Suchergebnisse

The article examines the problem of comprehensive official reporting on public sector debt. It considers the IMF toolkit for public debt statistics, the peculiarities of its practical use and inherent methodological issues influencing the quantitative assessments. Estimates of the total liabilities and liquid assets for the components of the Russian public sector are given, which show, inter alia, the increase of the total liabilities of the largest state-owned enterprises (as a share of GDP) since 2016, first of all, due to the growing share of stateowned banks in the banking sector. The importance of regular monitoring and review of the public sector liabilities and assets is substantiated.

In recent years, many companies have adopted the total quality management (TQM) philosophy for achieving organizational excellence. The paper reports on the findings of a case study concerned with appraising TQM practices in the Housing Authority of Fiji (HA). The HA has been set up to provide affordable shelter and mortgage finance for low and middle‐income earners in Fiji. Data collected suggest that following the global trend, as well as being consistent with the government's recent public sector reform policy, TQM systems at the HA made the organization more effective and efficient. The organization was preparing itself to be corporatized. The case study reinforces previous claims that suggest that an organization may adopt a TQM strategy to promote both "institutional" and "quality" cultures.

This paper explores the role of public debt and fiscal deficits on factor productivity in an economy with credit market frictions and heterogeneous firms. When credit market conditions are sufficiently weak, low interest rates permit the government to run Ponzi schemes so that permanent primary deficits can be sustained. For small enough deficit ratios, the model has two steady states of which one is an unstable bubble and the other one is stable. The stable equilibrium features higher levels of credit and capital, but also a lower interest rate, lower total factor productivity and output. The model is calibrated to the US economy to derive the maximum sustainable deficit ratio and to examine the dynamic responses to changes in debt policy. A reduction of the primary deficit triggers an expansion of credit and capital, but it also leads to a deterioration of total factor productivity since more low-productivity firms prefer to remain active at the lower equilibrium interest rate.