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Bottom‐Up Costing Within Medium Term Expenditure Frameworks: A Survey of Practices in Selected OECD Countries
Author(s) -
Di Francesco Michael,
Barroso Rafael
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
public budgeting and finance
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.694
H-Index - 30
eISSN - 1540-5850
pISSN - 0275-1100
DOI - 10.1111/pbaf.12069
Subject(s) - activity based costing , government (linguistics) , business , term (time) , medium term , cost accounting , accounting , finance , public economics , economics , linguistics , philosophy , physics , quantum mechanics , macroeconomics
The public financial management literature stresses the importance of bottom‐up costing of budget programs within a medium term expenditure framework (MTEF), however, comparatively little attention is paid to its practical implementation. This paper helps close this gap by surveying MTEF costing practices in four countries: Australia, Austria, Canada, and the Netherlands. The research utilizes questionnaire responses and interview data from national finance ministries, as well as review of government policy documents. The paper finds that current program costing practices fall short of the declared objectives of MTEFs, and the focus of costing and cost information remains incremental budget decision processes.