1 comments about The Culture of Spending: Why Congress Lives Beyond Our Means.

1. I only wish to disagree with the professional reviewer cited above, who says that Payne writes with an "academic writing style." In fact, this book is very readable and is not weighted down with academic jargon. He makes a good case for an aspect of the legislative process that is often overlooked. If you are a student of government, you should read this book.

4 comments about Pensions in the Public Sector (Pension Research Council Publications).

1. What can be done to help public sector pension plans perform more efficiently, and thereby enhance old-age security? In much of the world, public sector pensions are in deep trouble, undermining economic policy and threatening retiree well being. By and large, North American public pension systems have performed better, boasting tremendous assets and offering reasonable retiree benefits. Even here, however, military and civil service systems are not doing as well. This volume takes stock of public pensions in the US and Canada, offering lessons and highlighting challenges these financial institutions will face in the coming decades.

   The first Pension Research Council study of public pensions in a quarter-century tackles these topics with an impressive group of international experts from the actuarial, legal, and economic fields. Contributors illustrate how reform options vary across uniformed employees, teachers, legislators and the judiciary, municipal and state employees, and military personnel. This study will be invaluable to taxpayers and their representatives, and those responsible for both public and private sector pensions.

   Olivia S. Mitchell is the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans Professor of Insurance and Risk Management, and Executive Director of the Pension Research Council at the Wharton School. Edwin Hustead is Senior Vice President in charge of governmental actuarial and benefits consulting at the HayHuggins Washington, D.C. office.




2. This is a sine qua non treatise for anybody having to deal with the subject of pensions. Edited admirably by actuarial scholars Mitchell, representing academia, and Hustead, representing private industry, the book covers all aspects of pensions in the private, public and academic sectors. The editors also write several individual chapters on their areas of super - expertise. Actually the most useful and comprehensive chapter, the one on governmental and military pensions, is written by the team Mr. and Mrs. Hustead. Mrs. Hustead is an expert attached to the White Houses' office of the budget. The most interesting chapter, this by Mr. Hustead alone, is the one with his lucubration on the pensions system, sometimes debacle, of the District of Columbia, Washington DC, the capital city of the USA. Although it was not the obvious intention of the author, it shows in a very peculiar and amazing way the vicissitudes of such a political entity that fully justifies the usage of vehicular license plates with the proclamation of "Taxation Without Representation" kindly exemplified by firmer President Clinton in the First Limousine, and, of course, immediately rejected by the Bush's administration. Finally, the selection of the goddess Minerva for the cover, is a master, and artistic, stroke.



3. This book explores the diversity of governmental pension plans and investigates how these financial institutions must change in years to come. Public employee pensions are in deep trouble in many countries, undermining economic policy and threatening retiree well-being. What can be done to help these programs perform more efficiently and enhance old-age security? This volume takes stock of public pension developments in the U.S. and Canada, highlighting challenges these financial institutions will face in coming decades. The first Pension Research Council study of public pensions in a quarter of a century tackles these topics with an impressive team of international actuarial, legal, and economic experts.



4. Public employee pensions are in deep trouble in many countries, undermining economic policy and threatening retiree well-being. What can be done to help them perform more efficiently and enhance old-age security? This volume takes stock of public pension developments in the US and Canada, highlighting challenges these financial institutions face in coming decades. The first Pension Research Council study of public pensions in a quarter-century tackles these topics with an impressive team of international actuarial, legal, and economic experts.

No comments about Handbook of New Institutional Economics.

2 comments about The Political Economy of Emerging Markets: Actors, Institutions and Financial Crises in Latin America (CERI Series in International Relations a).

1. With the search among investors for higher yield and with the asset class being one of the notable outperformers in the recent equity market upturn, Santiso's book on emerging markets (notably Latam) could not have arrived at a more opportune time. Generally speaking, it overviews the most significant empirical findings associated with emerging markets over the past two to three years, locating them within the context of a number of distinct themes. So if one is looking for a comprehensive treatment of the asset class, notably from an academic's perspective, this book is well worth the read. The editor's synopsis is accurate in terms of its overview of the main contents of the book.
   The only problem I had with the piece is the editing job. There are a few spelling mistakes, misplaced uses of punctuation, and the odd sentence that must be read several times in order to realise its main import. I suspect if a proper editing job was undertaken in the main text (the footnotes are superb and very informative)the quality of the book would be enhanced significantly.
   The book is probably of less use to practitioners but this was probably not Santiso's intent. In any case, thoughtful fund managers or equity strategists would clearly find the book informative, probably compelling them to conduct further readings in the literature noted in the footnotes.



2. With the search among investors for higher yield and with the asset class being one of the notable outperformers in the recent equity market upturn, Santiso's book on emerging markets (notably Latam) could not have arrived at a more opportune time. Generally speaking, it overviews the most significant empirical findings associated with emerging markets over the past two to three years, locating them within the context of a number of distinct themes. So if one is looking for a comprehensive treatment of the asset class, notably from an academic's perspective, this book is well worth the read. The editor's synopsis is accurate in terms of its overview of the main contents of the book.
   The only problem I had with the piece is the editing job. There are a few spelling mistakes, misplaced uses of punctuation, and the odd sentence that must be read several times in order to realise its main import. I suspect if a proper editing job was undertaken in the main text (the footnotes are superb and very informative)the quality of the book would be enhanced significantly.
   The book is probably of less use to practitioners but this was probably not Santiso's intent. In any case, thoughtful fund managers or equity strategists would clearly find the book informative, probably compelling them to conduct further readings in the literature noted in the footnotes.

5 comments about The Price of Liberty: Paying for America's Wars.

1. The bulk of "The Price of Liberty" summarizes how America paid the costs of its former wars, ensuring its future stability. This provides the backdrop for today - increased spending on non-war items, combined with increased defense spending in a long-term struggle and a major tax cut. Obviously, this is a major break with the past and "does not compute."



2. Foreign Investment: foreign loans provided the nation with critically needed money. Hamilton argued, the lack of national tax condemned the nation to a permanent weakness and the government to debilitating dependence on the state for revenues. State Power ruled supreme when central government was bound. The new constitution gave Congress exclusive authority to authorize federal borrowing and to lay and collect duties, excises, and imports. Congress determined that the treasury could spend. The nations commander and chief was over the military but depended on Congress to authorize funding of war debt.
   Duties: Import duties were consider a tax on the rich where direct taxes were assessed on the value of the individual's assets. The average American lived on a farm or in a small village and bough few imports.
   
   Direct Taxes: Direct taxes were seen as more coercive than import duties. Property owners were compelled to pay the direct tax. Direct taxes were used in times of emergency and limited by Congress to impose. The direct tax was appropriated among the several states and the national population corresponds to the tax portion. The direct tax could not disproportionately gang up on the slave states to pay more taxes. Initially customs and duties provided the bulk of government revenues. Property tax appeared during war times and existed in the 19th and 20th century, as a result of continual war. The revenue bill passed as a tax on importation necessary for support of government, the discharge of debts, and the means to encourage production and commerce. Duties on coffee were 5 to 15% and luxury items 15% tax. The tonnage act placed modest duties on registered tonnage of American owned ships.
   
   Coalitions: The war in Iraq was seen largely as a unilateral American effort. No Islamic nations were involved. Building strong coalitions helped establish international legitimacy and encourage participating nations to pay a large portion of their costs. War required massive borrowing. In the early part of the war, the American people were assured costs would be low. Politicians cast aside worries about post war reconstruction believing that Iraqi oil production would reach 2.3 million barrels per day and defer much of the reconstruction expense. It didn't happen.
   
   GDP: Politician managed to sidestep tax increases, hard recession, and increased nonmilitary spending (social security, Medicaid, and Medicare). The war was only costing 4% of GDP, whereas, the Korean war cost 10% of the GDP and Vietnam cost 15% GDP. The war was marketed as a "long war on terror" with financial similarities to the cold war. Prior to 9/11 pentagon spending was slowly decreasing. GDP pressure to spend on non-military expenditures is predicted to increase. Social security, Medicare, and Medicaid are face with entitlement blitz from some 79 million, post WWII baby boomers. The demand for entitlement is sure to crowd out discretionary spending.
   
   Democrats: Democrats during the war wanted a tax increase. Republicans feared cuts of entitlements. Fed man Greenspan said he "would pursue tight monetary policies until a meaningful deficit reduction package was enacted." Four issues were at hand: 1. entitlements and mandatory program reform 2. Tax revenue increases 3. Orderly reductions in defense expenditures 4. And budget process reforms. Republicans cared about issues one and four.
   
   Consumer Spending: Unlike past wars there were no bipartisan calls for patriotic sacrifice. Instead, Americans were encouraged to spend money to boost the economy. 2003, $87 billion in emergency supplement appropriation was requested and 2004,2005, and 2006 the supplements were controversial. In 2006, Department of Defense budget totaled $290 billion and foreign aid reached $28 billion. 2007, $270 billion more was required. From 2004 through 2006, Fed revenues rose from 16% of GDP to 18.4% of GDP at the same time deterioration of GDP of 6 percent in 4 years was the largest drop in 50 years. Four other times matched the drop: Civil War, WWI, Great Depression, and WWII. In 2008 and 2009, funds will be made through the national budget process.
   
   "Pressures to withdraw troops intensified in 2006, primarily because to mounting causalities and growing fustration that enormous mistakes had been made and victory highly improbable." "Faith in the ability of tax cuts to drive the economy and dramatically or eliminate deficits heavily influenced thinking in fiscal policy." "Supply side effects from tax cuts arising from increased work and savings are unlikely to have revenue feedbacks of over 10%" "If Congress were to make recent tax cuts permanent, and fail to enact significant entitlement reform, the county would face a steep rise in the debt burden in the next decade.



3. Former member of the board of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations and international finance expert Robert D. Hormats applies his expertise and extensive historical research to The Price of Liberty: Paying for America's Wars, a thoughtful history of how America has paid for its conflagrations from the Revolutionary War debt (deemed a threat to the nation's creditworthiness and very existence by America's first secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton) to the invention of the greenback during the Civil War, the adoption of a progressive and populist income tax during World War II, the arms race budgeting that allowed the United States to outlast the Soviet Union during the cold war, and the diplomatic cost-sharing of the first Gulf War. A critical look at America's precarious modern-day financial position - including the heavy toll of over-dependence on oil, and a debt that relentlessly climbs especially due to unchecked social security spending and rising interest payments - closes The Price of Liberty, along with a lament that Hamilton's wisdom has been all but forgotten today. A highly recommended addition to American History shelves, and a sharp warning against the obstacles facing America's future.



4. I just saw this author give a lecture with Richard Brookhiser at the New-York Historical Society, and although it was brief, the author gave an extremely cogent overview of how the U.S. paid, and is paying, for its wars. The book is engrossing and very highly recommended.
   
   Wars are extremely expensive and destructive; it's a pity the monies spent on defense cannot be allocated elsewhere (but, I am a firm believer that defense spending is more a stimulus to the economy than simple transfer payments.) However, in the near future, pressure from other budgetary obligations will necessitate a drastic reduction in defense spending, or an extreme cut back in social spending.
   I feel sorry for the baby boomers and their quickly disappearing dream of retirement.



5. ...followed by one chapter of evasiveness and some relatively unsurprising conclusions. The Price of Liberty is being marketed as an analysis of our current quagmire in conducting our national defense against terrorism. Good marketing, no doubt, but for this reader the chief value of the book is historiographical. Beginning with Alexander Hamilton and his brilliant schemes to pay for the Revolution after the fact, Hormats has written what amounts to a history of the American economy in terms of tax policies and the debates about taxes. Because that history is a kind of 'punctuated equilibrium', Hormats vaults from war to war, not unlike an old-fashioned high school textbook: the Revolution, the War of 1812, the Civil War, WW1, WW2, the Cold War, Vietnam, with passing references to the other events of warfare in the two centuries of American coping. But the principal actors in Hormats's military history are not generals; rather they are secretaries of the treasury, leading congressmen, and presidents often overshadowed by their own administrations. This amounts to a fresh and thought-provoking history of the United States as a whole over the 'long duration'.
   
   Hormats begins by expounding his vision of Hamilton's Vision. It's quickly obvious that Hormats himself is Hamiltonian to the core. Hamilton was the prime advocate of strongly managerial federal powers - Big Government - employing taxation and fiscal mechanisms like his national bank to stimulate the growth of the economy, especially the manufacturing sector. Part of Hamilton's vision, Hormats, says, was to build the financial stability to support a secure national defense. The contrary vision of Thomas Jefferson - an agrarian, states' rights centered isolationism - didn't play out very successfully during Jefferson's own administration or during that of his Virginian successors, but it has never faded away. During every subsequent crisis of the federal budget in wartime, more or less the same fault lines of difference have ruptured Congress; military preparedness versus social spending, borrowing versus pay-as-you-go, sales/excise taxes versus income/property taxes, and with increasing acrimony, progressive taxation of the wealthy versus regressive taxation of the masses. Even such seemingly current notions as 'supply side economics' have had previous incarnations in Congressional debate, as Hormats amply demonstrates.
   
   Hormats also documents the uneven success of presidents at controlling the fiscal policies of their administrations, including those whose own parties controlled Congress. The most interesting chapter in the book - chapter 5, A Righteous Might - focuses on FDR's frustrations with the coalition of Republicans and conservative Democrats who actually wrote most of the tax laws of the New Deal era. Conservatives and libertarians of the present era would do well to re-examine Roosevelt's record in light of Hormats's revelations, rather than demonizing FDR for decisions which weren't entirely his to make.
   
   The weakest chapter in The Price of Liberty deals with the administration of Ronald Reagan. Hormats carefully exposes the naive irresponsibilty of Reagan and his economic advisors - their refusal to adjust their Reaganomic theories to the realities around them - yet he is oddly evasive about the results. Like most Reaganites, he exaggerates both the novelty and the impact of Reagan's Cold War tactics, even though he has already acknowledged the continuity of such tactics from Truman to Carter. He pays quick lip-service to Gorbachev's declaration that the USSR collapsed chiefly from internal failures, yet he credits the pressures of budgetary competition with toppling Communism. That's an odd paradox. If the Soviet Communist economic system was so dysfunctional in comparison to Capitalism, why did it take 60 years to falter? On the other hand, if it was dysfunctional, why should Reagan get credit for tipping it over? [My own opinion, lest I be accused of leftist sympathies, matches Gorbachev's - that the USSR was dysfunctional economically and socially, and suffered a well-deserved collapse of its own making.]
   
   Hormats is distinctly positive, though less 'historical' in his approach, about the Gulf War policies of George H.W. Bush. Then, after no more than one clause of one sentence about the Clinton administration, Hormats delivers an indictment of the fiscal incapacities and blunders of the George W Bush debacle that could be read aloud as a campaign speech by any candidate of any other party.
   
   I won't summarize Hormats's concluding recommendation for a sounder fiscal policy to prepare the US for the future. The value of this book, in my mind, is not Hormats's plan to pay for the War on Terrorism but rather his insightful historical recounting of the payments of the past. Definitely a five-star history, but I've deducted one star for slipping from history to journalistic opinion-making in its final chapters.

No comments about Managing Government Expenditure.

5 comments about Fiscal Administration.

1. A previous reviewer incorrectly identified my father's (J. Mikesell) undergrad alma mater as Illinois. In fact John Mikesell earned his BA from Wabash College.

   Just setting the facts straight.




2. I am currently using this book for a graduate-level public budgeting course for a ranked MPA program. Mikesell's textbook is a poorly written, discursive and convoluted in scope. There are several basic grammatical errors in this textbook, and this is coming from someone whose first language is not English. The end-of-chapter computational problems are difficult to complete because nowhere in the chapters does the author explain how to do the problems.

   There is also too much information crammed into each paragraph; I'm lucky if I can read three pages in a row in one sitting. The author does not write well; he uses too many block quotes and lists (e.g, (1), (2), (3)...). Therefore, this book does not read well, and the information he tries to provide does not register in the mind.

   Most of my classmates have the same complaints as the ones I listed above. This book agitating for many to read, even for someone with a fairly solid economic background. Therefore, I'd strongly recommend not to use this book if at all possible.

   But to balance out this criticism with some good points, the first chapter is relatively easy to read and useful.




3. Are you looking for this book for your MPA course? Save some money and buy an older edition. They're all the same!!!



4. I didn't get the book until 20 days after delivery. Way too long compared to other services. I got books I ordered the same day, 5 business days after placing the order.
   
   Overall, Im pleased with the condition of the book.



5. Public Budgeting Systems by Robert D. Lee, Philip G. Joyce, and Ronald Wayne Johnson is written more clearly... if you have a choice, buy this book. The problem with Mikesell is that he has to write 200 pages (six chapters) to explain the concept of revenues in the budget process. Too many trees were wasted in the development of this book. Lee, Joyce, and Johnson can do this in 40 pages.
   
   The greater majority of my Public Budgeting Systems class at George Mason University feels that the Mikesell book is written in a manner to lull oneself to sleep... the benefit is that one could read the book rather than using drugs to induce sleep.
   
   However, if you are required to purchase the Mikesell book, you should go to the Amazon UK web site and complete your transaction there... you can save yourself about 70 to 80 dollars.

No comments about Public Debt and the Birth of the Democratic State: France and Great Britain 1688-1789 (Political Economy of Institutions and Decisions).

No comments about A Primer on Nonmarket Valuation (The Economics of Non-Market Goods and Resources).

No comments about Public Finance in Theory and Practice (5th Edition).