This paper describes methodological issues pertaining to measurement of fiscal impact. The fiscal deficit is, under any circumstances, a crude tool for assessing the impact of fiscal policy on the economy. This paper also analyzes various ways in which the conventional definition of the fiscal deficit is affected by high rates of inflation. It has shown that, as the rate of inflation rises, the picture emerging from the conventional measure may, under certain circumstances, become somewhat blurred since the conventional measure may magnify the size of the fiscal adjustment that a country need. In fact, the size of the debt service that compensates bondholders for the reduction in the real value of their assets arising from inflation should be made explicit so as to indicate that part of the deficit whose impact depends mainly on portfolio decisions regarding the public's demand for government bonds, and on the potential effects of these bonds on the monetary and liquidity conditions of the economy.

Conventional fiscal accounting methodologies do not appropriately account for governments’ noncash policies, such as their contingent liabilities. When these liabilities are called, budget costs can be large, as evidenced by the United States’ saving and loan crisis. In general, deficit measures may underestimate the macroeconomic impact of government policies, promoting the substitution of noncash for cash expenditure and increasing future financing requirements. The paper describes extended deficit measures to address the problem, but notes their limited practical value. Nonetheless, some alternative methods of valuing contingent liabilities are proposed to gauge fiscal impact and facilitate budgetary control.

In many countries, the activities of public enterprises have an important fiscal impact. While the precise nature of this impact is often obscured, it is important that it be reflected in measures of overall fiscal activity. The paper is intended to raise and clarify some of the issues involved in this task.

As social and solidarity economy (SSE) entities are increasingly requested to demonstrate their positive contribution to society, social impact measurement can help them understand the additional, net value generated by their activities, in the pursuit of their mission and beyond. Policy plays an important role to facilitate a conducive environment to unlock the uptake of social impact measurement among SSE actors.

This book provides a practical and intuitive model for measuring the effectiveness of technical training programs, addressing the challenges faced by technical training managers and other technical managers in justifying the return on investment for large-scale and investment-intensive training programs. The 4-tier Return on Expectations (ROE) framework presented in this book, developed through years of research, observation, and experience, aims at reducing the pains of technical business managers while presenting and return on investment (ROI) of their training programs. This book reduces your pains by eliminating the need to dollarize every piece of training investment. It also makes you less dependent on practically difficult methods to compute a defendable ROI. Instead, it will guide you on clarifying your and your stakeholders’ expectations and then presenting a return on expectations, using the most relevant metrics and practical approach to calculate four indices: training reaction index, improvement index, effectiveness index, and impact index. ​​​​​​​By using a feedback-based and data-driven approach, this book enables technical training managers or training leaders handling large-scale programs to collect data, measure key indicators, and compute indices that provide evidence of the effectiveness of their training programs, ultimately helping them communicate the value and effectiveness of your training programs to executives. Never again would you return to your traditional methods.

After a decade of strong export-led growth, decreasing unemployment and fiscal surpluses, the COVID-19 pandemic and the energy crisis have revealed structural vulnerabilities and emphasised the need for accelerating the green and digital transitions. At the same time, rapid population ageing increases public spending pressures and exacerbates skilled labour shortages.

This book focuses on political connections in the United States. It contributes to the literature on the link between politics and business, and on the impact of political connections on firm value, by considering industry-level regulation as a discriminating factor in the investigation of firm value creation. Overall, the findings are consistent with the view that industry-level regulation matters.