Professor David Heald

Current Work

 
Most of my research time at present is committed to devolved public finance (devolved government came to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in 1999); government accounting reform (Resource Accounting and Budgeting went live in the United Kingdom in 2001-02, and the switch to IFRS was made in 2009-10); and the substance and regulation of accounting for Public-Private Partnerships. Although the main focus of my work is on the United Kingdom, I am greatly interested in comparative developments across the world, both with regard to government accounting and fiscal decentralisation. Also, the explicit links stressed by HM Treasury between public expenditure planning and fiscal policy have stimulated me to examine the substance and rhetoric of ‘fiscal transparency’. I have published an edited book (Transparency: The Key to Better Governance?) with Christopher Hood (Gladstone Professor of Government, All Souls College, Oxford) on the more general relevance of ‘transparency’ to public policy. In 2010-11 I am on research leave, thanks to a Royal Society of Edinburgh/Scottish Government Support Research Fellowship, which allows me to concentrate on my research: the project title is 'Improving the quality of public expenditure' .