26 Mar 2001
The Changing Role of the Central Budget Office Allen Schick
The traditional role of the central budget office is incompatible with the management reforms enfolding in various OECD Member countries. These reforms are grounded on the principle that managers must be permitted to run their operations without undue outside interference. The logic of reform is that only when managers are free to use money and other organisational resources within agreed budgets can they be responsible for the organisation’s successes or failures. In countries where a culture of reform has taken hold, there is consensus that halfway measures do not suffice, that managers either are free to act or are not. It is not a matter of relaxing one or another restriction, but of reshaping the operations of public institutions and the behaviour of those who work in them. The budget process is one of the main arenas in which the machinery of government is undergoing fundamental transformation.
26 Mar 2001
Budgeting in Sweden Jón R. Blöndal
From enjoying the largest budget surpluses of any OECD Member country in the late 1980s, Sweden went into having the largest budget deficits of any OECD Member country in the early 1990s, which were accompanied by a massive increase in government debt. In a span of just five years, the level of debt had nearly doubled. However, by the late 1990s, the budget had been brought back to balance and Sweden is now enjoying significant surpluses again.
26 Mar 2001
Voucher Programmes and their Role in Distributing Public Services Martin Cave
This paper is concerned with a number of conceptual and practical issues associated with the use of vouchers to distribute public services. Section 1 proposes a definition of vouchers and considers the position which voucher distribution occupies in the spectrum of possible mechanisms for the production and distribution of public services; this leads into a discussion of the objectives which voucher distribution might promote. Section 2 classifies the contexts in which vouchers might be applied and types of voucher systems. This permits a preliminary mapping of combinations of policy objectives and characteristics of the public service in question onto alternative forms of voucher distribution. Section 3 provides an illustrative review of the use of vouchers in the distribution of public services. Many of the examples discussed are in the field of education, where discussion of or use of vouchers is most developed, but experience of other public services is included where it is available. Section 4 contains conclusions.
26 Mar 2001
Greater Independence for Fiscal Institutions Nicholas Gruen
This paper seeks to outline the thinking behind a proposal contained in a recently released discussion paper by the Business Council of Australia (BCA). The BCA is Australia’s leading business body. It comprises the chief executive officers of most of Australia’s largest companies. The BCA’s paper was entitled Avoiding boom/bust: macroeconomic reform for a globalised economy (1999). A major section of the paper was devoted to exploring the idea of "re-engineering" fiscal policy.
26 Mar 2001
The Chilean Pension System Joaquin Vial Ruiz-Tagle, Francisca Castro
The introduction in the early 1980s of a privately managed pension system in Chile, based on individual capital accounts, has attracted world-wide attention. This reform – as well as other market oriented structural changes – and the significant improvement in Chilean economic performance has led many observers to conclude a direct link, especially through the rise in private domestic savings generated through the new pension system.
