Suchergebnisse

This Special Issue is based on papers initially presented at the 'Accounting for the Public Sector at a Time of Crisis' Conference at the Centre for Not-for-profit and Public-sector Research, Queen's University Belfast, UK in 2018. The public sector consists of organisations that are owned and operated by government; organisations that exist to provide goods and services for a country's citizens. What is particularly distinctive about such organisations, and what makes them different from businesses, is that they are (or, at least perhaps, should be) notfor-profit. In addition, they frequently have wide social and cultural goals that are central to what they do. They are pervasive in most societies. Yet, it is argued, they face crisis on a number of fronts: in terms of the influence of potentially-inappropriate, business-like New Public Management ideas related to performance management and the embracing of related accounting and budgeting approaches; and in terms of the impact of austerity, following the Great Recession in 2008. In such a context it is suggested that public-sector governance, accounting and accountability systems are heavily involved. The papers included in this Special Issue present an opportunity to reflect on aspects of this crisis in terms of how it connects with accounting systems and accounting changes. Key arguments of these papers, and overarching themes of this Special Issue, are explored in this editorial.

This special issue is based on a selection of papers initially presented at the conference on 'Public Services and Charities: Accounting, Accountability and Governance at a Time of Change' (Centre for Not-for-profit and Public-sector Research, Queen's University Belfast, January 2017). 'Public services and charities' is a distinctive grouping that includes organisations that are not-for-profit and often have wide social and cultural goals that drive mission and actions. These organisations operate in a very fluid environment. Expectations of the public at large and of government are changing; economic pressures bear down on them particularly acutely; performance metrics and a push for marketisation reflect a spirit of the age; 'business practices' are frequently afforded a reputation of being 'good' and applicable in all settings; while news reporting and social media often amplify any perceived shortcomings. The papers included in this special issue present an opportunity to reflect on some of the key changes taking place with respect to accounting, accountability and governance in this setting. Such opportunities to reflect can support evaluation of the stated objectives of implemented and proposed changes, and also help to inform policy making within government and elsewhere. Key arguments made in these papers, and the overarching themes of this special issue, are explored in this editorial.

We analyse data collected from a survey of Northern Irish low-income households experiencing varying degrees of financial hardship and examine how debt affects health and health-related behaviours. Our results indicate that the subjective experience of feeling financially stressed has a robust relationship with most aspects of health, including ability to self-care, problems performing usual activities, pain problems and psychological health. In contrast, the size of the debt, the type of debt or the number of different lenders does not add any extra explanatory power. Additionally, our results indicate that the pathway from financial difficulties to worse health runs through worse diets and increased consumption of cigarettes and drugs. This research is timely as household debt burdens will soon surpass the high levels seen at the time of the financial crisis and the introduction of welfare reform in Northern Ireland will put additional strain on low-income households.

At present there are 597 credit unions operating within the UK with their growth, be it defined in term of new credit union establishment, asset growth or membership growth, placing them as the fasting growing financial grouping in the UK over this last decade.The fundamental motivation of a credit union is to provide financial services to its membership, in particular a depository for savings and an access to consumer credit. As a practical problem there are, however, a number of reasons why credit unions may achieve a less than perfect balance in the treatment of borrowers and savers. For example, maintaining low loan rates may reduce the credit union's ability to offer high dividend rates while the maintenance of high dividend rates may require higher loan rates. Consequently, the competing pull of these two objectives may result in the emergence of conflict between those credit union members who on the one hand are net savers and those that are net borrowers. If such conflict does emerge it is then likely to place in jeopardy other aspects of a credit union's function most notably their role as financial counsellors and promoters of thrift within low income communities.The approach taken in this study is to derive an index of member group imbalance and then to employ this index to determine whether member group imbalance has an adverse impact upon the generation of total benefits by individual credit unions. The analysis demonstrates that there is a strong pro‐borrower bias in the operation of UK credit unions with this pro‐borrower bias driven by the regulatory environment within which they operate.

AbstractThe use of personal finance smartphone apps results in an improvement in various measures used to assess financial knowledge and skills, attitudes and motivations, and financially capable behaviors for those in low‐income households. Those provided with smartphone apps demonstrated increased self‐confidence in financial decision‐making and financial literacy and improved their ability to delay self‐gratification and their sense of being able to effect change. Financially capable behavior changes manifested in being better able to keep track of finances and manage unexpected bills. User engagement with finance apps could be improved by targeting users with a specific financial decision‐making problem, personalizing the apps through push notifications to encourage ongoing user engagement, and incorporating game mechanics.

Accessing elderly housing wealth through equity release mortgages (ERMs) continue to be the focus of policy debates about how to pay for social care and how to support retirement incomes in the UK. We demonstrate in this paper that the spatial concentration of this market in just a few regions is not due to demand but to the risks faced by suppliers. We show that by ignoring regional variations in No Negative Equity Guarantee risk in national pricing models providers cannot profitably supply these products outside areas of high house price growth. We also show that EU Solvency II capital requirements provide a further disincentive to supply ERMs in these areas. Government subsidies to product provision are also modelled and shown to be infeasibly high. We therefore conclude that the government policy focus on equity release as a means of tackling the challenges of an ageing population is misplaced.

Abstract**:  The unique characteristics of credit unions reduces the information asymmetry that is prevalent in credit making decisions, enabling them to provide loans where other financial institutions cannot. This makes them a potential tool in the fight against financial exclusion. Yet, the UK credit union movement is not regarded as being successful, even though there is evidence of much financial exclusion. This study is cross sectional in form, and evaluates characteristics that may contribute to the success of the UK credit union movement at national and regional level, in 2000. The findings are used to consider the impact of recent regulatory changes on the movement. The key findings are that there is a significant relationship between the success of a credit union, its size and the deprivation of the ward from which it sources its members. More specifically, larger credit unions and those located in more affluent wards, are more successful. Affiliation to the Irish League of Credit Unions and having a common bond of occupation, are also found to be contributing factors to credit union success. These results are taken as providing support for the recent changes implemented by the Financial Services Authority (FSA), which is likely to result in the emergence of larger credit unions (through mergers), run by appropriately qualified persons, serving a more mixed‐income membership base. It is, however, noted that the history of the UK movement is one of missed opportunities and only time will tell whether credit unions have the wherewithal to accept current opportunities.

The aim of this paper is to analyse credit union industries within a development framework. Explicit consideration is given to credit union industries in four countries – Great Britain, Ireland, New Zealand and the United States. It is argued that in terms of a developmental typology the credit union industry in Great Britain is at a nascent stage of development, the industries in Ireland and New Zealand are at a transition stage while the US credit union industry is mature in nature. In progression between stages the analysis considers the influence of factors such as situational leadership, the complexion of trade associations, professionalisation, regulatory and legislative initiatives and technology. The analysis concluded that while there was a substantial commonality of experience, there were also significant differences in the impact of these factors. This consequently encouraged the recognition of the existence of 'a variety of the species' in respect of credit union development.

In this study we employ a distance function approach to investigate sources of productivity growth in UK building societies in the post‐deregulation period 1989–93. Productivity growth is decomposed into technical change and change in efficiency, with the latter change also being decomposed into change in pure technical efficiency, change in scale efficiency and change in input congestion. As a scale‐inefficient society may be able to obtain size efficiency gains even when the attainment of scale efficiency is impractical, we also measure the change in size efficiency over the period. The finding of substantial productivity growth was largely due to progressive shifts in technology, with the relatively small improvements in efficiency being largely due to improvements in scale efficiency. A marked increase in the attainment of size efficiency over the period was also found.