Rather than ponder sovereign wealth funds' (SWFs ') significance for global capital markets, this thesis takes a step back and asks the following: why do SWFs exist in such numbers across the global political economy? The SWF literature, dominated by fmancial economists and neoliberal commentators, has yet to adequately address this puzzle. This is significant given the funds embed systematically significant amounts of national wealth throughout speculative capital markets, thereby increasing their state's vulnerability to recurrent asset bubbles and crises. The thesis consequently examines the interest-based politics behind SWFs' domestic origins. It begins its analysis with the argument that SWFs are first and foremost domestic strategies of governance created to achieve specific short and medium term goals of the administrative state. This is despite their international and long-term investment orientations. In short, the funds serve to immediately stabilize state actors' governance function by reconceptualising problems of uncertainty in the quantitative and manageable terms of fmancial risk. This account of SWFs' origins thus contests that currently dominating mainstream commentary, which portrays the funds as evolutionary features of modem fmance capitalism. The domestic political interests SWFs were initially created to serve consequently remain critically unexamined. Drawing from the constructivist institutionalism literature, the thesis also seeks to demonstrate that SWFs are the institutional embodiment of a specific array of prescriptive fmancial ideas. It will be shown this framework offmancial 'knowledge' problematically constrains political actors to defer their interests to the demands of the speculative fmancial realm. In the face of recurrent crises, such constraint highlights how SWFs' immediate impact on domestic socioeconomic spheres outweighs their imagined fmancial benefits. The funds' rapid expansion since 2000 therefore poses significant implications for the nature and exercise of sovereign authority in SWF-states. These theoretical arguments are developed in Part I of the thesis, and then tested against three case studies in Part II: Norway's Government Pension Fund-Global; Alberta's Heritage Savings Trust Fund; and Ireland's National Pension Reserve Fund.

Directors’ remuneration has been subjected to continuous study by researchers in different fields such as accounting, management, human resource and psychology. Accounting scholars primarily based their research on agency theory. Recent papers focused on the affect of corporate governance on the determination of directors’ remuneration. This study aims to investigate the effect of three main variables on directors’ remuneration – corporate governance variables, human capital attributes and firm performance. The study controls the effect of firm size, type of industry, leverage, diversification and location. 417 (50%) Malaysian public listed companies were selected using stratified random sampling for three years period from 2004 to 2006. Only non-financial companies are included in the sample because financial companies are subjected to different set of regulations in Malaysia. Using multiple regression method, it is found that seven corporate governance variables are significantly related to directors’ remuneration. The study shows that board size, CEO-chairman duality role, proportion of independent directors and proportion of interlocking directors in the board are significantly related to directors’ remuneration. Proportion of non-executive directors in the board, percentage of indirect directors’ shareholding and percentage of block holders’ shareholdings are found to be negatively related to directors’ remuneration. Of the three human capital attributes studied, only executive directors’ average age and tenure are found to be significantly related to the level of directors’ remuneration. No evidence was found to conclude the role of qualification towards level of directors’ remuneration. The model used was tested for its robustness using different set of alternative measures for some of its key variables. Corrections were also made to address other common problems associated with multiple regression such as outliers, non-normality of residuals, heteroscedasticity and multicollinearity. Finally, the study extends the analysis by running fixed effect model in order to control for firm specific effects. There are few discrepancies between the pooled regression model and fixed effect model result but this may be caused by little variation over time among governance variables. Finally, the findings further supports the agency theory by showing that, among Malaysian companies, performance still plays significant role in determining rewards for its directors

Although the number of researches measuring the efficiencies of higher education institutions has grown especially for the last two decades, literature of both parametric and non-parametric research on HEIs in Turkey is relatively scant compared to the countries alike. This PhD research that fills this noticeable gap in the literature scrutinises 53 public universities in Turkey between the full academic year of 2005-2006 and 2009-2010 covering 5-year time span. In this research, albeit the slight changes in the non-parametric estimation, number of undergraduate students, postgraduate students and research funding are taken as outputs, capital and labour expenses as input prices and eventually annual expenses as total cost. Moreover, university-based features are included into the model so as to apprehend potential heterogeneities among the universities. The initial conclusions coming out of parametric estimation have certain suggestions for public HEIs in Turkey. Firstly, mean efficiency performances of Turkish public universities are fairly dispersed ranging from 70% to 90%. This would encourage a new set of policy-making decisions to lead inefficient universities to be aware of the success of their counterparts. Secondly, despite the fact that some universities have relatively poor efficiency rates, in overall analysis their efficiency scores are indicating optimistic signs relying on certain models. Lastly, developing different models do matter for efficiency analysis in the sense that dispersion of efficiency values among Turkish universities does vary from one model to another.

This thesis measures the tax effort and taxable capacity in Libya and examines an important research question: " Has the tax burden reached the level of full tax capacity in Libya?". The main motivation of the study is the need to diversify the sources of the Libyan economy. To this end the thesis presents a conceptual framework for tax burden, excess of tax burden, theory of optimal taxation, concept of taxable capacity, concept of tax effort. The framework is used to reviews the developments of the Libyan economy and the impact on tax effort. The thesis has explored several aspect of tax performance in Libya. First, it analyses the trends of public revenues, public revenues, public spending in final stances of the government. Second, it studies the tax structure and the relative importance of tax sources through the analysis of marginal propensity to tax and the income elasticity of taxes. Third, it examines the evolution of Libya's tax system particularly the income tax system. Finally, various econometrics models such OLS regression, Ordinary ridge regression, and Unbiased ridge regression are used to measure the tax performance such as tax burden, tax effort and tax capacity using time series data covering 1970 to 2000, and panel data covering 2001 to 2007. A fixed and random effect model are used to compare if the determinants of Libya’s tax efforts differs from that of a range of selected oil producing countries. These countries are: Algeria, Argentina, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Botswana, Brazil, Cameroon, Chad, Chile, Colombia, Republic of Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Ecuador, Egypt, Emirates, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guatemala, Guyana, Indonesia, Iran, Kenya, Kuwait, Lesotho, Libya, Mauritania, Nigeria, Oman, Peru, Saudi, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Venezuela, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe. This research consists of seven chapters: Chapter One provides a background; Chapter Two provides the literature review; Chapter Three 4 gives a brief overview of the development of the Libyan economy, while in Chapter Four there is a description of the public finances in Libya; this is followed in Chapter Five by a review of the tax system in Libya; Chapter Six presents the study’s analyses and findings; Chapter Seven provides the conclusions and recommendations. The main findings of this research are: First, in Libya, tax burden per capita is high; Second, the tax bases in Libya were narrow reflecting the government's heavy reliance on oil revenue; Third, the level of taxable capacity in Libya is also low compared to the selected oil producing countries for a variety of reasons, including: narrow tax bases, failure to diversify the tax sources, and the public sector being subject to tax. The argument is presented that the Libyan economy has reached the full utilization of its taxable capacity. In addition, the study found that the following factors have a major positive impact on Libya's taxable capacity and tax effort: the national product of the service sector, money supply, level of business freedom, level of economic freedom, currency in circulation and tax penalties. In contrast, two factors are found to be negatively affecting the taxable capacity and tax effort in Libya: non-oil exports, oil revenues. The contributions of this study to the literature are twofold: first, this is the first of its kind to provide comprehensive analyses of Libya’s tax performance; Second, it has added some new variables such as oil revenues, non-oil exports, currency in circulation, money supply(M1), and tax penalties in testing the determinants of tax effort into the model built by previous researchers. Finally, the research results shed lights on how Libya government may diversify the Libyan economy and encourage growth in the non-oil private sector through proper taxation mechanisms.

L'objet de ce travail est d'analyser, du XIXe siècle à 2010, les déterminants politico-économiques du niveau des dépenses publiques, exprimé en pourcentage du PIB, pour les quatre principaux pays de l'Union européenne. (la France, l'Allemagne, l'Italie et le Royaume-Uni ; groupe que l'on notera « UE-04 »). Dans le chapitre 1, nous présentons les différentes mesures de la « taille de l'État », et mettons en évidence la croissance des dépenses publiques depuis le début du XIXe siècle. Nous recensons et testons les principaux modèles monofactoriels de détermination du niveau des dépenses publiques : loi de Wagner, modèle de développement de Rostow, effet de déplacement de Peacock et Wiseman, Granger-causalité entre dépenses et recettes, et interactions budgétaires internationales. Ces modèles ne peuvent expliquer que partiellement et superficiellement l'évolution séculaire des dépenses : ils sont trop simples pour appréhender la profonde complexité des processus. Les niveaux de dépenses publiques sont de plus en plus interdépendants, du fait de l'intensification du processus de globalisation. Ils varient de plus en plus de manière similaire : ce co-mouvement (ou cycle international) est probablement lié à l'émergence d'un « fédéralisme budgétaire européen » et à l'amplification de l'intégration. Enfin, ils ne semblent pas converger, du fait de la persistance de fortes et anciennes différences, notamment institutionnelles. Le chapitre 2 propose une première étude systématique des épisodes de baisse des dépenses publiques depuis le XIXe siècle. Après une recension de la littérature, nous procédons à une analyse quantitative. Le nombre d'années de hausse des dépenses est approximativement égal à celui des baisses. En revanche, l'intensité moyenne des hausses est supérieure à celle des baisses. Ces mouvements sont de plus en plus coordonnés entre les économies. La chronique politico-économique atteste que le PIB et les dépenses liées aux guerres constituent des facteurs fondamentaux, et que sur la période contemporaine les configurations institutionnelles et la volonté des dirigeants politiques exercent une influence essentielle. Enfin, les épisodes de baisse durable sont peu nombreux et sont généralement mis en œuvre lorsque la conjoncture économique est favorable, par des réductions opérées dans les trois grandes catégories de dépenses publiques : consommation, investissement et transferts. Dans le chapitre 3, nous effectuons une ample recension de la littérature sur les déterminants des dépenses publiques. Il existe plusieurs dizaines de facteurs potentiels. Les processus de détermination des dépenses publiques étant très complexes, le contenu interprétatif des modèles théoriques est limité. La littérature néglige deux éléments pourtant désormais fondamentaux : les interactions budgétaires entre les pays, et l'influence des institutions de l'Union européenne. Le creusement de la dette et la crise des finances publiques ont conduit à une homogénéisation des gouvernements : les décisions budgétaires sont désormais largement déconnectées du positionnement idéologique des dirigeants ainsi que du niveau de soutien dont ils disposent. Une analyse économétrique en panel des déterminants des catégories de dépenses publiques sur la période 1992-2010 pour l'UE-04 indique que la croissance du PIB agit de manière significativement négative. Les autres variables politico-économiques traditionnelles peinent à expliquer les évolutions des dépenses. Un panel dynamique permet d'apprécier le rôle joué par la variable dépendante retardée. Pour le total des dépenses publiques, il existe une force de rappel, pour laquelle les transferts jouent un rôle prépondérant. / The purpose of this thesis is to analyze, from the 19th century to 2010, the politico-economic determinants of the public expenditures level, expressed in percentage of GDP, of the four major European countries. (France, Germany, Italy, and United Kingdom; group that will be abbreviated "UE-04") In Chapter 1, a presentation of the various measures of the "size of government" is undertaken, and the increase of public expenditures since the 19th century is highlighted. The most important monofactorial models determining public expenditures are reviewed and tested: Wagner's law, Rostow's development model, Peacock and Wiseman's Displacement effect, Granger causality between expenditures and receipts, and international budgetary interactions. These models can only explain partially and superficially the long-term evolution of expenditures: they are too simple to grasp the deep complexity of the determination processes. Public expenditures levels are more and more interdependent, because of the intensification of the globalization process. The levels vary more and more in a similar way: this comovement (or international cycle) is probably linked to the emergence of a "European budgetary federalism" and to the expansion of the integration. Finally, they do not seem to converge, because of the persistence of strong and old differences, especially institutional ones. Chapter 2 is a first systematic analysis of the episodes of the public expenditures' reduction from the 19th century. The literature is reviewed, and a quantitative analysis is carried out. The number of years of increase is approximately equal to the number of years of reduction. Nonetheless, the average intensity of increases is greater than the average intensity of reductions. These movements are more and more coordinated across economies. The politico-economic chronicles establishes that GDP and war-related expenditures are fundamental factors, and that in the contemporary period the institutional configurations and the will of the political leaders exert a major influence. Finally, there are few episodes of sustainable reduction. They are generally implemented when the overall economic situation is favorable, and cuts are then employed in the three major categories of public expenditures: consumption, investment, and transfers. In Chapter 3, the abundant literature related to the determinants of public expenditures is reviewed. There are several dozens of potential factors. The determination process of the public expenditures is very complex, and thus the interpretive content of theoretical models is rather limited. The literature disregards two elements that are henceforth fundamental: the budgetary interactions between countries, and the influence of the institutions of the European Union. The growing public debt and the public finance crisis have led to a homogenization of governments: budgetary decisions are henceforth largely unrelated to the ideological orientation of political leaders, as well as to the level of popularity that these leaders enjoy. An econometric analysis of panel data is performed to study the determinants of the main categories of public expenditures on the period 1992-2010 for the UE-04. GDP growth's impact is significantly negative. The other traditional politico-economic variables barely explain the evolution of public expenditures. The role played by the lagged dependent variable is estimated using a dynamic panel. There is a restoring force for the total of public expenditures, for which the transfers play a paramount role.

Thesis (M.M. (Finance & Investment))--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, Graduate School of Business Administration, 2013. / The lack of a framework for selecting appropriate funding mechanisms results in costly and inefficient financing of public infrastructure projects in South Africa. The purpose of this research was to determine the nature, the utilisation and the appropriateness of various public infrastructure financing mechanisms. Twenty major public infrastructure projects were used to conduct the exploratory study of public infrastructure financing practices in South Africa. Although the research found that South African financing practices were similar to practices in developed economies, it was also found that the capacity of public institutions to manage infrastructure projects needed strengthening. The research further found that markets for other mechanisms had to be developed further to provide more financing options. Finally, a conceptual framework that provides a consistent and systematic process in selecting appropriate and efficient public infrastructure financing decisions was proposed.

Este trabalho estuda o efeito da Lei de Responsabilidade Fiscal (LRF) sobre os municípios brasileiros. De modo particular, avalia qual era a situação fiscal dos municípios, se essa situação necessitava ser controlada através da imposição de uma regra e se o limite imposto sobre as despesas com pessoal afeta esses municípios e contribui para redução do gasto público. Em relação à situação fiscal, os problemas de déficit corrente e gasto excessivo com pessoal não aparecem de modo generalizado. Ambos se restringem a uma pequena parcela dos municípios, o que indica que o limite imposto pela Lei não afeta na média os municípios. De fato, a resposta à questão levantada sobre qual o é impacto da Lei sobre os gastos com pessoal no conjunto dos Municípios brasileiros mostra que a LRF afeta de modo positivo o gasto com pessoal. Isto não deve levar à conclusão de que ela não está sendo cumprida, pois dado que a despesa com pessoal apresentada pelo conjunto dos Municípios brasileiros nos últimos anos ficou abaixo do limite estabelecido pela Lei, conclui-se que há espaço para uma elevação desse gasto sem que isso implique numa infração a mesma. Contudo, o estudo também analisa o impacto da LRF sobre os municípios que enfrentavam um elevado gasto com esse item de despesa. Neste caso, o resultado alcançado permite concluir que a LRF é relevante para controlar o gasto com pessoal. / This work studies the effect of the recent budget rule adopted in Brazil, called Lei de Responsabilidade Fiscal (LRF), on its municipalities. It investigates if the problems of fiscal deficits and expenditures on salaries and wages of public employees, including retirement expenditures, were so high as to justify the imposition of a fiscal rule as were in the case of Brazilian states. It also evaluates if the limit established by the law on government’s payroll had any effect on the mayors behavior towards this item of the public budget and contributed to reduce the public spending. In regard of the fiscal situation of the Brazilian municipalities, neither the fiscal deficit nor the government’s high payroll appeared as generalized problem. These are problems restricted to a small number of cities, which indicates that the LRF should not have a significant effect on government’s payroll. In fact, the result of the dynamic effect panel model estimated to evaluate the LRF’s impact on government’s payroll shows that the law’s effect is positive. However, this should not lead to the conclusion that the law is being broken. As the data shows, the limit imposed by the LRF is not biding, which leaves space for a growth in the government’s payroll. On the other hand, when the analysis of the LRF’s effect on the government’s payroll is restricted to the cities that had a high spending on salaries and wages, the result is that the limit imposed by the law has the expected effect of controlling the high expenditures.

This thesis studies the provision of public pension system through three different approaches. Part one focuses on demographic change and pension system reforms in China. It reviews the historical reforms and the problems and suggestions associated with the current system. More importantly, by applying a calibrated overlapping generations general equilibrium simulation model, it investigates the impact of the demographic changes and the choice of pension system to the individual choices and macroeconomic variables in the future. As with all social insurance programs, the provision a public pension system involves a trade-off between protection and distortion. The second part is a theoretical study about the optimal level of public pension system. It derives the optimal pension benefit level by considering the welfare loss imposed by the saving and labour supply distortion. The third part of the thesis, is an empirical study investigating the reasons for different choices in pension systems. There are three types of public pension systems popular throughout the world: Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG), Funded and Mixed. The latter two have grown up largely since 1980s, after Chile successfully built its Funded system. By applying logistic regression tests, we examine the likely social and economic variables which have been affecting the choices.

This thesis presents three empirical analyses of the macroeconomic effects and sustainability of fiscal policy. Three key issues are examined: the transmission mechanism for fiscal policy shocks in Korea, the sustainability of government debt in three selected countries (Korea, the UK, and the US), and the effects of fiscal consolidation on macroeconomic activity. The main findings are as follows. First, government spending has a positive effect on the economy. Capital spending is likely to boost the economy more effectively than current spending. Second, there is a cointegrating relationship between the variables in Korea and the US, but not in the UK. That means fiscal policy in Korea and the US is sustainable, while fiscal policy in the UK is not. Third, fiscal consolidation is not likely to be expansionary in terms of GDP growth. The results also show that fiscal consolidation in time of high debt-to-GDP ratios, the spending-base, or high sovereign risk has fewer negative effects on economic growth than fiscal consolidation in time of low debt-to-GDP ratios, the tax-base, or low sovereign risk. The economic growth rate, government spending-based fiscal consolidation, low long-term interest rates, and higher sovereign risk have significant effects on reducing debt-to-GDP ratio.

This thesis investigates the trade and revenue impact of trade liberalization. The purpose is to address the following issues: to examine the effect of trade liberalization on the volume of imports and exports, taxation, and its association with the enhancement of the performance of overall tax system. An empirical analysis is conducted by, first, adding liberalization factors to the import and export demand functions to assess their impact on imports and exports. The results indicate that, for Thailand, trade liberalization does not lead to the deterioration in the trade balance. Instead, it helps improve export performance. However, trade deficit may still occur due to a high income elasticity of demand for imports, rooted from its import structure. Although trade liberalization is not found to be associated with the problem of trade imbalance, the fiscal imbalance may still persist due to the mechanism of tariff reduction. In order to deal with the fiscal problem, the government needs to implement domestic tax reform. The consequence of reform may vary since liberalization impacts on taxation differ greatly depending on various factors. The study examines its effect on taxation, by applying a tax effort model and employing a two-way fixed effect approach. The results suggest that tax reform in less developed and developing countries, by moving away from trade tax to domestic taxes, may be inapplicable since domestic taxes may also severely suffer from liberalization. However, tax reform is still necessary and thus the study applies the concept of tax buoyancy and elasticity to evaluate the ability of Thailand’s tax system to mobilize its revenue after the reform. The results reveal that the tax system as a whole is buoyant and elastic due to the high tax-to-base buoyancy of corporate income tax, especially in the post-AFTA period. The main findings from empirical studies have important policy implications for tax strategies of Thailand and other developing countries.