Public—Private Partnerships in Ireland: Policy and Practice

Ireland's National Development Plan 2000–2006 includes a significant programme of public—private partnerships (PPPs). The Irish Government's policy on PPPs has been shaped to ensure that capital investments under PPP are not included when calculating key fiscal aggregates. This article traces the origins of Ireland's PPP programme and outlines the extent of PPP activity to date. It details how the PPP programme has failed to make an impact in terms of addressing Ireland's infrastructure deficit and examines three particular cases where the PPP model has been applied.     

What Can Countries in Other Regions Learn from Social Security Reform in Latin America?

About a dozen countries in Latin America have enacted reformsthat include elements being contemplated elsewhere, includingthe partial privatization of social security. It is not easyto draw universal lessons for social security reform from theexperience of countries such as Argentina, Chile, and Mexico,however, where sizeable public pension systems went bankruptbefore the populations aged, mainly because of mismanagement.Most developing economies have much smaller social securitysystems. Relatively well-managed systems in industrial countriesface problems that are long term in nature and have been broughtabout by an aging population. The experiences of Latin Americanevertheless offer some general lessons for countries in otherparts of the world. These lessons relate to changes in labormarket incentives accompanying reforms and how workers reactto them, government actions that have met with success in managingthe transition to funded pensions, and the expectations of individualsfrom social security systems. Latin America's reforms suggestthat the most effective approach is to keep payroll taxes low,governments solvent, and social security systems focused onproviding reasonable insurance against poverty in old age. JEL codes: G23, H31, H53, H55, J26     

Are there Social Spillovers in Consumers’ Security Assessments of Payment Instruments?

Even though security of payments has long been identified as an important aspect of the consumer payment experience, recent literature fails to appropriately assess the extent of social spillovers among payment users. We test for the existence and importance of such spillovers by analyzing whether social influence affects consumers’ perceptions of the security of payment instruments. Based on a 2008–2014 annual panel data survey of consumers, we find strong evidence of social spillovers in payment markets: others’ perceptions of security of payment instruments exert a positive influence on one’s own payment security perceptions. The significant and robust results imply that a consumer’s assessments of security converge to his peers’ average assessment: a 10 percent change in the divergence between one’s own security rating and peers’ average rating will result in a 7 percent change in one’s own rating in the next period. The results are robust to many specifications and do not change when we control for actual fraud or crime data. Our results indicate that spillovers rather than reflection appear to be the cause, although separating the two causes is very difficult (Manski 1993). In particular, the spillovers are stronger for people who experience an exogenous shock to security perception, people who have more social interactions, and younger consumers, who are more likely to be influenced by social media. We also examine the effects of social spillovers on payment behavior (that is, on decisions regarding payment adoption and use). Our results indicate that social spillovers have a rather limited impact on payment behavior, as others’ perceptions seem to affect one’s own payment behavior mainly indirectly through the effect on one’s own perceptions.     

Monetary Policy Stress in EMU: What Role for Fundamentals and Missed Forecasts?

This article reexamines the problem of monetary policy stress in the EMU. In addition to estimating the amount of stress in particular countries, we investigate its sources by breaking it down into its “fundamental” parts, covering how it is a result of country-specific macroeconomic divergences and the EMU-wide “non-fundamental” component, with special attention given to the role of missed forecasts. Our results confirm that peripheral countries were exposed to risks emerging from low interest rates while the “core” countries did not suffer from much monetary policy stress. Interestingly, the bulk of it was non-fundamental, i.e., not caused by inflation and output gap differentials between countries. We show that missed forecasts did make an important contribution to this part of the stress and were mainly responsible for pushing the interest rate below its rule-consistent level.     

Devolved Government and Transport—Relationships,Process and Policy

This article explores the change in relationships taking place between the National Assembly for Wales and UK government. The context for this is the rationale, constituent elements and timespan of an integrated transport policy for Wales, and the author draws on evidence to, and reports from, the House of Commons, the National Assembly, the Wales Office and the report of the Richard Commission on the Assembly's powers. Wales can be seen as a case study of how devolution, and the development of transport policy in a devolved context, have progressed; it is argued that the principles apply to other devolved governments in the UK and elected assemblies.     

Women in public policy and public administration?

This paper explores the persistence of gender inequality in public administration in the UK and globally. The implications for the continued under-representation of women are explored. The data reveals vertical and horizontal occupational gender segregation which the paper argues, drawing upon representative bureaucracy research, has policy outcomes for beneficiaries of public services.     

Spatial Planning and Transport in London and the South East—Can Policy Co-Ordination and Delivery be Achieved?

The railway system in London and the south east is fundamental to London in its roles as the capital of the country and as a world-class financial and business centre. This article examines the formal strategies for spatial planning and railway investment in London and the south east and shows that there is a distinct dichotomy between spatial and transport planning. The authors explain the key investments needed in the network. They call for the Government to demonstrate how land use planning and transport investment are dovetailed together and properly funded, and for the Strategic Rail Authority to act more in concert with regional and local interests.     

Studies in Convergence? Post‐Crisis Effects on Corporate Rescue and the Influence of Social Policy: The EU and the USA

The financial crisis and the sovereign debt crisis that it precipitated in a number of peripheral EU Member States heralded massive changes in insolvency, corporate rescue and employment protection policies. The US and the EU both suffered greatly in the wake of the crisis, but their recoveries have occurred along very different tracks. The US has managed to regain much of its position in terms of relative growth and the UK has outpaced the recoveries of those European countries that are members of the European Monetary Union. The purpose of this treatise is to explore the context of the 2007–2008 financial crisis in the US and in the EU and its impact on legal reform in corporate rescue and restructuring as well as those aspects of social policy implicated within insolvency systems (notably collective redundancy and transfers of undertakings). It will also consider whether or not the corporate rescue and employee protection systems can be seen to be converging, and whether, in view of the different socio‐economic, political and cultural aspects of the US and the EU, such convergence might be beneficial. Copyright © 2015 INSOL International and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

ERP in action — Challenges and benefits for management control in SME context

ERP systems have fundamentally re-shaped the way business data is collected, stored, disseminated and used throughout the world. However, the existing research in accounting has provided only relatively few empirical findings on the implications for management control when companies implement ERP systems as the technological platform. Especially scarce are the findings concerning the production phase, after implementation, when the information processes, related work practices and the new information contents can be seen as established. In this paper we explored and theorized the benefits, challenges and problems for management control when an ERP system is in use, four years after the implementation. Our findings also illustrate why and under what circumstances these challenges and benefits may exist. For a holistic view of the organization our findings, based on a qualitative case study, are constructed from the viewpoints of people at different levels and functions of the organization. Top management expected a new strategic control system, but due to the many challenges it ended up with merely financial accounting based control. At the operational level, serious challenges lead to inadequate usage of the ERP system. Management control produces the financial basic data and must contend with many practical problems caused by ERP implementation.     

Risk Preferences Regarding Multiple Fatalities and Some Implications for Societal Risk Decision Making—An Empirical Study

Risk preferences related to accidents or other situations involving the possibility of multiple fatalities were studied in 87 persons in Sweden belonging to two separate groups with professional or educational knowledge of risk‐ and crisis‐management issues. Use was made of a tradeoff method, the results obtained consisting of von Neuman–Morgenstern utility functions over the range of 0–1000 fatalities. Most of the utility curves for the number of fatalities were found to be convex, implying the majority of subjects to display risk‐seeking behaviour. Implications of the findings for societal risk decision making are discussed, along with prospective areas of application and the possibilities of considering other dimensions than the number of fatalities.     

Terrorism and Critical Infrastructures: Implications for Public–Private Crisis Management

The spate of terrorist attacks in New York, London and Madrid has raised some significant issues for the public management of critical infrastructures. In many countries, privatizations in the 1980s and 1990s have transferred key elements of the critical infrastructure to private companies. Because these infrastructures are of major significance to our societies and economies, they must be protected against prolonged periods of breakdown. The ‘new’ terrorism has the potential to do just that. The management of this new threat is a complex task, which invariably will be undertaken by both public and private actors. They must deal with the core challenges of the prevention of attacks, effective communication of information across organizational boundaries and the ‘ownership’ of crisis decision-making. This article considers these issues within the context of the broader research areas of public management and crisis management.     

What's in an education? Implications of CEO education for bank performance

Exploiting a unique hand-built dataset, this paper finds that CEO educational attainment, both level and quality, matters for bank performance. We offer robust evidence that banks led by CEOs with MBAs outperform their peers. Such CEOs improve performance when compensation structures are geared towards greater risk-taking incentives, and when banks follow riskier or more innovative business models. Our findings suggest that management education delivers skills enabling CEOs to manage increasingly larger and complex banking firms and achieve successful performance outcomes.     

An examination of state and local government pension underfunding – Implications and guidance for governance and regulation

State and local government pension underfunding has become a major focus of public policy debate due in large part to recent Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) actions that have brought national attention to the issue. The extent of these plans underfunding has been debated, along with the necessity for state government intervention and the level of regulatory actions that should be enacted by state legislatures. State and local public pension plans do not fall under the enumerated powers of the federal government in the Constitution and are therefore left to each individual state to regulate. The amount of plan underfunding and enacted public policy by state varies greatly. Additionally, in contrast to numerous state balanced-budget laws, legal directives for fully funding public pensions are virtually non-existent. This paper analyzes the state and local public pension crisis, examines current and long-term risk, studies public employee fiscal conditions, considers the societal impacts of these plans, considers the strengths and weakness of pension plan types, recommends public policy and regulation, and offers strategies for managers, board members, and public officials to adopt.     

New development: Managing and accounting for sustainable development across generations in public services—and call for papers

Social and environmental justice across generations is a fundamental attribute of sustainable development. In this article, which is also a call for papers for a future theme in Public Money & Management (PMM), we develop our case for further research on how governments and public service organizations seek to address sustainable development in their decision-making processes. We believe that accounting for social and environmental aspects is an underdeveloped area of research and practice that is worthy of further critical enquiry. We therefore call on researchers and practitioners to submit their research to a themed issue of PMM on managing and accounting for sustainable development in public services.     

Can earnings fixated investors survive in a competitive securities market? Implications for sustained price anomalies and mark-to-market accounting

We model the dynamic survival of earnings fixated investors in a competitive securities market that allows for learning and arbitrage and that is populated by heterogeneous investors. Our model is distinct from those based on aggressive trading by overconfident investors. We prove that in the absence of noise traders, rational investors will drive out earnings fixated investors from the market in the long-run. More interestingly, we show that in a market with noise traders, some proportion of earnings fixated investors survive in long-run equilibrium for all feasible model parameter values. Furthermore, under no circumstances can the earnings fixated investors be driven out of the market completely. On the contrary, for some parameter values, the earnings fixated investors drive out the rational investors entirely. These results rationalize the long-run sustainability of common pricing anomalies. They also highlight potential benefits to society of mark-to-market accounting.