring funds to execute public sector projects have been solved. The study involved both qualitative and quantitative methods to ascertain the various strategies the contractors go through to obtain public sector projects focusing on the challenges associated with the project execution. The study revealed that delayed payments and inadequate cash flow on the part of government, lack of credit worthiness and inadequate collateral security from contractors are key determinants to challenges associated with financing public sector projects in Ghana. This paper recommends the establishment of a Construction Development Authority (CDA), within the Ministry of Works and Housing to develop financial plans, policies and laws for this important sector of the economy.

Effect of School-Based Income Generating Activities on the Financial Performance of Public Secondary Schools in Kenya

This study was conducted to determine the value added by Income-Generating Activities （IGAs） on the financial performance of public secondary schools, in terms of assets, liability portfolio, and net worth. Secondary school managers have the gigantic task of balancing meager resources between subsistence and development needs as well as good performance in national examinations. However, macro-economic shocks such as inflation, fuel shortage, and crop failure, among others, often militate against the success of public schools. School-based IGAs enable public schools to cope with external economic shocks, without necessarily passing down budgetary adjustments to parents. However, the country lacks a clear policy guideline to facilitate the initiation, management, accounting, reviewing, and financial reporting of IGA projects. Besides, there is no documented information regarding the value added by IGA initiatives to the financial performance of public secondary schools. The study found that IGA and non-IGA schools were significantly different in terms of category, student population, age, annual income, and number of paid workers. Schools having IGAs were 1.9 times more likely to own as many assets as schools not having IGAs. Besides, IGA schools were about 2.2 times less likely to have their liability in excess of the median threshold. Regarding net worth, the study found that schools having IGAs were about 2.1 times more likely to be operating above the median threshold; suggesting that schools having IGAs were wealthier than non-IGA schools. Based on the findings, this study concludes that IGA projects were beneficial to schools by improving the ability of schools to accumulate assets and manage their liabilities. The study recommends the need to： formulate an appropriate policy framework to guide and standardize IGA activities; initiate suitable training programs for school IGA managers; as well as engage business development managers to advice schools on IGA matters.

Financial Management and Control and Internal Audit System in the Public Sector in BiH

The introduction and implementation of finansijsko upravljanje i kontrola(FUK,financial management and control[FMC])in Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina(FBiH)aims to incorporate a modern public internal financial control(PIFC)system into traditional public resources management models.This area is one of the reform areas in which Bosnia and Herzegovina(BiH)is obliged to harmonize the legislative framework and practice with the good practices and regulations recommended by the European Commission.The establishment and development of the PIFC are also an obligation of Bosnia and Herzegovina established by the Stabilization and Association Agreement between the European Community and the member states,of the one part,and Bosnia and Herzegovina,of the other part.The public internal financial control(PIFC)system focuses on enhancing transparency,financial discipline,and dedicated use of public resources,that is,transparent,economical,efficient,and effective management of public resources,and control of the use of those resources.The topic of this paper is“financial management and control in the public sector”where the aim is to show,through the conducted theoretical research,the level of achievement of the establishment of this system in public sector institutions in BiH.The European Union wants to direct all potential member countries towards development of internal controls in the use of their own resources,but also to create a control environment that would ensure the dedicated use of EU funds.In Bosnia and Herzegovina,there is no single legal framework in terms of a single law governing public internal financial controls.The contents of the applicable legal provisions at all three levels(BiH,FBiH,and Republic of Srpska[RS])are largely congruent thanks to the Coordination Committee of Central Harmonization Units(CHJs)in Bosnia and Herzegovina,through which the harmonization of regulations and practices in the development of public internal financial controls is ensured.

Financing Public Transport Infrastructures by Means of Value Capture Provided by Its Implementation

A transport infrastructure is not only a trip provision system but a public facility that generates value for companies and for the society through expanding markets or developing cities, creating another perspective for new investments, as well as its own financing. According to this perspective, the financial earnings resulting from the implementation of transport infrastructure can be captured for its own investment. Given the restrictions of society indebtedness, due to social inequalities, scarcity of resources and insufficient fare collection, with the current financial model for public transport infrastructures, the value capture configures as a strategy to be explored to obtain resources. This paper presents the concept of value capture and its connection and relevance with transport infrastructure financing strategies. Applied to the evaluation of the impacts on the surrounding regions of one of the most significant Brazilian transport projects, the improvement and expansion of Belo Horizonte＇s metro, the provided value capture outcomes open more realistic perspectives for greater engagement of the Public Sector in such projects.

Considerations About Municipal Government Finance in the State of the Espirito Santo： 2001/2009

Fiscal decentralization in Brazil has promoted a break in the national collection system and granted greater autonomy to states and municipalities against the federal government with regard to fundraising. The theoretical difference emerged, when one observes the greatest proliferation of local entities from the autonomy granted by the Federal Constitution （FC） from 1988 to the various levels of government, many of which almost totally depend on inter-governmental transfers. There are those who advocate the strengthening of public actions from observing the problems of small units （municipalities） and who will now have greater decision-making freedom. Therefore, this article aims to analyze the public finances of municipalities in the core theoretical （all people born in Espirito Santo） state guided by the Fiscal Responsibility Law （FRL） and fiscal decentralization in the country. For this purpose, they were taken as the time frame 2001 and 2009. Methodologically, this paper used a literature review, as well as data from the National Treasury Secretariat （STN）. In addition, authors took as a tool to help multiple regression models to strengthen the results. The principal evidence shows that, even with a slight improvement in the framework of indicators of revenue, these municipalities have proved essentially dependent on resources from the Union. Additionally, the results show a relative reduction of spending on items, such as staff costs and legislation in one year to another. In parallel, there were greater participation of the variables, costs of health and sanitation, education and culture, among others, to explain the variation of the expenditure of municipalities in Espirito Santo in the years observed. The data fit well to the model with a significance level of 1%.

The Research of Change Trend of Our Government's Public Expenditure Scale

It is obvious that the change trend of our government expenditure scale declined constantly .The expenditure proportion of science, education, culture and hygiene increased fast, reflected the situation that the finance of our country was transformed into “public finance” from “building type finance” gradually.The expenditure proportion of the local is higher than central authorities. This is disadvantageous for our country’s economy development and society stability.

IPSAS and Accounting Systems in the Italian Public Administrations： Expected Changes and Implementation Scenarios

This paper proposes to identify the main features of a possible implementation path of the International Public Sector Accounting Standard （IPSAS） standards within the Italian local public administration. In perspective, local Public Administrations （PA） may represent the reference target for the introduction of IPSAS standards but a direct application in the short-run can hardly be imagined in the Italian context. According to the CFOs of medium-small Municipalities in the Lazio Region, the IPSAS enforcement strategy swings between the ＂forced＂ model and the ＂spontaneous＂ model. The application of IPSAS standards to Italian PAs depends on specific law provisions at all institutional levels and requires a process of implementation based on a bottom-up model ＂governed by the center＂.

Existing Problems about Public Health Input in China and Countermeasures

Through the comparative analysis of public health input in foreign countries,China’s urban and rural areas and the central and western regions,this paper pointed out that China’s current public health input is small,the public health investment structure is unreasonable,the way of government investment in public health is imperfect,and government investment in public health is inefficient.The following recommendations are given to address abovementioned problems:establishing a multi-channel financing mechanism to increase public health input;specifying functions of governments at all levels;optimizing investment structure;creating newpublic health investment modes and promoting public health service voucher system;improving the legal system and management system of public health service;increasing the efficiency of public health input.

Financing of sanitation services in the slums of Kampala and Dar es Salaam

This paper presents an assessment of the extent and conditions under which private financing can be a realistic approach for sanitation in slums. It is based on a cross-sectional study comparing two slum communities in East Africa, where 250 households from Bwaise III in Kampala, Uganda and 379 households from Temeke in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania were interviewed in 2010. Also, 10 key-informant interviews and 8 focus group discussions were conducted in addition to field observations. Findings show that majority (85%) of households used unimproved, private-shared pit latrines. These privately owned latrines had many structural shortfalls besides poor operation and maintenance while the public latrines provided by third-party were structurally sound but were under-utilized in residential slum neighorhoods. This is attributed to the presence free or at least cheaper alternatives which the community members preferred instead of paying per-visit user-fees. For the few who were willing to pay, willingness to pay was positively associated with the presence of a facility User committee and having been sensitized. In this context, a combination of these factors made cost recovery as well as operation and maintenance very minimal. The poor status of privately owned shared pit latrines matched the limited income levels of households. Similarly, cost recovery for public facilities was dependent on the number of users who were willing to pay: the more the users, the more the cost recovery. A combination of private and public financing is thus necessary to fund different but complementary aspects of sanitation in slums.

Apples, oranges and lemons: public sector debt statistics in the 21st century

In both academic research and policymaking,public sector debt and debt-to-GDP ratios are relied on for a multitude of important economic,political and socioeconomic decisions,especially as public sector balance sheets expand to an unprecedented size in the midst of the 2019–2020 COVID pandemic.The reliance on available data from reputable sources often overlooks the question of whether the denominator in this ratio is accurately measured or how well the denominator is understood by the audience interpreting it.Building on past work in international financial statistics,and making use of a unique and newly created dataset on media reporting of public sector debt,the purpose of this article is to examine the quality,accuracy,interpretation and overall meaningfulness of public sector financial statistics.The main findings suggest that i)most of the world’s governments still do not seem to feel sufficient pressure to voluntarily provide comprehensive financial statistics based on well-defined modern methodological frameworks and ii)high profile financial statistics,which are reported,have become increasingly numerous and complicated,making it difficult for non-experts to know which is most appropriate in the context of their analysis.

General Aspects of Financial Law

The aim of this article is to outline the general parts of the legal branch called financial law. It is intended as the first part of a series of articles outlineing the topic in detail. The aim of the submitted contribution is to demonstrate that the financial and legal aspects created the basis of economic development of the regions from the early beginnings of human society. Social relations constituting the subject-matter of the financial law had been developing, changing, and had become established before the financial law itself has been constituted. These relations seem to have been present from the very beginning of the existence of the human society. Regulatory acts associated with regulation of these relationships embodied solidarity and methodological specificities. The specificity of the subject-matter of regulation, solidarity and methodological specificities of the financial, and legal standards sufficiently define superstructure with a natural law character. The superstructure is based on constitutional system of national states after the EU integration has been completed on the EU law. As we can evaluate retrospectively, the transfer of fmanciallaw competencies in Brussels was a failiure. Since the political union was established through the Lisbon treaty in 2009 the European sovereign debt crisis emerged and ravaged the EU until today.

Critical Factors in Financing and Management of Light Rail Transit Systems： Delphi Methodology Approach

In recent years, a large number of LRT （light rail transit） networks and tramways have been built in Spain using the tender system. The rhythm of construction has been such that very few analyses have been carried out and those that have were only partially done because the main participants involved had ulterior motives which impeded their having a critical and independent opinion of the projects carried out. Within this framework, the Delphi methodology presents itself as a very useful instrument, as the intrinsic advantages that it has added to the characteristic that the experts who participate in the project can remain anonymous without detracting value from the conclusions obtained as these are grouped together according to their worth.

The Efficiency of Public Health Expenditure in Turkey Between 2003 and 2013

Turkey launched a project in 2003 known as ＂Health Transformation Programme＂ （HTP）, which enabled Turkey to make considerable progress and radical changes to the health care system. The programme in 2003 included the effectiveness and the efficiency factors within the process by setting them as the primary objectives to increase the health status of the population （effectiveness） and to use resources in the best possible manner and at the lowest possible cost （efficiency）. Accessing services according to the need of patients and state benefits according to their ability to pay would be viable under these objectives. In this study, initially, Turkish National Health System will be articulated on a literature-study basis approach to measure the efficiency of public expenditure on health. Then, the measured level of the efficiency will be analysed in Turkey, The paper serves a purpose to analyse the efficiency based on the outcomes of heath service such as satisfaction with public health services over the period of 2003-2013. A simple linear regression was employed to test the degree of statistical relation between public health expenditure and satisfaction with public health care services.

Behavioral Aspects in Obligatory Reports of Public Hospitals in Poland

The health care sector is the most difficult one to manage and control. Special units in this field are public hospitals which are required to prepare a lot of reports to various institutions, including the ownership body. The paper focuses on two issues. The first is the presence of behavioral factors in the reporting of public hospitals in Poland to the ownership bodies. This article aims to indicate the thematic areas of specific reports, most affected by behavioral factors and explain the causes and consequences of their occurrence. The second issue is the analysis of the legal status of obligatory reporting of public hospitals. Participants of the conducted research, due to their specific ownership and political and social position, were public hospitals in Poland. The paper uses the research methods of the meta-analysis of the literature, legal acts in Poland and empirical materials, and also the methods of synthesis, observation, and deduction. Data analysis focused on specific sample of reports issued by Polish public hospitals for their ownership body. The research shows that hospitals draw up a tremendous number of often thematically overlapping and redundant reports addressed to different institutions in different time periods. It is a consequence of legal regulations failing to streamline the reporting of the health care sector institutions, in particular public hospitals. The paper points to the large number of legal instruments that contain imprecise requirements resulting from the complex and obscure forms of control of public funds allocation in this sector. There are many behavioral factors that shape some fields of public hospitals＇ reports, for example, interpersonal relationships, egoism, private financial interests, strengthening of the employment status and professional position, and professional competences. There is considerable freedom in the reporting process fulfilled by public hospitals in Poland for their ownership body. It causes strong consequences, like poor-quality data, duplication of information, and its chaos, as well as high costs of obtaining information. Reporting system of financial and non-financial data of public hospitals in Poland is dysfunctional.

Financial Effectiveness of Greek Municipalities： An Empirical Investigation

Municipalities are autonomous economic and administrative entities, with common actions and responsibilities. Moreover, all Municipalities are quite different considering specific characteristics, such as geographic, demographic, and economic. The aim of this research is to separate the entire sample of Municipalities in Greece into categories, based on the effectiveness of financial management and financial performance into effective and ineffective ones. For the separation of the sample into groups, cluster analysis was preferred. For this reason, three variables were used： the lending capacity of the Municipality, flexibility in making non-investment costs, and flexibility in investment spending. These three variables were considered to be the key dimensions of effectiveness in financial management and therefore their use, representatively describes the effectiveness of Greek Municipalities. Thus, this paper presents the literature review of the financial effectiveness of Municipalities and the methodology of an empirical research through structured questionnaire that was sent to the entire population of Greek Municipalities, characterized in this way with considerable heterogeneity. In this way, it investigates the views of Mayors in the two categories of Municipalities （effective and non effective financial management and financial performance） as regards： （a） the biggest problems faced by the citizens in their Municipality, and （b） the biggest personnel problems faced by their Municipality. Concluding, the prioritization of both problems seems to be the same for both groups of Municipalities. The frequency of responses differs slightly and differences are not so large that financial performance can be considered to affect respondents＇ opinions.