Good Text Book on Public Policy

Section I:  What Is Public Policy?

Chapter 1:  Public Decision Making
Chapter 2:  Why Is It So Hard to Make the World a Better Place?


Section II:  Why We Do What We Do

Chapter 3:  Understanding Individual Behavior:  Rational Man and Woman
Chapter 4:  Understanding Group Behavior:  Collective Action        
Chapter 5:  Evaluating Social Welfare


Section III:  Markets and Government

Chapter 6:  The Political Process
Chapter 7:  The Market System
Chapter 8:  The Role of Government


Section IV: Tools for Analysis

Chapter 9:  Gathering and Measuring Information
Chapter 10:  Basic Data Analysis
Chapter 11:  Introduction to Regression Analysis
Chapter 12:  Benefit-Cost Analysis
Chapter 13:  Program Evaluation


Section V:  Making Policy

Chapter 14:  The Role of Institutions
Chapter 15:  Policy Design

Introduction to Public Policy by Charles Wheelan

Risk: A Very Short Introduction

Table of Contents
1. Risk decisions
2. Defining risks
3. Analyzing risks
4. Risk perceptions
5. Risk communication
6. Reconciling risks
7. Risk, culture and society

Authors: Baruch Fischhoff and John Kadvany

Books about Government Accounting

Essentials of Accounting for Governmental and Not-for-Profit OrganizationsPaul Copley

What other books do you recommend?

Related:
Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board
Summary Report of the 2010 Financial Report of the United States Government

AICPA

Government Accounting Standards Board

July Book Club readings

There are a few PFM related books in our July list.

Author Blog of the Day- Daniel Ben Ami

danielbenam

Assorted- Bend it like Becker and others

Living on a Budget;

The grocery market in the United States accounts for more than 25 percent of all retail sales, totaling hundreds of billions of dollars. The last decade has seen important transformations in the market structure of this industry with non-traditional retailers such as Walmart and Costco accounting for more than 30 percent of total grocery sales. For any given product, the spread of consumer prices from different retailers is orders of magnitude larger than price fluctuations from changing world food market conditions. The average consumer faces prices that differ by more than 20 percent across stores in the same area.

The National Broadband Plan

Growth Policy- Paul Romer

The economist manifesto

Bend it like Becker

Angus Maddison, Economic Historian, Dies at 83

The Trouble With Rankings

Economics Uncut-A Complete Guide to Life, Death and Misadventure

Yuan to fight about it? The WTO legality of China’s exchange regime

The Secret to Happiness?

David Brooks writes;

If the relationship between money and well-being is complicated, the correspondence between personal relationships and happiness is not. The daily activities most associated with happiness are sex, socializing after work and having dinner with others. The daily activity most injurious to happiness is commuting. According to one study, joining a group that meets even just once a month produces the same happiness gain as doubling your income. According to another, being married produces a psychic gain equivalent to more than $100,000 a year.

If you want to find a good place to live, just ask people if they trust their neighbors. Levels of social trust vary enormously, but countries with high social trust have happier people, better health, more efficient government, more economic growth, and less fear of crime (regardless of whether actual crime rates are increasing or decreasing).

Further Reading;
The Hidden Wealth of Nations by David Halpern

The Politics of Happiness: What Government Can Learn from the New Research on Well-Being
Derek Bok

Hidden Wealth of Nations

The Hidden Wealth of Nations by David Halpern
Table of Contents
Preface and Introduction.
Chapter One: Prosperity and wellbeing.
Chapter Two: Not getting along.
Chapter Three: The politics of virtue.
Chapter Four: Fairness and Inclusion.
Chapter Five: Power and Governance.
Chapter Six: Conclusion.

The Silo of World Bank Blogs

Two new additions to the World Bank blogs:

Prospects for Development
All About Finance

Advice to World Bankers: Please consolidate your blogs- may be it's a reflection of the Bank's management style? What do you think readers? Do include settings for blogger feeds in all the blogs.

Currrent Favorite Authors at IMF/World Bank Joint Library:

Stiglitz, Joseph E/ Reinhart, Carmen M. / Collier, Paul / Eichengreen, Barry J.
/ Wooldridge, Jeffrey M. / Yusuf, Shahid, (World Bank Staff)/ Sen, Amartya /Baum, Christopher F. / Ahmad, Ehtisham / StataCorp LP / Shephard, Neil / Pozen, Robert C./ Hayek, Friedrich A. von (Friedrich August) / Greene, William H. / Gladwell, Malcolm / Fabozzi, Frank J. / Cameron, Adrian Colin

Another Practitioner- Rakesh Mohan's Eichengreen challenge

Monetary Policy in a Globalized Economy- A Practitioner's View

Rakesh Mohan

Ashok Mody review;

In a recent comment, Barry Eichengreen (2009) says that economists are subject to fads and trends because the penalties for departing from social norms are large. Hence, even though the tools and perspectives to question the prevailing normative view are available, the incentives to adopt them are minimal...

Rakesh Mohan sees such pragmatism as the key role of a practising economist. It is in the practice of economics that the rubber, so to speak, hits the road, the theories are tested, the validity of parameters is assessed, and the cold reality of politics is faced. He speaks of the recurring conflicts in objectives faced by policymakers. In resolving these conflicts, he questions and prods, often pushing back on views widely held by academic and other practising economists. In his practice, Mohan reports, the Eichengreen challenge was always present. But because the risk of being marginalised is high, bucking the orthodoxy requires clarity of perspective and determined persistence. Both of these are amply in view in this book, which brings the speeches Mohan delivered as deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) from the early years of this decade, along with an extensive introduction and an “after word” that reports on the ongoing global financial and economic crisis...

For students of the Indian economy who also seek a special understanding of India’s monetary and financial policies, this book will be an invaluable guide. It presents a careful and current account of developments with an analytical eye, placed in the context and language of ongoing international policy debates. For readers seeking to assess the pulse and rhythm of India’s ginger steps from the safety of domestic finance to the choppier waters of international finance, the book offers a calibrated prognosis.

Books about Iceland

Why Iceland?: How One of the World’s Smallest Countries Became the Meltdown’s Biggest Casualty by Asgeir Jonsson

Frozen Assets: How I Lived Iceland’s Boom and Bust, by Armann Thorvaldsson,

Meltdown Iceland: Lessons on the World Financial Crisis from a Small Bankrupt Island
-Roger Boyes