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Financial Sustainability in Governments. A New Concept and Measure for Meeting New Information Needs

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Abstract

Public sector plays an essential role in the development of a country and the provision of a wide range of public services . However, the financial and economic crisis has undermined the public administrations’ capacity of continuing to provide public services to society without reducing their quality and amount. Under this framework, international organizations (IFAC in Recommended Practice Guideline. Reporting on the Long-Term Sustainability of an Entity’s Finances, IFAC, Toronto, 2013; CICA in Indicators of Government Financial Condition, CICA, Toronto, 1997; EU 2012a) and prior research (Groves and Valente 2003; Cabaleiro et al. 2013) have focused on the analysis of the public finances to encourage public administrations to achieve financial sustainability at all governmental levels . In this regard, this chapter tries to summarize not only the evolution of the definition and measurement of the public finances toward the financial sustainability but also the internal and external factors that could jeopardize it following prior research and international organizations.

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Acknowledgements

This research was carried out with financial support from the Regional Government of Andalusia (Spain), Department of Innovation, Science and Enterprise (Research project number P11-SEJ-7700) and the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports under Grant (FPU13/05949).

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Correspondence to María Deseada López Subires .

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López Subires, M.D., Rodríguez Bolívar, M.P. (2017). Financial Sustainability in Governments. A New Concept and Measure for Meeting New Information Needs. In: Rodríguez Bolívar, M. (eds) Financial Sustainability in Public Administration. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57962-7_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57962-7_1

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