Editorial: The Scandalous State of State Accounting
Brian Sturgess
Pages 1 - 8
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Government Accounting
Making Enron look good
Ian Ball & Gary Pflugrath
Pages 9 - 26
As the current sovereign debt crisis engulfing Europe broadens and threatens to bring down more governments and lead the world into another, potentially very serious, economic slowdown, minimal commentary and public debate has focused on a fundamental problem, and the need to address it. That proble ... Read more
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Avoiding Fiscal Crisis
Accounting for contingent liabilities to manage fiscal risk
Hana Polackova Brixi
Pages 27 - 52
Fiscal activities in the form of contingent liabilities are common in both developed and developing countries, in part because they allow governments to secure public services or economic and financial stability without immediately having to raise taxes or borrow. Yet they pose a fiscal danger as go ... Read more
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How to Have Your Cake and Eat It
Government accounting for PFI
James Cuthbert & Margaret Cuthbert
Pages 53 - 64
This article is about how the capital assets in private finance initiative (PFI) schemes are treated in government accounts. The article begins by describing how public sector obligations in relation to the capital assets of PFI schemes are accounted for in the national accounts, and also, using dif ... Read more
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How Much Red Ink?
Comparing economic and accounting approaches to measuring government deficit and debt
James L. Chan & Yunxiao Xu
Pages 65 - 74
Under the influence of economics, fiscal policy and government budgets focus on projected cash deficits and bonds issued to finance them. While these numbers are certainly necessary, they overlook the delayed costs of policy decisions and actions. Therefore they should be complemented by actual cash ... Read more
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America’s Dangerously Opaque Public Accounting Systems
Avantika Chilkoti
Pages 75 - 82
The current global economic crisis has highlighted the problems that result from governments’ archaic and erroneous accounting practices. The Financial Report of the United States Government is scrutinised with the same pedantry that an auditor or long-term investor uses when studying the financial ... Read more
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Reforming Japan’s Foreign Exchange Policy
Masanaga Kumakura
Pages 83 - 98
Among major advanced countries Japan stands out with its large-scale, one-sided exchange market interventions and enormous foreign exchange reserves. While the country’s exchange market activism is often attributed to its obsession with export-led growth, there are institutional reasons why such a p ... Read more
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The Indices of Transparency of Economic Information and the Latin American e-Government
El Housin Helal Ouriachen, Manuel Antonio López Hernandez & César Daniel Vargas Diaz
Pages 99 - 122
The aim of this paper is to create a ranking of the Ministries of Economy and Finance on transparency and disclosure of economic and financial information that Latin American countries have at an online level. Our methodological proposal is a questionnaire and indices on the transparency of informat ... Read more
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Sovereign Credit Risk in the Eurozone
Jamal Ibrahim Haidar
Pages 123 - 136
What is the current state of sovereign credit risk across the Eurozone? Does the recent fiscal crisis extend to other (non-Eurozone) countries? Is Greece the centre of the problem? How did the current fiscal crisis in the Euro area start? Who is behind it? How can it evolve? How can it be addressed? ... Read more
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The New Dynamic Between US Stock Prices and Money Holdings
Frank Browne & David Cronin
Pages 137 - 156
The financial crisis has had the effect of focusing attention on the role of liquidity, but more specifically excess liquidity, in driving asset prices to unsustainable bubble levels. We think this focus is fully warranted. However, we consider that, in this critical relationship between money and o ... Read more
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Can Global Payments for Ecosystem Services Work?
Edward B. Barbier
Pages 157 - 172
Recent efforts to establish a financial mechanism to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) have sparked hopes for the world’s first global payment system. REDD could help conserve forests in developing countries, lessen greenhouse gas emissions and ecological degradation, ... Read more
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Managing Capital Surges
Graham Bird
Pages 173 - 188
Following the global financial and economic crisis, and beginning in mid-2009, there has been a surge of capital into Asian and Latin American emerging economies. While capital inflows have a good side, they also have a bad side. This will be particularly pertinent when the increase in inflows occur ... Read more
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