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It was not until the late 1960s that housing attracted much attention from academic social scientists. Since that time the literature has expanded widely and diversified, establishing housing with a specialised status in economics, sociology, politics, and in related subjects. As we would expect, the new literature covers a technical, statistical, theoretical, ideological, and historical range. Housing studies have not been conceived and interpreted in a monolithic way, with generally accepted concepts and principles, or with uniformly fixed and precise methodological approaches. Instead, some studies have been derived selectively from diverse bases in conventional theories in economics or sociology, or politics. Others have their origins in less conventional social theory, including neo‐Marxist theory which has had a wider intellectual following in the modern democracies since the mid‐1970s. With all this diversity, and in a context where ideological positions compete, housing studies have consequently left in their wake some significant controversies and some gaps in evaluative perspective. In short, the new housing intellectuals have written from personal commitments to particular cognitive, theoretical, ideological, and national positions and experiences. This present piece of writing takes up the two main themes which have emerged in the recent literature. These themes are first, questions relating to building and developing housing theory, and, second, the issue of how we are to conceptualise housing and relate it to policy studies. We shall be arguing that the two themes are closely related: in order to create a useful housing theory we must have awareness and understanding of housing practice and the nature of housing.

We examine personnel policies and careers in public agencies, particularly how wages and promotion standards can partially offset a fundamental contracting problem: the inability of public-sector workers to contract on performance, and the inability of political masters to contract on forbearance from meddling. Despite the dual contracting problem, properly constructed personnel policies can encourage intrinsically motivated public-sector employees to invest in expertise, seek promotion, remain in the public sector, and work hard. To do so requires internal personnel policies that sort “slackers” from “zealots.” Personnel policies that accomplish this task are quite different in agencies where acquired expertise has little value in the private sector, and agencies where acquired expertise commands a premium in the private sector. Even with well-designed personnel policies, an inescapable trade-off between political control and expertise acquisition remains.

The American public exhibits an exceptionally strong bias against public sector activity in the economy. Why this is so is investigated by applying the traditional literature on “American exceptionalism” and the comparative method. A defence of an active role for government in the economy is developed, based on social and institutional economics. The traditional explanations for American exceptionalism given by Sombart, Commons and Perlman are outlined. A comparison of the Canadian and US politico‐economic cultures is employed as a means for evaluating the validity of the arguments in the traditional exceptionalist literature. Although those investigating American exceptionalism have often compared the US with Europe, it is argued that Canada makes a better subject for comparison with the US. This is because the two countries are very similar, yet exhibit different attitudes toward the public sector.

The improvement in the efficiency of public management leads to an increase in the quality of services, boosting confidence in institutions and thus generating a multiplier effect. This paper aims to update the literature on the data envelopment analysis (DEA), which uses a frontier methodology, for measuring the efficiency applied to the defence sector.

Two main research areas are related through this study: Defence Economics and Efficiency and Productivity Analysis. The frontier methods for measuring technical efficiency are grouped into parametric, non-parametric and semi-parametric. The DEA literature review in the selected sector allows to identify three main fields of work that are discussed in detail.

Existing empirical research has hardly applied bootstrapping methods to remove bias from the estimates. No empirical work has applied an analysis of efficiency determinants by the inclusion of exogenous variables.

The managerial implications of efficiency are numerous. A line of research is proposed to examine the extent to which efficiency improvements have an impact on reputation and, therefore, on the image of and confidence in institutions. The link between Defence Economics and Corruption Economics is also considered.

La mejora de la eficiencia de la gestión pública conduce a un aumento de la calidad de los servicios, impulsando la confianza en las instituciones y generando así un efecto multiplicador. El presente trabajo tiene por objeto actualizar la literatura sobre la metodología frontera de medición de la eficiencia DEA, aplicada al sector de la Defensa.

A través de este estudio, se relacionan dos áreas principales de investigación: Economía de la Defensa y Análisis de Eficiencia y Productividad. Los métodos frontera para medir la eficiencia técnica se agrupan en paramétricos, no paramétricos y semiparamétricos. La revisión de la literatura DEA en el sector seleccionado permite identificar tres campos de trabajo principales que se discuten en detalle.

La investigación empírica existente apenas ha aplicado métodos bootstrap para eliminar el sesgo de las estimaciones. Ningún trabajo empírico ha aplicado un análisis de determinantes de la eficiencia mediante la inclusión de variables exógenas.

Las repercusiones de la eficiencia en la gestión son numerosas. Se propone una línea de investigación para examinar en qué medida las mejoras de la eficiencia repercuten en la reputación y, por consiguiente, en la imagen y la confianza en las instituciones. También se considera el vínculo entre la Economía de la Defensa y la Economía de la Corrupción.

The protection of public assets, fighting corruption and providing accountability for government agencies is necessary for public welfare, and it is possible to achieve this by quality auditing of the public sector. Since audit quality depends on the competencies of the auditor, this chapter focusses on the competencies of the public auditor and how these competencies are expected to evolve in the future with the development of technology. The chapter concentrates on the most sought-after skills for today’s public auditors by analysing the employment criteria in the Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs) of the European Union, the United States, the United Kingdom and Turkey. Even though the SAIs of these countries/regions are quite different, it is possible to find common ground. The SAIs of these countries, in general, require public auditors to have an undergraduate degree and require the candidates to pass extensive tests on reasoning abilities.

Moreover, the author investigates the requirements for public auditor competency in the public auditing standards followed by these countries. In addition to this, the author discusses the future expectations from public auditors and the new skills these will need. Past skills include technical knowledge, prior experience, hierarchical order in audit teams, professional scepticism, reasoning abilities and reporting skills. Advancements in technology such as Artificial Intelligence and Industry 4.0 will require auditors to have technological knowledge, emotional intelligence, interpersonal skills, project management skills, critical thinking and strong communication skills. Furthermore, understanding the business and related risks will overshadow prior experience.

This study aims to investigate the public deficit issue by contrasting conventional and Islamic views encompassing the paradigm, technical base, orientation and consequence detailed in nine discussions, which are rarely investigated in the research. There is a predisposition that contemporary Muslim scholars discuss the public deficit as well as the private sector perspective, which is used in the conventional conception, without riba as a primary feature.

The paper develops a comparative approach that derives two perspectives from the available literature using the qualitative method under the critical thinking method. It was drawn up in detail on how the paradigm and its related budgeting process contribute to public deficits, mainly in government institutions.

The paper reveals a prominent difference in public deficit in the Islamic view from a conventional perspective. From 9 points of comparison, the analysis covers 18 discussion that differentiates between private and public area criticism seems to overlap. The foundation giving a unique perspective in Islam toward public deficit is the concept of ownership that differs from capitalism, mainly the function of public spending is to distribute the wealth among people not for economic growth. The Islamic Government spent for public purposes based on cash-basis budgeting. The budgeting system in Islamic public spending is founded on treasure availability.

The paper uses a qualitative method that cannot empirically snapshot the actual or factual condition, in which subjectivity plays a plausible role. Furthermore, there is no actual sample (best practices) of the concept to be examined.

The research encompasses overlap between Islamic and conventional perspectives, including public and private issues regarding public deficits. The main beneficiary of the paper is a policymaker, including academicians or practitioners who are appropriate to use the concept in their circumstances.

The study is a pioneering study in public deficit comprehensively comparing conventional and Islamic perspectives and drawing up conceptual and technical aspects.

In the wake of public service liberalisation in many OECD countries, economic interventions into the purpose and implementation of social policies have gained a lot of interest in recent years. The prime aim of this paper is to describe the nature of these interventions. The paper examines the reasons for pursuing elusive efficiency objectives in the conduct of public policy, rationales for purchaser‐provider splits, evaluation of cost‐quality relationships, service costing and pricing, and the influence of “external” economic variables.

The paper breaks the analysis of public policy down to three layers of economic interventions: macroeconomics (allocative efficiency, intervention rationales and macroeconomic environment), mesoeconomics (economics of delivery in “social industries”) and microeconomics (agent behaviour, contracting, pricing and evaluation). Each level of economic intervention is illustrated with examples, mainly taken from Australian public policy and mainstream social economic research.

Some of the most critical questions in policy implementation (outsourcing, pricing, contracting and agency problems) can be traced back to economic reforms. Experiments with new modes of service delivery are driven by a changing economic context, yet the efficiency gains from these innovative approaches may come at the expense of service quality.

Changing macro‐, meso‐ and microeconomic variables profoundly alter the parameters of service delivery. Designers and managers of service delivery systems need to be aware of – and skilled in – the practical application of economic principles, concepts and methods.

Except for the health sector, there is a lack of consistent research on the interrelationships between the standard economics toolkit and the delivery of public services. Yet the two are profoundly intertwined. The paper helps distinguish these relationships by putting together elements of conceptual analysis and fieldwork.

The paper offers a new view of the role of state based on recognition of the economic ability of the state as a separate factor of production. Recognizing the state’s economic ability is as a fifth factor of production and correspondingly gives indirect taxes the status of factor income as state profit. Direct taxes play two roles: they fund expenditure that is necessary for the production of public goods and at the same time they are in effect the latter’s price. If we were to apply the mechanism of producing and purchasing private goods to public goods, direct taxes would be replaced by the state loans that are non‐repayable, but yield interest, or by irretrievable loans with computed interest. In this case, which is illustrated by the budgetary equations in the model of an economy “without taxes”, indirect taxes become analogous to state profit and direct taxes are replaced by irretrievable loans with computed interest.

Privatization continues to receive serious consideration at the federal, state, and local government levels. The most frequent reason cited for privatizing services is to reduce the size and cost of government. While many government entities have privatized services, it is often up to academic researchers to determine if the goals of privatization have been realized and to shed light on the organizational and service characteristics that make it more likely that the results of privatizing a particular service will be positive. This paper seeks to provide a background to those researchers interested in examining the privatization of government services. The paper reviews and synthesizes prior privatization research and discusses future research directions.