11577 results in Macroeconomics
Governing Misinformation in Everyday Knowledge Commons
- Madelyn R. Sanfilippo, Melissa G. Ocepek
- Coming soon
-
- Expected online publication date:
- December 2024
- Print publication:
- 31 December 2024
-
- Book
- Export citation
-
Governing Misinformation in Everyday Knowledge Commons delves into the complex issue of misinformation in our daily lives. The book synthesizes three scholarly traditions - everyday life, misinformation, and governing knowledge commons - to present 10 case studies of online and offline communities tackling diverse dilemmas regarding truth and information quality. The book highlights how communities manage issues of credibility, trust, and information quality continuously, to mitigate the impact of misinformation when possible. It also explores how social norms and intentional governance evolve to distinguish between problematic disinformation and little white lies. Through a coproduction of governance and (mis-)information, the book raises a set of ethical, economic, political, social, and technological questions that require systematic study and careful deliberation. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Discourse on Social Planning under Uncertainty
- Charles F. Manski
- Coming soon
-
- Expected online publication date:
- November 2024
- Print publication:
- 30 November 2024
-
- Book
- Export citation
-
Economics without Preferences
- Microeconomics and Policymaking Beyond the Maximizing Individual
- Michael Mandler
- Coming soon
-
- Expected online publication date:
- August 2024
- Print publication:
- 31 July 2024
-
- Book
- Export citation
-
Economics without Preferences lays out a new microeconomics – a theory of choice behavior, markets, and welfare – when agents lack the preferences and marginal judgments that economics normally relies on. Agents without preferences defy the rules of the traditional model of rational choice but they can still systematically pursue their interests. The theory that results resolves several puzzles in economics. Status quo bias and other anomalies of behavioral economics shield agents from harm; they are expressions rather than violations of rationality. Parts of economic orthodoxy go out the window. Agents will fail to make the fine-grained trade-offs between options ingrained in conventional economics, leading market prices to be volatile and cost-benefit analysis to break down. This book provides policy alternatives to fill this void. Governments can spur innovation, the main benefit markets can deliver, while sheltering agents from the upheavals that accompany economic change.
Capital in Banking
- The Role of Capital in Banking in the 19th and 20th Century: The United Kingdom, the United States and Switzerland
- Simon Amrein
- Coming soon
-
- Expected online publication date:
- July 2024
- Print publication:
- 31 July 2024
-
- Book
- Export citation
-
Capital in Banking traces the role of capital in US, British, and Swiss banking from the 19th to the 21st century. The book discusses the impact of perceptions and conventions on capital ratios in the 19th century, the effects of the First and Second World Wars, and the interaction of crises and banking regulation during the 1930s and the 1970s. Moreover, it emphasises the origins of the risk-weighted assets approach for measuring capital adequacy and explains how the 2007/2008 crisis led to a renaissance of unweighted capital ratios. The book shows that undisclosed reserves, shareholders' liability, and hybrid forms of capital must be considered when assessing capital adequacy. As the first long-run historical assessment of the topic, this book represents a reference point for publications in economics, finance, financial regulation, and financial history. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
3 - Major Design and Implementation Considerations
- Shishir Mathur, San José State University, California
-
- Book:
- Development Charges
- Published online:
- 12 January 2024
- Print publication:
- 27 June 2024, pp 56-71
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Legally, development charges are a fee, not a tax. Therefore, jurisdictions should use revenue generated from development charges to provide the infrastructure and services to serve the charge-paying real estate development. That is, the charges must meet the nexus principle, which calls for a direct relationship between the real estate project and the development charges-funded infrastructure and services. Furthermore, they must meet the rough proportionality principle. That is, they should be proportional to the cost of providing the infrastructure and services needed to serve the real estate project. When combined, the nexus and rough proportionality principles are called the rational nexus principle.
Furthermore, development charges can disproportionately burden lower-income households by negatively influencing their ability to pay (ATP), causing vertical inequity. The ATP principle undergirds vertical equity. As per this principle, the higher-income community members should pay more than the lower-income members for the publicly funded infrastructure and services. The need to promote vertical equity is even more critical in developing countries such as India. A large proportion of these nations’ population is low-income, and development charges could overburden them if the design of the charges does not consider ATP.
This chapter describes the aforementioned nexus, rough proportionality, and vertical equity issues. It also discusses other major factors to consider while designing and implementing a development charge program. These factors include the political feasibility of levying development charges and the enabling legal framework required to do so, the ways to enhance revenue yield and ensure its stability, and the institutional capacity required to levy these charges.
Nexus and rough proportionality principles and equity considerations
Two US Supreme Court cases—the Nollan and Dolan cases—form the foundation of the nexus and rough proportionality principles. These casesrequired that exactions must be related to the improvements made to a land parcel (the nexus principle) and must be roughly proportional to the improvements’ monetary impacts (Johnson 2008).
As noted in the previous chapter, in the Nollan v. California Coastal Commission (1987) case, the Nollan family requested permission to expand their house from the Commission. In turn, the Commission asked the Nollans to grant a public easement along the section of their land parcel that faces the beach. The US Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Nollans, noting that the Commission did not establish a connection (nexus) between the house’s expansion and the easement (Altshuler and Gomez-Ibanez 1993).
2 - Use of Development Charges Globally
- Shishir Mathur, San José State University, California
-
- Book:
- Development Charges
- Published online:
- 12 January 2024
- Print publication:
- 27 June 2024, pp 32-55
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Several countries worldwide use development charges to fund infrastructure and services. Governments in many of these countries have a long history of negotiating contributions from developers. These contributions could be monetary and non-monetary, and they are referred to by various names. For instance, they are called development exactions in the US, planning obligations in the United Kingdom (UK), and developer contributions in Australia and New Zealand.
As noted in Chapter 1, development charges are an example of monetary contributions, and they are generally levied based on a fixed fee schedule. They are also known by various names. For example, they may be called impact fees, development impact fees, and system development charges in the US; community infrastructure levy (CIL) in the UK; infrastructure charges in Australia; external development charges in India; and capital contributions, engineering service contributions, and bulk infrastructure contribution levies in South Africa.
As non-monetary contributions, governments can require developers to provide infrastructure and services, such as affordable housing, land for parks, and off-site improvements like sidewalks and signalized traffic intersections. The development charge can supplement or complement non-monetary contributions. However, local governments are often prohibited from using non-monetary contributions and development charges for the same project to avoid double-dipping. For example, local governments in the UK generally use CIL to fund neighborhood- or jurisdiction-wide infrastructure and services. They use planning obligation for site-specific requirements for which they cannot use CIL, as per the national law enabling CIL (GoUK 2011). Some of these requirements include landscaping, improving local roads, or funding affordable housing. Similarly, local governments in the US typically do not collect a park impact fee to acquire land for a park if they require a dedication of land for it. However, they can charge a park impact fee to construct the same park because the fee would complement the development exaction. Here, the latter would be used to acquire the land and the former to construct the park.
The remainder of the chapter takes a closer look at how development charges are used in Australia, South Africa, and the US. I chose these three countries based on their geographical spread (spread across three continents) and levels of economic development (two developed and one developing country). I also considered the maturity of their development charge programs (more mature programs in the US than in Australia and South Africa), enabling environments, and the availability of information.
7 - Way Forward and Future Research Opportunities
- Shishir Mathur, San José State University, California
-
- Book:
- Development Charges
- Published online:
- 12 January 2024
- Print publication:
- 27 June 2024, pp 172-177
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
The last few years have seen an increased global focus on local government finance. This focus turned into a shared commitment at the UN-HABITAT III Conference held in Quito, Ecuador, where the New Urban Agenda (NUA) was adopted. NUA resulted from an extensive collaborative effort that included nearly 200 national and thousands of state, regional, and local governments; scores of UN agencies; and several thousand other organizations, policy experts, and networks. The agenda notes the significant urbanization occurring globally and recognizes the urgency of lifting millions of urban poor out of poverty and improving urban QOL in an environmentally sustainable way. NUA explicitly acknowledges municipal finance as one of the five main pillars for implementing the agenda and highlights the need to strengthen it to sustainably create, generate, and share the value gains due to urban development. Furthermore, NUA calls for developing transparent and accountable financing tools and stresses the need to link fiscal and urban planning systems and promote LVC tools (HABITAT III 2016). Development charges are a valuable tool to fulfill the NUA.
Development charges are widely used across the world. A recently published compendium of LVC tools surveyed 60 countries around the globe and found that development exactions (both cash/monetary and in-kind/non-monetary) are the most-used LVC tool among the five studied in the compendium (OECD and Lincoln Institute of Land Policy 2022). Moreover, 43 countries use development exactions; of them, approximately 85 percent (around 37 countries) use monetary development exactions, that is, development charges. The use of these charges is likely to continue to increase as countries worldwide adopt neoclassical public finance tools that adhere to the BTP principle.
However, development charges are used unevenly, even within a country, state, and region. Examples from Australia, South Africa, and the US show that some jurisdictions fund a large proportion of their fundingneeds through this tool, whereas others a mere fraction of them. Moreover, due to the multilayered opacity around the design and use of development charges, it is impossible to get an accurate and comprehensive picture of their use. The US arguably has the best data on these charges, but even that comes from national surveys that rely on readily available data rather than scientific survey techniques. The utility of this book should be considered in this larger context of sparse knowledge about this critical urban development finance tool.
List of Figures
- Shishir Mathur, San José State University, California
-
- Book:
- Development Charges
- Published online:
- 12 January 2024
- Print publication:
- 27 June 2024, pp ix-x
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
1 - Introduction to Development Charges: Normative Bases and Their Role in Local Public Finance
- Shishir Mathur, San José State University, California
-
- Book:
- Development Charges
- Published online:
- 12 January 2024
- Print publication:
- 27 June 2024, pp 1-31
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Introduction
Globally, governments at all levels—national to local—are fiscally constrained, particularly in India and other developing countries of the Global South. Specifically, local and state governments are more fiscally limited because a large proportion of tax and fee revenue typically accrues to the national government. This issue is further exacerbated due to several reasons. First, local and state governments have very little authority to levy new taxes. Second, the national government, being severely indebted externally and internally, is unable to extend funds to local and state governments for urban development. Third, the municipal bond markets are either underdeveloped or nonexistent in such countries, limiting their ability to access private capital markets to generate funding. Finally, residents resist traditional tax-based revenue sources, such as property and income taxes. In such a scenario, the countries require additional sources of revenue to fund urban development, especially due to their rapid rate of urbanization. For example, the increase in India’s urban population will be the largest in the world, surging by 404 million from 2014 to 2050, and China will follow suit with 292 million (UN 2014). Therefore, development charges can be a significant source of revenue for funding urban development in India.
Property owners pay these charges when seeking the government’s approval to change or institute the use of their land parcels or to improve them. They pay the charges to public agencies, which, in turn, use this revenue to mitigate the negative impacts of the charges-paying development, for example, providing the infrastructure needed to serve the development. In India, these charges are often meager, and they are not tied to the cost of providing infrastructure and services that serve the development, such as roads, parks, and schools. In many cases, the charges have not been updated for decades. Therefore, they have not kept pace with the cost of developing urban infrastructure and services.
Development charges fall under the larger umbrella of development exaction. Jurisdictions require that real estate developers pay development exactions at the stage of building permit approval. Jurisdictions levy the exactions to mitigate the impact of the proposed real estate development on public infrastructure and services (Mathur 2016). The developer exactions could be financial or in kind. For example, as a condition for permitting a 500-unit apartment complex, a city government can levy development exactions on the real estate developer.
Foreword
-
- By Paul Smoke
- Shishir Mathur, San José State University, California
-
- Book:
- Development Charges
- Published online:
- 12 January 2024
- Print publication:
- 27 June 2024, pp xiii-xviii
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Urban finance is becoming one of the most important issues in international development. The globally negotiated Agenda 2030 commits the international community to realizing an ambitious set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) around the world in less than a decade. If this is to occur or even to make credible progress, countries and their constituent subnational governments will need to work in new ways and with new partners, and they must effectively use all the governance, fiscal, and managerial mechanisms at their disposal and develop new ones. Finding and properly targeting the resources to take on this ambitious agenda is a particular challenge.
The UN Secretary General’s Synthesis Report on the SDGs states that “many of the investments to achieve the sustainable development goals will take place at the subnational level and be led by local authorities” (UN General Assembly 2014, 22, para. 94).The High-Level Panel on the Post-2015 Agenda claims that “cities are where the battle for sustainable development will be won or lost” (UN 2013, 17). The call for action in the New Urban Agenda (Habitat III) points to the need for particular attention to “addressing the unique and emerging urban development challenges facing all countries, in particular developing countries” (UN-HABITAT 2017, 9, para. 19). The Addis Ababa Action Agenda on Financing for Development highlights the subnational role in financing sustainable development and commits to scaling up international cooperation to support local and regional governments (UNDESA 2015).
The growing recognition of the role of subnational governments in sustainable development is occurring in part because of the rise of decentralization in many countries around the world. High-income countries—and increasingly low and middle-income countries—expect subnational governments to perform an expanding range of public functions. In a large global sample, subnational governments in high-income countries on average accounted in 2020 for 28 percent of total public spending (nearly 14 percent of GDP). Fiscal decentralization is more recent and uneven in many middle- and low-income countries, so subnational spending is typically less significant (except in a group of large or federal countries), on average 11 percent of public spending (around 2 percent of GDP) in the latter group. The difference in the role of subnational governments in public investment is similarly unbalanced—44 percent of total public investment in high-income countries compared to 18 percent in low-income countries (OECD and UCLG 2022).
Frontmatter
- Shishir Mathur, San José State University, California
-
- Book:
- Development Charges
- Published online:
- 12 January 2024
- Print publication:
- 27 June 2024, pp i-vi
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
5 - Case Studies of Development Charge Programs
- Shishir Mathur, San José State University, California
-
- Book:
- Development Charges
- Published online:
- 12 January 2024
- Print publication:
- 27 June 2024, pp 89-155
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Through an in-depth study of several development charge programs from the US and India, this chapter analyzes the case study programs on the major design and implementation factors identified in Chapter 3, such as the enabling legal framework, rational nexus principle, vertical equity, and revenue stability and growth.
After that, this chapter describes a typical new township, calculates its infrastructure funding needs based on the current costs to provide major infrastructure/services in India, and uses the development charge rates noted in the Indian case studies to calculate the revenue likely to accrue from these charges. Next, it compares the need with this revenue and conducts a sensitivity analysis to show how much the development charge rates need to increase in India to meet the infrastructure funding requirements under various scenarios. Under the first scenario, these charges should meet half of the funding needs. The other half would be met through a mix of other revenue sources such as property taxes, user fees, and state/central government aid. Under the second scenario, development charges would meet all funding needs. Finally, the chapter conducts a comparative evaluation of the Indian and US cases along the legal, equity, and revenue yield and adequacy dimensions.
Fremont, CA
The city of Fremont is situated in the south-eastern part of the San Francisco Bay Area region of northern California. The city is growing in population. It added over 16,000 residents between 2010 and 2020 at an annual growth rate of approximately 1 percent to reach a population close to 230,000. The household income is a little over USD 133,000 (US Census Bureau n.d.a)—almost twice the nation’s median income of USD 68,703 (US Census Bureau 2020) and 3/4th more than California’s (USD 75,235) (US CensusBureau n.d.b). The city has a large Asian majority (59 percent), with white(24 percent) and Hispanic (13 percent) residents rounding out the top three races/ethnicities (US Census Bureau n.d.a). Finally, a large majority of residents own their homes (approximately 60 percent), often living in low-density, single-family houses. The city is essentially a medium-sized affluent suburb—one of many that dot the region.
Legal enabling framework
Three layers—national, state, and local—of laws and regulations influence Fremont’s use of impact fees (as mentioned earlier, development charges are called impact fees in the US). As described in Chapter 2, at the national level, the US Constitution’s Fifth Amendment protects citizens against takings.
List of Tables
- Shishir Mathur, San José State University, California
-
- Book:
- Development Charges
- Published online:
- 12 January 2024
- Print publication:
- 27 June 2024, pp xi-xii
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
6 - Recommendations
- Shishir Mathur, San José State University, California
-
- Book:
- Development Charges
- Published online:
- 12 January 2024
- Print publication:
- 27 June 2024, pp 156-171
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
This chapter synthesizes the insights gained from the review of development charges levied by local governments in India and across the globe (Chapters 1, 2,and 4), the factors to be considered while designing and implementing a development charge program (Chapter 3), and the in-depth Indian and US case studies (Chapter 5), to provide policy recommendations for levying these charges. Specifically, the recommendations are organized into several categories that cover enabling legal framework, transparency, equity, revenue yield, funding state- and regional-level infrastructure, meeting growth management and other planning objectives, political feasibility, and institutional capacity.
While several recommendations are sprinkled across the previous chapters, they are consolidated in this chapter so that all the major recommendations are in one place. Furthermore, discussing them in this chapter allows us to see how findings from more than one chapter support many of these recommendations; that is, they bubble up as key recommendations after considering the entirety of the development charges landscape.
Robust enabling legal framework
A combination of state-level authorizing legislation, rules, and policies and local jurisdiction-level ordinances, rules, and policies that implement the state-granted authority provide a robust legal framework for levying development charges. This framework could draw upon various sources of power. For example, in the US, these charges are justified either as a regulatory fee (to meet the government’s larger public health and safety objectives) or as a service fee (to meet the cost of providing a service, irrespective of the health and safety objectives). Landmark court cases and the US Constitution’s Fifth Amendment provide further support. The national constitution provides similar support in South Africa.
Various forms of enabling legislation
Notably, state-level enabling legislation can come in different forms, such as development-charge-specific authorizing legislation. The Mitigation Fee Act of California, US, and the Building Tax Act of Kerala, India, are two examples. Sometimes, other state-level regulations accompany the act, such as in Tamil Nadu, India, where the Tamil Nadu Town and Country Planning Act, 1971, and the I&A Charges Rules, 2008, combine to provide the state-level legal framework for levying I&A Charges. Similarly, in Florida, US, the Impact Fee Act and the Growth Management Act’s concurrency requirements provide the legal framework. In other cases, broader state-level legislation provides the authority to levy development charges, such as the Urban Planning and Development Act, 2012, in Bihar, India, and the Planning Act, 2016, and the Economic Development Act, 2012, in Queensland, Australia.
Preface
- Shishir Mathur, San José State University, California
-
- Book:
- Development Charges
- Published online:
- 12 January 2024
- Print publication:
- 27 June 2024, pp xix-xx
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Four key realizations prompted me to write this book. First, my lived experiences in two countries—India and the United States—that are very different from an urban development perspective prompted me to think deeper about the reasons for the differences in these countries’ quality of urban development. Having worked as a planner in India before I came to the United States, I knew that planning schools in both countries provide similar technical planning training. Therefore, the differences should lie elsewhere. Upon further reflection in the ensuing years, and as I conducted further comparative scholarly research in the field of public finance, I realized that a major difference lies in the amount of own-source urban development revenues at the disposal of local governments in the two countries. While the local governments in the United States have access to an extensive suite of local revenue sources such as property and sales taxes, development charges, and a well-functioning municipal bond market, local governments in India (and, for that matter, across the Global South) rely heavily on state and federal grants. Essentially, while I was planning neighborhoods and cities in India, many of my plans were not implemented due to a lack of funds.
Second, while researching local finance tools, I realized that these tools often have secondary unintended negative consequences. For example, while development charges can be set at a high enough rate to fund a large proportion of infrastructure/service needs, these high rates can negatively impact housing affordability. Therefore, equity should be considered while designing and implementing these financing tools, especially in developing countries, where the poor have disproportionately borne the brunt of centuries of political, religious, social, and economic suppression.
Third, just because a tool exists in a local government’s toolkit does not mean it is being used properly. Development charges are a prime example. While most Indian cities use the charges, the revenue is extremely inadequate to meet the cities’ infrastructure/service needs. Furthermore, there is little consideration for equity, accountability, and transparency in the design and implementation of these charges.
Finally, whereas significant research based in the US, and to some extent Australia and the UK, has been published in the last two to three decades, little is known about the use of these charges elsewhere, especially in developing countries.
References
- Shishir Mathur, San José State University, California
-
- Book:
- Development Charges
- Published online:
- 12 January 2024
- Print publication:
- 27 June 2024, pp 178-199
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
List of Abbreviations
- Shishir Mathur, San José State University, California
-
- Book:
- Development Charges
- Published online:
- 12 January 2024
- Print publication:
- 27 June 2024, pp xxi-xxiv
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
Contents
- Shishir Mathur, San José State University, California
-
- Book:
- Development Charges
- Published online:
- 12 January 2024
- Print publication:
- 27 June 2024, pp vii-viii
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
Index
- Shishir Mathur, San José State University, California
-
- Book:
- Development Charges
- Published online:
- 12 January 2024
- Print publication:
- 27 June 2024, pp 200-208
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
4 - Overview of Development Charges in India
- Shishir Mathur, San José State University, California
-
- Book:
- Development Charges
- Published online:
- 12 January 2024
- Print publication:
- 27 June 2024, pp 72-88
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
In India, revenues from taxes and fees typically accrue to the central government with little left for state governments and rural and urban local bodies (RULBs). Therefore, these two levels of government are fiscally constrained. Moreover, RULBs and state governments have very little authority to levy new taxes. In fact, local sources of revenue have steadily shrunk. For example, the recent implementation of GST necessitated local governments to discontinue octroi and local body tax. The abolishment of octroi led to a 35 percent reduction in the revenue of the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM), one of India’s largest municipal corporations (Mankikar 2018). Furthermore, the total government liabilities (sum of all government debt and liabilities) are over two-thirds (68.6 percent) of the country’s GDP (GoI 2020b), which restricts the amount of urban development funds the central government can award to the state governments and RULBs.
Moreover, due to underdeveloped municipal bond markets, local governments are unable to access private capital markets for raising debt to fund urban development. To date, only eight municipalities have raised a meager INR 33.9 billion (Das 2019) or USD 474 million. This amount is just 0.1 percent of the municipal bond issuances of USD 426 billion in the US in 2019 alone (SIFMA 2020). Finally, residents resist traditional local revenue sources, such as property taxes. In such a scenario, India’s local governments urgently need additional local revenue sources to fund urban development projects, especially due to their rapidly urbanizing populace. For example, between 2014 and 2050, India’s urban population will increase by 404 million, far exceeding the next two countries—China and Nigeria—that will witness increases of 292 million and 212 million, respectively (United Nations 2014). Development charges are a key potential revenue source (Chary and Prasad 2014; Civil Society 2018).
Starting in the 1980s and spurred by the balance of payment crisis of the 1990s, India initiated fiscal and economic reforms at the national level and started paying increased attention to neoliberal market-based solutions and revenue sources, such as development charges (Vidyarthi, Mathur, and Agrawal 2017). Other Global South countries are also exploring such solutions, which are being popularized by multilateral aid and lending organizations such as the World Bank and UN-HABITAT. Indeed, in 2016 UN-HABITAT published a reader for developing countries that provides an overview of such financing tools (UN-HABITAT 2016).