V. Working Group on Public Sector Finance and Acco

The Public Sector Finance and Accounting Working Group will focus on user charges and fees for the next 12th NISPAcee conference to be held in 2004. The detailed research protocol is available from the NISPAcee web site. The project should provide an in-depth analysis of the current practices with regard to user charges and fees practised in transitional countries. Particular emphasis will be paid to locally imposed and/or collected charges and fees. Prospective authors are invited to prepare country studies that will not only describe the current practices in this domain, but also provide an authoritative historical account and contribute to better theoretical understanding of non-tax revenue sources for reforming local governments. The research will be comprehensive, as the authors are expected to provide a comprehensive account of all user charges and fees applied in their respective country. It is expected that the authors will be able to supply a consistent dataset covering the period of transition, from 1987 to 2002, and, if appropriate, provide a detailed comment on whether there were any changes in the way user charges and fees are used in the national fiscal system. The papers have to be analytical and critical, where a description of current practices and situation is just an initial step.

From 2004, the Group will also consider papers that do not address the main topic, but assistance will not be sought for those papers and authors are responsible to ensure funding for their participation at the NISPAcee conference. One of the WG sessions will be devoted to unsolicited papers. It is expected that a book will be produced with selected and fully referenced papers presented at the 12th NISPAcee conference.