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I. INTRODUCTION Tax Increment Financing (TIF) is a program where local government officials designate a geographic area for development and then finance certain aspects of the development with future growth [...], California s recent decision to discontinue tax increment financing (TIF) after six decades of use has triggered a re-examination of its broader use. TIF typically allows the borrowing of funds for local economic development in a specified district, to be paid for by taxes collected in the future that are generated by the development. To put the findings of the previous literature into context and to make them more broadly informative, this paper reviews the empirical research, provides some descriptive national analysis of TIF adoption, and provides policy recommendations informed by the empirical findings and literature. Keywords: tax increment financing (TIF), property taxes, economic development, policy adoption JEL Codes: H25, H71, 018

The real benefit of aid loans to recipients is discussed as opposed to the style used by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's Development Assistance Committee (DAC) countries, which is based on the net cost of aid to donors. Argument on the high DAC discount rate and its effect in changing currency values are discussed.

The relationship between International Monetary Fund and bilateral aid, with relation to millennium development goals, is discussed.

The effectiveness of foreign aid to development, which may come in the form of conditions, advice, and money, is studied. Results indicate that foreign aid cannot accomplish development as a whole, but it can help in financing particular tasks such as building or maintaining roads. The need to focus on smaller problems, which will affect economic growth, is discussed.

A study evidencing the role of interprovincial transfers on economic convergence process in Canada is presented.

A study analyzing the effect of global taxes on regular development aid is presented.

An econometric model analyzing the factors affecting the investment of money and capital in economic development is presented. For the purpose, data from South Africa is used. The study also evidences that foreign savings have a complementary relationship with domestic savings and do not have the effect of substitution. The effect of growth rate on savings rate is also examined. The adverse impact of dependency rates on savings rate is also observed.

This paper examines which factors can explain the allocation of aid by four regional development banks as well as three United Nations agencies. The results suggest the following: most donors examined also exhibit a bias apparent in bilateral aid allocation in favor of less populous countries. Some of them also share another bias of bilateral donors who give more aid to their former colonies. However, the three United Nations agencies contravene a third bias of bilateral aid allocation and provide more aid to countries geographically more distant from the centers of the Western world. While the regional development banks with the possible exception of the Inter-American one focus exclusively on economic need as measured by per capita income, the three United Nations agencies also take into account human development need in their aid allocation as measured by the Physical Quality of Life Index. Some tentative evidence is found that respect for political freedom is rewarded with higher aid receipts at the aggregate multilateral level and by the Inter-American Development Bank as well as perhaps, in a few estimations, two of the three United Nations agencies. Neither respect for personal integrity rights nor low levels of perceived corruption play any role in the allocation of aid by the donors looked at. In general, higher military expenditures and arms imports are not associated with higher aid receipts, with a few notable exceptions.

An analysis of Labour Party's public sector policies and position on the Private Finance Initiative for community development projects is offered. Additional information on private finance use for various public construction projects in UK is included.

Byline: Lant Pritchett (1) Keywords: capital; growth; productivity; public sector Abstract: The cost of public investment is not the increment to the value ofpublic capital. Unlike with private investors, there is no plausiblebehavioral model in which every dollar that the public sectorspends as ``investment'' creates economically valuable ``capital.''While this simple analytic point is obvious, it has so far beenuniformly ignored in the empirical literature on economic growth,which uses--at best--cumulated, depreciated, investmenteffort (CUDIE) as a proxy for capital stocks. However, particularlyfor developing countries the difference between investment costand capital value is of first-order empirical importance: governmentinvestment is half of more of total investment, and calculationspresented here suggest that in many countries government investmentspending has created little useful capital. This has implicationsin three broad areas. First, none of the existing empirical estimatesof the impact of public spending has identified the productivityof public capital. Even where public capital has a potentiallylarge contribution to production, public-investment spendingmay have had a low impact. Second, it implies that all estimatesof total factor productivity in developing countries are deeplysuspect as there is no way to empirically distinguish betweenlow growth because of investments that create no factors andlow growth due to slow productivity growth. Third, multivariateregressions to date have not adequately controlled for capitalstock growth, which leads to erroneous interpretations of regressioncoefficients. Author Affiliation: (1) World Bank Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge, MA, 02138 Article History: Registration Date: 06/10/2004

Research presented concerns the economic impact of stock market liberalization, or a country's policy to allow foreign purchasing of stocks. Findings suggest that the country that liberalizes it's stock market can lower the cost of equity capital by promoting risk-sharing between foreign and domestic agents.

Issues related to the financing of Brazil's economic development are examined, focusing on changing patterns of financing since the 1950s. Topics include the role of financial systems in economic development, foreign investments in Brazil, inflation, growth in capital markets, and political policies.

A model of tax increment financing (TIF) adoption incentives was used to examine the relationships among various components of TIF projects. The model demonstrated that revenue is not required to be incremental relative to the project, which, in turn, need not be efficient to be financially practicable for the municipalities. Projects may best satisfy the requirements of TIF regulations but may not be implementable through TIF. Unconventional government programs may be needed to assist towns in promoting growth in certain areas.

Economic development and financial reforms vary from country to country and assessing evidences for charting economic programs should be done with regards to individual country specifics. Cross country regressions vary primarily due to differences in institutional and policy considerations and these, along with the use of time series methods, may well determine the relationship between economic development and liberalization.

The literature on endogenous growth contains very little information on vintage technology. Optimal vintage capital accumulation is studied under conditions of asymptotic endogenous growth without input parametrization. It is shown that vintage capital accumulation and time preference determine the rate of endogenous innovations and rate of vintage capital depletion. A larger amount of vintage physical capital equipment in use results in a larger allocation of human capital to total capital stocks.

Guidelines for managing a revolving loan fund program are provided. They cover such issues as the scope of managerial responsibilities; the handling of complaints from bankers, prospective borrowers and the local citizenry; and compliance with accounting and audit regulations. The tips provided include attending loan funding training courses with the National Development Council and coordinating closely with loan board members on key projects.

The demand-supply, pool technique and the Box-Jenkins univariate time-series model were used to examine the impact of Taiwan's $303.11 billion national reconstruction program on the country's fiscal deficit in the input-output model. Furthermore, the study also tried to determine the effects on various public bond policies of inflation, output, income and employment. The results may be used to develop an optimal policy using the forecast regional input-output system.