This thesis looks at policy formulation in a Revenue Office over the nine-year period, from 1984 to 1993. It presents a case study that is based on actual events; but, because of the difficulties in reporting on the events in a large organisation without the possible influence of some staff, particularly senior management, it was decided to change the names of the organisation, the people and policies. The thesis is based on an examination of a number of policy initiatives that were 'quilted' together. Its focus is not on the contents of the policies or primarily on their economic success, but on the bureaucratic and stakeholder processes involved in their formulation. The purpose of the thesis is to provide a way of understanding events in organisations that are portrayed or categorised by research as policy formulation. Policy formulation is considered to be a core process in organisations, but it is still poorly understood or explained by current models, particularly those based on a rationalistic view of the world. Many of these models have their roots in economic theory and rationality, which promotes the idea that policy is a fundamental and almost inevitable part of organisation goal attainment. These ideas permeate and structure the theory and depiction of organisations and, hence, the way we understand the nature of the social actions and interactions supporting policy formulation. The thesis rejects the assertion that organisations move in a consistently calculated and logical direction based on goal setting and developing policies to meet objectives. An alternative view is proposed: that policy formulation must be understood within the phenomenon of an organisation where people enact a particular form of social reality. Under this model organisations are created and maintained by social processes that are continually executed by people. In this context, individuals and groups use processes of negotiation and power to manipulate and re-define the meanings attributed to problems and solutions to maintain a perception of consistent and coordinated change and goal attainment in policy formulation. This social practice is an attempt to define reality and maintain legitimacy for the policy changes. Thus, the emphasis is on social processes rather than outcomes, thereby focusing on the development and maintenance of perceptions of problems and solutions. This thesis analyses policy formulation as a distinctive kind of social practice using a case study of policy developments in a revenue office, as a means of explaining the basic nature of ongoing corporate life. The case study explores the way that core revenue office policies, proposed as 'logical' change, were formulated by individuals and groups who constantly used 'legitimising' management models and principles, agenda management, and bargaining and power processes to negotiate, influence, modify and manipulate the perceptions of change. The aim is to explain how policy options were generated in the 'Charisma period', to examine their origins and how they were acted upon, and to develop a set of summary concepts that might be used to understand policy development behaviours. / Master of Commerce (Hons)

No description available.

Thesis--University of Florida. / Manuscript copy. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 308-321).

Not available / text

No description available.

According to the World Bank, over 80 countries currently plan some form of fiscal decentralization. This group includes Japan, a highly centralized tax state, which in 1995 put in place a law and associated high-profile institutions to promote fiscal and administrative decentralization. But the process in Japan has quickly become bogged down. This dissertation asks why there are hurdles confronting fiscal decentralization in Japan. My research uses the fiscal sociology approach and highlights bureaucratic interests in Japan's intergovernmental tax regime, one that is especially interesting in comparison with other advanced industrial countries. Fully 70 percent of all government spending in Japan is done by subnational levels of government, and 51 percent of the central state's current operating expenditures are transfers downward that serve to support that high rate of local spending. And though Japan is a centralized state, over a third of its taxation is collected locallly. In consequence, Japan is quite anomalous when set alongside a representrative sample of federal and unitary states. No other country among the nine OECD nations used, for comparative purposes, in this dissertation combines such high fiscal transfers with heavy levels of subnational spending and taxation. And no other country gives close control over a large terrain of subnational taxation to a central-state agency (the Ministry of Home Affairs). The ministry's vast bureaucratic turf brings it into conflict with the Ministry of Finance, as both seek to maintain or expand their fiscal jurisdiction. They are thus not interested in fiscal decentralization in large part because they are busy fighting "trench wars" with each other on these tax fields. This dissertation hence undertakes a detailed analysis of intergovernmental fiscal history in Japan, focusing in particular on the Ministry of Home Affairs' ambiguous role in the Japanese state. The case studies of inter-bureaucratic fiscal politics include the Local Allocation Tax (a large general subsidy) as well as an array of taxes on the fields of income, assets and consumption.

This thesis consists of three essays in monetary economics and international macroeconomics. / Chapter one uses Canadian data to evaluate the performance of money growth targeting and inflation targeting policy rules, especially when they react to asset price changes. There are three important findings. First, estimates of the policy rules consistent with both regimes provide evidence that the Bank of Canada has systematically reacted to stock price bubbles and exchange rate changes. Second, a counterfactual experiment reveals that, the high inflation of the 1970s and early 1980s could have been avoided if the Bank of Canada had responded more strongly to inflation and growth in aggregate demand. Third, simulation experiments yielded two important results: For both the money growth targeting and inflation targeting policy rules, it is always desirable to react to changes in exchange rates and stock price bubbles: Contrary to established findings, the results indicate that the money growth targeting policy rules are more efficient than the inflation targeting policy rules. / Chapter two uses data on Ghana to test the validity of the intertemporal model of current account that allows for external shocks in the form of variable interest rates and exchange rates, and the existence of capital controls. We find that, irrespective of the degree of capital control, the basic model fails to predict the dynamics of the actual current account. However, we find that extending the model to capture variations in interest rates and exchange rates better explains the path of the actual current account balances only during the liberalized regime. When the model was adjusted to allow for credit constraints, there was some support for the proposition that the presence of capital controls prevented economic agents in Ghana to smooth their consumption path during the control regime. / Chapter three investigates the effect of trading block on Tanzania's bilateral trade. Using a fixed effects estimation technique, the results revealed that the East African Community (EAC) and the European Union (EU) have had significant positive effects on Tanzania's bilateral trade. We also find that there is a significant intra-trade relationship between Tanzania and its major trading partners in the manufacturing sector.

No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2008. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed Aug. 13, 2008). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Economics, August 1997. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.