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The purpose of this paper is to discuss how funding systems influence higher education institutions and their strategies and core tasks.

Taking the results of a comparative study between Denmark, Norway and Portugal as a point of departure, the paper identifies and analyses the main features of these state funding systems, their strengths and weaknesses, and their impact on academia.

The system‐level analysis offers an illustration of a trend across Europe. The paper shows that mixed funding models have been implemented in all three countries.

Funding systems and their impacts do not come in neat packages. The systems demonstrate a mixed pattern of strengths and weaknesses. The impacts of the funding systems converge, although different mechanisms are employed. There are no clear cut differences in the perceived strengths, weaknesses and impacts of the two main types of funding systems – input‐based funding and output‐based funding – presented and discussed in the paper.

Not much information is broadly shared about how current system and resource library funding formulas operate. Do the formulas encourage or discourage certain programs or services? How are systems and resource libraries funded across the country? These questions are vital to systems looking for fiscal models that work. Having examined the costs of basic services provided by the seven Colorado regional library service systems and the Colorado Resource Center (CRC) previously in the Bottom Line (Fall 1990, pp. 18–24), this second article reviews the current funding formulas for the systems and the CRC.

Increasingly, countries around the world are reforming their traditional ‘special educational needs’ funding models, many of which contradict the overarching principles of inclusive education as set out in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with a Disability (UNCRPD). There is growing awareness across countries that the way education systems are financed directly shapes the extent to which schools can be inclusive. Spiralling costs have also influenced governments who have begun calling for ‘cost control’ and greater transparency and accountability in how resources are distributed and monies are spent. In Ireland, calls for a more equitable resource model for students with disabilities in mainstream education resulted in the introduction of a new system of funding which removed the need for diagnosis to receive supports. However, since ratification of the UNCRPD in 2018, Ireland's system of special education is being considered for full reform with the possibility of moving to a system of inclusive education and the removal of special schools and classes. This raises the question: can two separate funding streams, one for general education and one for special education ever exist in an inclusive system? Having one funding model for all students, although the logical choice, is the source of much concern among parents and disability advocates, many of whom fear it will lead to children with disabilities ‘falling through the cracks’ and used by government as a mechanism to reduce spending overall.

Public pension plans in the U.S. are seriously underfunded, especially following the financial market crisis of 2008-2009 which resulted in large investment losses. However, funding levels vary widely across plans. Pension boards of trustees make key management decisions in pension systems and these decisions have significant effects on funded levels, yet our empirical knowledge of board management is limited. This study explores the effect of board composition on pension funding levels. Existing theoretical debates lead to differing expectations, and previous studies have mixed results. Our research uses a panel data set of large public pension plans from 2001-2009. We also collect data for pension board composition from this time period. We find that increasing political appointees and employee members on the board increases the funding performance of the pension system.

The deferred nature of retirement benefits provides public officials with a means of postponing to later years the retirement financing burden. This practice is aided by the fact that the Employee Retirement Income and Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) does not apply to the public sector. Failure to provide for full actuarial funding violates the concept of interperiod equity, which the Governmental Accounting Standards Board cites as a fundamental responsibility of public administrators. Underfunding also violates the just savings principle developed by the philosopher John Rawls. This paper examines the extent of retirement system underfunding in state and local government and considers the various ways in which underfunding imposes an unfair burden on future generations. The ethical significance of underfunding is tied to the works of Rawls, and remedial measures are proposed which are consistent with Rawls’ just savings principle.

This chapter highlights aspects that are high on the agenda of the financing inclusive education debate: the need to re-think resource allocation mechanisms, the issue of empowerment, the way funding mechanisms support inclusive education, and the importance of appropriate governance and accountability mechanisms. It focuses on critical factors of financing that support the right to education, as outlined in Article 24 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) (United Nations, 2006), in a context of financial constraints and explores issues in the policy-practice gap in relation to both national- and European-level policy priorities and objectives. It draws on existing literature on modes of funding, on past research conducted by the European Agency and on the conceptual framework developed within a new European Agency study on current policy and practice in this field.

This paper presents three models of funding health care in 130 developing countries, based upon a public system, a private system and personal remittances.

The authors trace the funding of health from foreign aid to health funding and health outcomes in the public system, foreign direct investment to health funding in the private system, and personal remittances to health outcomes. This is followed by panel data, fixed effects models subjected to 2-, 3- and 4-stage least squares regressions.

Findings from the first model were that aid in the form of Technical Cooperation Grants funded Infrastructure. Infrastructure Spending due to aid funds Government Health Plans, which reduced the Incidence of Tuberculosis, which in turn reduced Undernourishment and increases Life Expectancy. Other positive health outcomes included reduced Birth Rate and reduced Maternal Mortality. In the second model, Foreign Direct Investment increased Female Employment and GDP per Person, funding Private Health Plans, which increase Life Expectancy, reduced Undernourishment, increased Skilled Care at Birth, increased the Number of Hospital Beds, reduced Maternal Mortality and increased the Birth Rate. In the third model, Remittances influenced both Out-of-Pocket Medical Expenses and Private Plans.

Publicly funded programs may be directed to nutrition, increasing life expectancy. Private funding may be directed to improving maternal conditions, with remittances removing the liquidity constraints.

This paper is the first attempt to trace health funding from its sources of foreign aid, foreign direct investment and personal remittances using three separate paths.

Examines the construction of the funding formula, following the 1988 Education Act, used to determine the levels of devolved budgets in three English local education authorities (LEAs). Explains that, in each LEA, a team was formed to determine the funding formula. Also explains that, as most schools pre‐local management of schools (LMS) only kept aggregate records showing the cost of education at the levels of primary/secondary sectors rather than individual school level, the LMS teams faced serious problems in defining budget parameters, identifying cost elements and attributing costs to functions. More critically, points out that while the 1988 Education Act made it clear that the new budgeting system should be comprehensive in the sense of not merely reflecting past expenditure patterns but being based on perceived education needs, the LMS teams developed funding formulae which predominantly preserved the status quo established by historical expenditure patterns. Explores both the arguments and the mechanisms which each LMS team deployed in order to produce an incrementalist budgeting system and the constraints that operated on incrementalism.

Scholars studying postwar settings are often highly critical of the work of NGOs in peacebuilding. In this chapter, I argue that many of the limitations of the NGO model are the result of the structure of funding. Using ethnographic and archival data from donors and NGOs engaging in peacebuilding in Croatia, this chapter examines the incentives build into the dominant donor–NGO model of funding. I find that the incentives for both donors and NGOs built into funding for peacebuilding lead to dysfunctional behavior by both donors and NGOs, and ultimately to ineffective and sometimes counterproductive peacebuilding projects. I find that donors actively shape the agenda of NGOs and push NGOs to see projects as the unit of peacebuilding. Donor funding is novelty seeking, rewarding NGOs for coming up with new project ideas and working in new locations. It also favors quantifiable events and activities for the purposes of reporting. In practice, these systematic preferences lead to the abandonment of successful projects, difficulty in securing long-term funding for work in troubled communities, and the favoring of countable events over development of the interpersonal relationships that are at the heart of successful peacebuilding.