Contenu du sommaire : Les ressources publiques : crise et stratégies

— Public resources under stress: victims or causes of the public finance crisis — The seriousness of the public finance crisis has probably its origin in the excess of revenues, taxes and borrowings. Thus, the opportunities given have fed the tendency of public bodies to spend, to make public investments, some of them being of dubious utility. Spending can not easily be curbed and reduced. Keeping it under control requires rules and procedures that put decisions under severe constraints of a level of revenues at the same time bearable and sustainable. All the current reforms, either domestic or European have this objective whatever there are called: balance, golden rule, budgetary discipline. But the huge heterogeneity of public finance, especially regarding the social dimension, and the far reaching fragmentation of public bodies, demands new legal instruments and oblige to deeply revamp the financing mechanisms as well as the sheer bases of public policies.

— Alternative Financing of Local and Regional Authorities — With public resources dwindling, alternative financing provides local and regional authorities with newfound financial leeway. Nevertheless, local elected officials do not take full advantage of these very real potentialities, despite the fact that alternative financing is currently undergoing a process of renewal. In deed, we are seeing both the modernisation of traditional resources and the appearance of new forms of revenue.

— Financial Crisis and Local and Regional Authorities' Resources — The financial crisis has had major repercussions for local and regional authorities, which provide 70% of public investment. It had, first of all, an impact on their resources, which have been stagnant at best, and in some cases, have decreased, for example, the Company Value Added Contribution (CVAE) and certain funds allocated by the State. Moreover, as is the case with all economic stakeholders, they must deal with the credit crisis and are therefore struggling to finance their investments. Therefore, unless a quick recovery solution is found, local and regional authorities will have no choice other than to postpone or even cancel some of their investments. Alternatively, they could use their fiscal leverage and increase the taxes over which they still exercise control.

— Effects of the Tight Financial Context on the Cost of Public Services — In a tight financial environment, the use of tariffs is often put forward as an alternative to taxes or at least as an alternative to increasing taxes. In France, tariff revenue has not been broached in a comprehensive manner; analyses are often carried out on a case by case or sectoral basis. The ongoing debate and examples from abroad attest to the topical nature of this issue. The use of tariffs or pricing nevertheless has serious consequences both in terms of the evolution of public action and of social justice.

— Urban road pricing: a tolerable funding tool ? — The paper first briefly recalls the reasons why economic theory traditionally supports urban road pricing. Secondly, in order to understand their economic basis, it studies the main economic agent's motives of reluctance towards tolling. The various distributional consequences of tolls are thus considered, as well as the sources of the discrepancies affecting individual and collective assessments of welfare changes. In the end, the paper suggests several essential prerequisites of urban tolling acceptability, for instance: the safeguard of freedom of movement, tangible compensations and a major part of the funds raised returning to transports.

— French Environmental Taxation: Resource Generation or Tax Incentive? — Environmental taxation, even in the broad sense of taxation of polluting activities or products, generates only a very low portion of tax revenues. Such policies are rarely conceived on the basis of strict environmental criteria and moreover, are often modified because of economic policy considerations. More specifically, environmental taxation is subject in a rather chaotic manner to budget performance concerns in order to benefit social protection, local and regional authorities or specialised agencies.

— Public property as a Potential Source of Resource Creation — In an effort to generate non?fiscal public resources, the French government has had in place since 2005 a policy aiming at streamlining its real estate holdings. New instruments and services were conceived to this end, which were successful in meeting their initial objectives. This policy however is by nature a short?term policy and, furthermore, is fraught with deficiencies which are well known but have apparently not been fully resolved.

— Sovereign Wealth Funds: Investment of Surplus and Future Source of Public Revenue — Sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) are generally defined as state?owned investment funds, financed by the accumulation of current account surpluses, either from raw materials exports (the case of SWFs in the Middle East, Norway and Russia), from structural surpluses of state savings (Singapore) or from the transfer of some of the Central Bank's foreign exchange reserves (China). The objective of this is to make budget and commercial surpluses productive: money can be invested in stocks, bonds (private or Treasury Bills), real estate, art or raw materials. From a legal perspective SWFs can be considered to be public funds, because of the way they function and are organised. An empirical analysis would deem them to be public resources because SWFs both manage and generate such resources.

— The Nation to the Rescue of the State: Donations, Bequests and Other Voluntary Contribu­tions — The same solutions for putting an end to the budget and financial crisis in France are advanced time and again, without much success. It seems that, above and beyond these textbook solutions, there is another avenue which is often neglected or even viewed with suspicion or condescension. Has the time not come to consider the possibility of the nation making voluntary contributions to reimburse the public debt?

— The Financing Crisis and Tax Systems Crisis from a Financial Sociology Perspective Keywords — The increased tax burden and economic globalisation have lead major economic operators to flee taxes, sometimes with the help of legislators. The system thereby loses legitimacy and economic anomie sets in. National institutional controls are no longer sufficient, and this at a time when international monitoring or regulatory systems continue to be deficient, despite the ongoing search for new solutions. The theorem formulated by Schumpeter on the internal sustainability of the modern financial system seems to be increasingly under threat in many States. This raises the issue of the financial system's political sustainability, particularly within a clearly democratic model.

— The Debate on Public Resources During the French Presidential Election Campaign in the Spring of 2012 — During the last presidential election campaign in France, many debates focussed on a wide variety of aspects of pubic resource management policies. The platforms of the major candidates did not include any revolutionary changes in taxation policy and had convergent positions on budget deficit reduction. There were however some significant discrepancies: the left advocated reinforcing graduated income taxation and capital taxation; the right proposed reducing the burden on businesses and increasing the VAT.

— Collection of Public Revenue in African States: Worrying State of Affairs — Public debt collection, mainly through taxation, on the African continent poses a real challenge because of the combined effects of difficulties experienced by economic operators and tax evasion by these same operators which goes unhampered because of inconsistencies in government policy.

— Current Issues in Public Resource Allocation in the Local Public Sector — The numerous and widely varied inter?municipal arrangements of local government institutions in France appear to have benefited from a considerable amount of financial revenue, transferred over the past few years. Does this imply that, regarding “clusters of municipalities,” public resources are allocated to the inter?municipal level, leaving cities with little to no say over these resources and their distribution? This is not a foregone conclusion. Although there appears to be a certain amount of resource capture, there is in actuality or potentially, financial restitution in favour of the municipality, often taking on the form of local negotiations. This is a financial and political “breath of fresh air” within the overarching territorial dimension of local public management.

— New Resources Under Study for Balancing Financial Statements in France — In spite of their diversity, social security revenues have been directly impacted by the crisis, worsening the deficit of the social security budget. More than ever, it's necessary to adopt a pragmatic approach regarding the allocation of new resources to social security. One possibility for providing these resources involves addressing social contribution exemptions, whether the aim is to reduce their impact on the social security budget or to eliminate them altogether. In a similar vein, there have been recent attempts to introduce a “social VAT” as well as increased interest in taxing certain behaviours.

— Sharing Resources between the State and Secondary Authorities: Examples from Germany — In Germany, as in most federal States, the two levels of the state (Federal and states) are to retain their financial and fiscal sovereignty. The question therefore arises of distributing public resources between these two levels, to which the local level must be added, which is autonomous under the supervision of each state. Moreover, this distribution is not only vertical but horizontal as well, with equalisation mechanisms aimed at ensuring a certain level of solidarity among the various parts of the federal territory. The article examines the solutions adopted in Germany regarding both types of distribution.

— Financing the European Union: National Contributions or a European Tax? — Financing the EU budget with the Union's inappropriately named “own resources,” is unsatisfactory for two reasons: first, it leaves it to the contributing States to manage these resources and second, there is a ceiling which prohibits strong action in times of crisis. The scope for reform seems limited. While there are a number of projects in the pipeline on European taxation, they are far from being unanimously accepted. Overhauling the institutional system, which has glaring deficiencies in its financial regime, would be the only solution which would make it possible to tackle today's challenges.

— Is the Introduction of a European Tax Impossible? — Introducing a tax directly governed by EU law and institutions in closely keeping with the system of “own resources” which was established progressively and has undergone changes since 1970. But it is very difficult to define its economic characteristics (base, rate) and the management arrangements, in spite of a number of proposals, some of which have been more specific than others. A European tax can only be conceived within the context of indirect taxation or possibly through the taxation of financial transactions. In any event, there are many hurdles to its implementation, the foremost of these is that it must go hand in hand with stepped up coordination or harmonisation of mandatory levies.

Different models of decision making have been proposed by scientific literature to understand consumer decision processes and the impact of marketing actions on them. This logic of impact is also relevant for the public sphere. Indeed, environmental public policies implement tools aimed at promoting behaviors among target groups. In this perspective, behavioral psychology can be used as a «toolbox» to improve the performance of this type of policy. This paper compares different empirical models which contribute to a better understanding of the impact of environmental measures.

— Validation of Professional Experience by Universities — The validation of acquired professional experience was added in 2002 to the arsenal of mechanisms, alongside secondary school, university studies, continuing vocational training and apprenticeships, which make it possible to obtain some type of diploma. This approach to qualification is increasingly popular and makes it possible to obtain a diploma based on experience acquired in personal or professional life. This mechanism requires Universities to make significant changes as regards traditional means of certification as well as the new roles assigned in this context to faculty members.