Public finances

Urednik: Juraj Nemec , Glen Wright
Preveli: Nikola Cajkanovic, Vera Milikic-Nedeljkovic
Izdavac: Magna Agenda, Belgrade, 1999
Format: 15.5 x 24cm
Broj strana: 437

Theory and Practice in Central-European Countries in transition. Every state undergoing transition is faced with the inevitability of radical change over the entire economic and social system but the area of public finances is certainly one of the most important areas needing reform.
Here, the reform means the dissolution of the old system of public finances and the adoption of a system compatible with the demands of the market economy and pluralistic democracy.
Public finance reform demands the conceptualization and precise analytical formalization of the system one wants to establish, a comprehensive insight into alternative models of future systems and options for the modeling of certain segments of such a system.
One of the crucial obstacles large reform projects face today is the lack of the necessary expertise.
The importance of knowledge is a result of the overall situation that Serbian public finances find themselves in after the fall of socialism. The devastated economy is not the only consequence of several decades of a socialist system - of equal significance is also the inefficient state, the inadequate system of international relations and the defense system, and the neglected area of research and education.
In the area of public finances, reform means more than just institutional reform in the narrow sense, it must also mean a degree of reconstruction of the state. The state must be cured of the most substantial ills that hinder it - incompatibility with market demands, conservative devotion to old procedures and patterns of behavior, but, above all, from inefficiency and wide-spread corruption. States in transition do not have sufficient funds to address these problems, and the only way the lack of funds can be supplemented is through knowledge and expertise.
A large project such as the reform of public finances cannot be realized in practice without a sound theoretical foundation.
In this respect, this book is invaluable because it combines clearly presented and coherent theory with empirical data. It also offers a valuable guide through the experience of transformation in public expenditure from a number of ex-communist countries.
The fact that numerous countries have gone further into the transition process than ours has an important positive effect - it enables us to learn from their collective experience and to avoid the mistakes which the states that pioneered the transition process had to make. This book presents a wealth of possible ideas on how to address the problems, methods for the realization of these ideas in practice and actual experiences gathered in the process of their realization.
Together with the fundamental conceptual and theoretical issues connected with the creation of a new institutional order, a large number of papers included in the book offer valuable suggestions on the practical realization of plans and the modeling of formalizations.
The authors who contributed:
Glen Right, Juruj Nemec,Tamas M Horvat, Mihalj Hedje, Kveta Kubatova, Alena Vancurova, Zeljko Sevic, Guergui Smetrakalev, Bojka Hamernikova, Alena Majtova, Juraj Namet, Janos Hoos, Gabor Peteri, Sonja Capkova