VI. Working Group on Public Finance and Public Financial Management

Lucie Sedmihradska, Department of Public Finance, University of Economics, Prague, Czech Republic,

E-mail: sedmih@vse.cz

Juraj Nemec, Matej Bel University Banska Bystrica, Slovakia

Professor of Public Finance and Management

E-mail: juraj.nemec@umb.sk

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WG Assistant Coordinator:

The WG on Public Finance and Public Finance Management invites all interested parties to participate with a research paper on any topic connected with public finance and public finance management (general track). It also announces two specialised tracks for the 2015 conference: (1) Local government taxation and (2) Public procurement. Papers submitted on specialised tracks should fully respect the research protocol.

Track 1: Local government taxation

Research questions:

What types of local taxes are in force? What kind of tax autonomy is legally granted to local governments and to what extent do they use it? Are there spatial interactions between neighbouring local governments? Do local governments engage in tax competition? Can we observe the electoral impacts of the local tax policy? The aim of this track is to answer these and similar questions related to local taxation and its actual usage by local governments.

We propose a structure of both a proposed abstract and paper, in order to stimulate the authors to realise an empirical research, even in the case of a small sample and case study research design. This template allows accommodating all types of research questions and research methods in order to obtain, as an entire group, rich and current evidence on what is happening in the region.

Track 2: Public procurement

Most public administration and public finance experts feel that cuts and tax increases cannot help to cope with the current crisis, at least not in the long-term perspective: efficiency and effectiveness of public spending might be much more important from this point of view.

The aim of this track is to collect papers analysing all aspects connected with the public procurement theory and practice under any conditions.

Possible research questions:

• Indicating and analysing gaps in public procurement systems and processes.

• Analysing the public procurement environment and/or results.

• Providing examples of successful responses to existing public procurement problems, explaining why positive changes happen.

• Providing examples of needed, but failed or non-realised changes, explaining why the situation did not improve.

 

Expected structure of the proposed abstract for any of the announced tracks:

• The objective or research question.

• Methodology.

• Expected findings.

Expected structure of the paper:

• Introduction of the case analysed.

• Short literature review of the phenomena studied, based on both local and international literature.

• Methodology.

• Analysis.

• Policy implications.