The exploration of this thesis on public finance proceeds on two axes. First, it aims at developing an ontological perspective to public finance. Accordingly, public finance is defined to be the concrete political relation between the state and society. The thesis that presents a political and historical evaluation of public finance from a critical sociological and political economy approach associates the components of this definition such as public, the political etc. with the relevant debates in social and political theory. In line with this, the traditional harmony-perspective of neoclassical public finance theories, which is ignorant of the political, is criticized, calling it as &lsquo / police finance&rsquo / instead of &lsquo / public finance&rsquo / . Secondly, the thesis explores the history of fiscal thought between the 15th-19th centuries with special reference to the Ottoman Empire. All in all, with these topics this thesis aims at making a contribution to the field of &ldquo / fiscal sociology&rdquo / from a critical sociological and political economy approach.

Uganda is credited for carrying out extensive reforms in its tax system in the 1990s. The system of administration was overhauled together with a complete overhaul of tax legislation. The overriding objective was to increase tax revenues. Improvements were registered in the tax revenues but only temporarily. Since 2004, there has been stagnation in the tax revenue figures. The revenue from direct taxes only contributes about 20% to the total revenue well below the Sub-Saharan average of 40%. This has focused attention on the appropriateness of the reforms. The focus of the reforms on achieving efficiency did not sufficiently take into account the fundamental importance of equity within the system. As a result, the Income Tax Act 1997 embodies distortions and inequalities in the treatment of taxable income and taxpayers that have led to inefficiency in the system as a whole. The tax reforms also took a narrow technical view of the tax system. Taxation has an impact on state-building and is, therefore, affected by the state of governance. The reforms, even where they were well designed, have been affected by institutional weakness and the lack of accountability in the political process. The fact that institutional capacity affects effectiveness of the tax system is well documented yet it does not seem to have been taken into account in 1997 (UNDP, 1991:70). Taxpayer morale and revenues have been constrained by high levels of corruption within the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) and arbitrariness in the award of tax waivers and other tax advantages. The purpose of the thesis is, therefore, to examine the distortions engendered by the tax system and their impact on taxpayer morale, tax revenue and investment. The thesis focuses on the direct taxation of profits from business activity in the formal and informal sector. An examination of the taxation of business profits provides an opportunity to highlight the distinctions in the tax system with regard to the treatment of the same type of income based on the legal status of the taxpayer and other considerations. The taxation of business profits in the corporate sector is compared with the taxation of business profits under the personal income tax system, taxation of partnerships and other unincorporated businesses. There is emphasis on the taxation of the informal sector which is presently less than satisfactory. However, the analysis is done in the context of the socio-political situation in Uganda. The weaknesses in governance and corruption have had an impact on the tax system by encouraging tax avoidance and evasion among political elites as well as on activities in the informal sector. The thesis also explores possibilities of broadening the tax base within the existing legislative framework as well as other possibilities for reform, for example, the call for the expansion of the tax base through taxation of land and agriculture by various experts and the URA itself (Private Sector Foundation- Uganda, 2009:122). Account must also be taken of Uganda’s membership of East African Community (EAC) and the constraints this puts on its exercise of fiscal sovereignty.

In this thesis, I use a political economy of trade policy approach to analyze the issues of strategic lobbying and taxation choice. The thesis contains 4 papers together with an introduction, literature review and conclusion. In Chapter 3, a lobbying-influence model is presented to discuss how the outcomes of trade policy is influenced by lobbying activities during the policymaking process. A comparison of the welfare-maximizing model and the lobbying-influence model under a game theory framework is undertaken. Chapter 4 provides a new explanation on the issue of asymmetric lobbying from the view point of the impact of external environment. Since the incentive of the domestic firm to engage in lobbying activities varies with its marginal costs, the outcomes of lobbying performance are different. This argument holds for both complete and incomplete information settings. Chapter 5 considers whether there is a positive role for lobbying activities in an incomplete information setting when the foreign entry is incorporated. The results suggest that the social welfare under the pooling equilibrium is higher than that under the separating equilibrium. As a result, there is no positive role for lobbying activities in this two-period model. Chapter 6 provides a political economy model to explain why trade taxes rather than more efficient income taxes might be adopted and what links the taxation choice and the economic development. In general, people prefers to pay less tax to the government. In a democratic society, a policy, which yields a higher utility to the majority of voters, is supported through majority voting. Therefore, the choice of taxation instruments depends on the tax payments, which are determined by the tax method, the income level, and the movement of income distribution over time.

In recent years major structural changes have been taking place within the UK economy. One of the major factors responsible for this is the oil developments in the North Sea, which have seen since 1980 the achievement of self sufficiency in oil for the UK. At the same time as this Development has been taking place, there has been a major change in economic policy towards the control of inflation through monetary and fiscal restraint as outlined in the Medium Term Financial Strategy. Economic policy was now to be framed within a medium term context, rather than in the context of short term stabilisation. Demand management policies were to be downgraded, and more emphasis was to be placed upon improving the supply side of the economy. This thesis is directed towards analysing the above developments but in particular the effects of an oil discovery, oil price increases and tight money upon the structure of the economy as well as the dynamic processes of adjustment involved. The evolution and final outcome of the adjustment process obviously also depends crucially upon the policies adopted by the Government, in terms of its attitude towards such developments. Hence our analysis would be incomplete without a discussion of present Governmental attitudes as well as its appropriateness. This ultimately involves deciding whether market forces should determine the reallocation of resources, or whether greater involvement by the Government is required.

Justifications for state interventions which seek to influence the consumption patterns of goods, services and activities are usually based on notions of equity or efficiency: the market either fails to offer a fair outcome in distributional terms or it fails to arrive at an efficient outcome in terms of aggregate welfare. But these justifications, implicitly and unintentionally, often incorporate elements which focus on the correction of another kind of failure: that of individual reasoning. They do this either because the concepts of equity and efficiency are invoked to justify state intervention beyond the analytic competence of these principles, or because support for specific public policies or institutions require additional principles to justify the particular form these institutions take. In short, justifications from equity and efficiency are underdetermined. But in order to support interventions which are at least partly correcting individual reasoning failure, we need a defensible theory of state paternalism. Existing discussions of paternalism fail to explain why the state should know better than the individual what is in his or her own best interests, even if it is acknowledged that individual reasoning can be sub-optimal. The thesis concludes with a discussion of criteria which do support the superior decision-making of the state in certain circumstances: where the benefits (or costs) of consumption are likely to occur a long period into the future; where direct experience of the particular form of consumption is problematic; and where technical complexities make judgement about appropriate consumption difficult. The thesis concludes with an analysis of some applications and implications of these proposals for state intervention in consumption.

In this study, stochastic simulation based risk analysis is applied to the government domestic debt stock in Turkey with the motivation to identify the cost and risk characteristics of alternative debt financing strategies. Future path of interest rates is simulated by using the yield curve forecasting framework in Diebold and Li (2002), which is founded on the Nelson-Siegel yield curve model. Yield curve simulation is based on the estimated term structure of interest rates for the period June 2001-July 2004. Simulated yield curves are generally upward sloped and concave. Contrary to the common observation, long-term yields are more volatile compared to short-term yields. Under each financing strategy, debt is rolled over on top of simulated term structure of interest rates. Alternative financing strategies are compared with respect to absolute Cost-at-Risk, relative Cost-at-Risk and relative risk measures computed from the simulated cost distributions. Results of the risk analysis are influenced by the characteristics of the simulated term structure of interest rates and the additional yield imposed on the coupon bonds, which is assumed to reflect risk perception of investors for increased maturity.

There is a significant amount of existing research on the topic of project management that dates back to Gaddis’ 1959 seminal paper “The Project Manager”. Most organisations recognise the role that projects play in bringing beneficial change to the business (Cooke-Davies, 2002; Kwak and Anbari, 2008; Maylor et al, 2006; Smyth and Morris, 2007; Kloppenborg and Opfer, 2002) and they increasingly use project management processes to seek to improve business results (Mathur et al, 2007). However, the “projectification” of business has not proved to be the panacea that individuals and organisations hoped (Maylor et al, 2006). Despite the volume of research conducted, limited insight has been made in explaining why project management success rates remain so low (Lyytinen and Robey, 1999; Cooke-Davies, 2002; McManus and Wood-Harper, 2008; Thomas and Fernandez, 2008). Without a single theoretical base for explaining and guiding successful project management, various different theoretical approaches, have been patched together (Winter et al, 2006b), leading to a knowledge base which is “unstable and fragmented” (Cicmil and Hodgson, 2006b, p. 115). Smyth and Morris urge academics and practitioners to work together to find “an eclectic mix” of concepts and theoretical underpinnings to be used to improve project outcomes (2007, p. 423). This research sought to understand the success criteria and critical success factors necessary for successful IS project management in the NHS. Through an ethnographic approach this research, uses academic and professional literature and practical experience, and sought to contribute to the ‘eclectic mix’ of knowledge and contribute to a deeper understanding of what is actually happening inside projects (Blomquist et al, 2010; Cicmil, et al, 2006, Winter et al, 2006b). This research found that those criteria in the iron triangle of success (Atkinson, 1999), particularly adherence to budget and schedule, are still prioritised at the expense of other criteria. It found that the organisation understood the importance of the various critical success factors on the project’s outcome but did not apply them in reality. Finally the research found extensive evidence of magic bullet thinking, a belief that the delivery of the new IT/IS alone would result in business change and benefits realisation across the entire organisation.

Within the Political Budget Cycle theory (PBC), it is well known that reelection-seeking incumbents have incentives to manipulate economic outcomes through fiscal policy. However, there is no research to asses the conditions under which manipulating taxes and spending effectively serve those interests of political survival. In our first chapter, we argue that the incentives to do so will depend on the extent to which output can be effectively affected in the short-run. Our theory suggests that politicians follow such strategy with different degrees of information, and shows why some incumbent presidents have been more successful in manipulating the fiscal policy than others using a sample of 13 Latin American countries between 1980 and 2005. Our second chapter estimates the macroeconomic effects of exogenous fiscal policy shocks with a three variable Structural Vector Autoregression (SVAR) model. Our sample country is Costa Rica, for which there is no literature on the topic. Using quarterly data from 1991 until 2009, we found a negative and small impact of fiscal policy on output, while a small positive of revenue. Based on these results, we decided to test the existence of an indirect tool the incumbent may still have through the regulated price industries. Our theory suggests that a regulator-agency will choose the price which maximizes the political support for the incumbent government-regulator. We provide evidence with monthly data from 1986 until 2014, from a wider regulated market: Costa Rica. We also provide insights on the effect of elections on gasoline prices (as a proxy for regulated markets) for a a panel of ten Latin American countries of annual data from 2001-2012. And we contribute to the literature by proposing a non parametric approach describing the relationship between prices in regulated markets and election timing.

In recent decades the Public Private Partnership (PPP) has been widely regarded as an innovative way to construct transport infrastructures and to improve the quality of service. As the number of PPP cases has increased, many countries have tried to standardise PPP models to minimise the costs of trial and error. South Korea, where 426 PPP projects have been undertaken since 1994, usually preferred the BTO (Build-Transfer-Operate) model for transport. In the BTO model, the private sector recoups its investment by charging end users directly and hence should bear the traffic demand risk. However, the Korean Government shared the demand risk through a minimum revenue guarantee to induce private sector involvement, and this led to many criticisms of the BTO model. Tariffs in the BTO case were much higher than those of public operators, but the Government still had to pay large amounts of guaranteed revenue. Thus, BTL (Build-Transfer-Lease), where the demand risk is on the public sector, has become an alternative model. The BTL is the “service sold to the public sector” model which is similar to the DBFO (Design-Build-Finance-Operate) in the UK. This thesis examines which of the BTO and the BTL PPP models is optimal to save governmental expenditure for transport infrastructures such as road and rail. Appropriate traffic demand risk sharing, which a particularly controversial issue in South Korea, is explored. These research objectives are examined through five case studies: the Incheon Airport Expressway and the Oksan-Ochang Expressway cases for road PPP; the Incheon Airport Railway, the Daegok-Sosa Railway and the Seoul Metro 9 cases for rail PPP. Through a detailed literature review and five case studies, the thesis shows that the optimal PPP model, which is measured by the VFM (Value for Money) assessment, needs to satisfy the interests of public sector, private sector, and end users. Based on these assessments and including these three viewpoints, it is concluded that the optimal PPP model for road can be the BTL where the public sector can save expenditure or reduce the level of tariff. Traffic demand risk for roads is relatively low, so the public sector does not have to transfer it to the private sector with high profit rate. In the case of rail, the limited revenue and high cost make a project difficult to be financially free standing by the BTO model. However, the BTO can be a better option in urban rail if traffic demand risk is shared appropriately.

This PhD thesis uses survey data and involves the application of latent factor structural equation methods to the study of the economics of disability and disability policy in later life, a topic which is currently very high on the policy agenda. It comprises four studies. The first chapter investigates the presence of health-related sample attrition (the drop-out of eligible sample members over time) in the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA). The second chapter examines whether different indic ators of disability, collected in three widely-used household surveys, are consistent with a common set of findings relating to the targeting of disability benefits. In the third chapter we estimate the additional per sonal costs experienced by disabled older people to achieve the same material standard of living as similar people living without disability. Chapter 4 assesses the presence of socio-economic disparities in birth-cohort trends in later life physical and cognitive disability and in the receipt of non-means-tested cash disability benefits.