Italy has a national health service (SSN) dating to 1978. Italy's system of government is characterized by a rather high degree of decentralization of power, and the health system is likewise decentralized. Most of the responsibilities for health care have been ceded to the regions. The state retains only limited coordinating and supervisory powers. The state has a financial responsibility for the national health service, but state contributions are limited and expenditures in excess of this made by the region must be financed from other sources. Health reforms of 1992-93 aimed at making the regions more sensitive to the need to control aggregate expenditure and to monitor measures to promote efficiency, quality, and citizen-patient satisfaction. The diffusion of individual health technologies has been relatively uncontrolled in many regions in Italy, although tight central constraints on capital spending have contained diffusion of new technology. Regulation of placement of services is a planning function and is the responsibility of both the Ministry of Health and the regions. Health technology assessment (HTA) activities have been expanding since the early 1990s, but these activities tend to be untargeted, uncoordinated, and without priorities. Nonetheless, the principal actors in the SSN at national, regional, and local levels are becoming more sensitive to the need to apply criteria of clinical and cost-effectiveness and to be more rigorous in deciding what services to guarantee. There are reasons to be guardedly optimistic about the future of HTA in Italy.
Health Systems, Economic Evaluations, Quality of Life
ABSTRACT This is a study of devolution of power and responsibility to local governments in Russia, the resulting pressures on local revenues and expenditures, and the challenges these pose to local public administrators currently and for the foreseeable future. It is developed from nearly 100 hours of face-to-face interviews of top local public administrators in Cherepovetz, Russia, and from a careful reading and discussion of the parameters are which set by budget obligations, charters, federal, state, and local laws which set the legal and financial constraints within which the local public administrator works. INTRODUCTIOn Many areas in Russia have moved so rapidly toward privatization and local self-government that, today, the formal transition is nearly complete and problems of adjustment to and the instability of the new political and economic order are of concern.1 As a result of the devolution of power, a substantial number of these problems fall on the local public sector and the capacity of its administrators to administer a constantly growing body of laws and policies in the context of a dynamic environment in which previous Soviet law is irrelevant, gives wrong signals or is nonexistent. Recognizing this situation, the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID) created the Russia Market Oriented Farm Support Authority (MOFSA) project to uncover these problems with the hope of helping local public officials design appropriate public policy strategies to deal with them. This case study draws from the author's work with Chemonics International and the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) in MOFSA in 1996 in Cherepovetz, Russia. It also benefits from the author's experiences with local public administrators in the United States, Estonia, and the Republic of Georgia. This study addresses the questions: (1) What is the nature of the decentralization and the devolution of powers and responsibilities to local governments in Russia? and (2) What are the resulting budgetary problems reported by local public administrators charged with implementing the newly acquired responsibilities in a democratic setting? Thus, unlike the burgeoning literature on privatization, this study focuses on devolution and its impact on local public administrators. This area of study has received relatively little attention except by such authors as Bird, Freund, and Wallich (1995), Alm and Sjoquist (1995), Mitchneck (1995), Bird, Ebel, and Wallich (1995), and Wallich and Nayyar (1993). Yet, it is the local public administrator who implements these ever-changing laws within an ever-changing political environment described by the articles in Lapidus and Walker (1995). Some characteristics of this residue are described in Lavigne (1995) and Aslund (1995) but largely from the economic perspective. This article focuses on the issues as they relate to local public administration. METHOD This study is based on nearly 100 hours of interviews with fifteen senior government officials of the Cherepovetz raion, including the head and deputy head of the local governments, all ministers and directors of departments including finance and agriculture, the chief legal counsel, the director of municipal properties who was also responsible for privatizing and who represents the state on certain private boards, the director of housing and utilities, two rural administrators, the director and chief accountant of the largest business enterprises in the area, the head of the largest consumer cooperative, the director of a school, and the members of the 17-member legislative assembly. Each was interviewed separately and each participated in three full days of interactive seminars in which the findings, reported here, on how devolution and decentralization have affected local budgets, were intensively reviews. The individual interviews were basically open-ended to encourage candor and to reduce interviewer influence. …
The important issue, for both central and local governments in the 2000's is financial reconstruction and administrative reform. And, pursuing a policy of government decentralization has been regarded as an important issue in 1990's, and since 1999 it has received much attention at the central government and local government levels. In 1999,the Government Decentralization Law was passed. As expected, that the relationship between the central and local government has changed drastically. This report gives a study of Basic Concepts of Reform of Public Sector Accounting System in Local Government, and so on, is presented as follows : 1. Introduction. 2. Central Public Finance and Local Public Finance : An Overview. 3. Issues of Public Sector Accounting System in Local Government. 4. Conversion of Public Sector Accounting System in Local Government. 5. Development of Public Sector Accounting System in Local Government. 6. New Public Management. 7. Conclusion.
Introduction Ghanaians have had to travel to Accra, our nation's capital, even for things as basic as passport application forms. Realizing that many of us travel long ways for numerous basic services from our central government, the government has instituted, through our Ministry, a program of public-service decentralization.(1) In 1987, Ghana's erstwhile military administration, the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) under Jerry Rawlings, decentralized both budgeting and economic development (hereafter referred to as ED) by instituting 110 District Assemblies or DAs.(2) The primary rationale is to effectively employ a basic human-needs or BHN approach to improve the living conditions of the people, using these DAs as the instruments for making localities determine their respective ED destinies.(3) This article is a recent case study of those subnational bodies, addressing certain important decentralization problems and issues in post-independent Ghana. The article also highlights some of the development dilemmas confronting developing societies of the world, particularly their subnational financing of development projects. Specifically, the article addresses the following questions: 1. Why were the District Assemblies instituted? 2. What specific roles do they play in grassroots ED? 3. What makes the implementation of their policies problematic? 4. How can these difficulties be ameliorated? The study offers fruitful and penetrating insights into some of the reasons for the success or failure of subnational governments not only in Ghana but also in developing countries. The focus of this article, however, is more the theoretical framework of decentralization within which the DAs operate and less the activities of these grassroots entities. The lack of that framework can best be understood when one considers the neglect of decentralization during the country's imperialist era. Colonial Neglect of Decentralization Since 1986, there has been a shift to subnational ED in Ghana under 110 DAs. To enable one to recognize the importance of this governmental action, one needs to be familiar with the country's administrative scene before independence in 1957. During the country's colonial administration (and for the greater part of the post-independence era), the governmental apparatus for political and economic decisionmaking was highly centralized. There was little or no involvement of the local communities, a system resulting in poorly planned and poorly executed district and regional projects. In particular, the country's colonial administrators limited their governing role to a few public-works projects, notably feeder roads to areas with foreign-exchange-earning commodities (e.g., gold, cocoa, etc.), as well as to maintaining law and order. Therefore, the national budget was small. The point of the foregoing is that ED, as we know it today, was virtually unknown.(4) Also, budgeting for the purposes of improving the people's human conditions was not a major objective of the colonial administrators, and it was not until after independence that Ghana's public budgets have been designed to reflect meaningful and realistic ED programs/projects.(5) Contemporary Governmental Decentralization Efforts As a consequence of the age-old problems of high centralization and lack of citizens' participation in governance that partly resulted from the lack of a meaningful ED-budgeting process, disparity in the provision of socio-economic infrastructure between urban and rural dwellers was exacerbated. Therefore, in 1983, the country's military regime of Jerry Rawlings initiated the process of statutorily empowering the Ministry of Local Government to embark on programs to decentralize the country's public decisionmaking process, especially as it relates to budgeting for ED purposes. The measure purports to directly involve local communities in decisions affecting them, and, thus, improve overall public administration and financial administration at the grassroots level. …
In international development, paradigms shift about once every 10 years. An important shift that is now taking place is from economic development to poverty reduction. The link between health and poverty has been recognized for a long time. The traditional way of looking at this is in terms of ‘wealthier means healthier’ ( Figure 1). While nobody disputes this link, the poverty reduction focus raises the question whether investment in health is important for poverty reduction. Quantitative evidence to answer this question is now emerging and producing astonishing findings. Health and income (a) the traditional view and (b) a new paradigm. In an analysis of geography, health and other factors in relation to poverty, Gallup et al. (1998) found one of the strongest correlations between poverty and malaria. In a longitudinal analysis of health, health policy and economic performance, Jamison et al. (1998) detected important time-frame relations between investments in health, the nature of these investments and economic performance. Bloom et al. (1998) found evidence that a change between dependent and the productive part of a population, i.e. reduction in fertility and increased child survival, can lead to a spurt in economic development. This demographic gift may be one of the reasons for the economic miracle in Asia. This effect is temporary and will turn negative when the cohorts grow old. At the microeconomic level there is also strong evidence for a link. For example, the programme fighting river blindness has given a 20% return on investment ( World Bank 1993). Moreover, families with river blindness spend twice as much on health as others, and their children are twice as likely to drop out of school, girls more often than boys. In a related chronic disease, lymphatic filariasis, patients produced 30% less material per hour than healthy cotton weaver coworkers ( TDR 1996a). Thus diseases and their underlying causes can affect the economies of families in a number of ways: Reduced productivity, impediment of education or retained high dependency ratios. The emerging conclusion is that the right investment in health is at least as important as education. While further quantitative research is needed to substantiate findings, leading decision-makers are are already convinced, as illustrated by the G8 resolutions at Cologne relating to debt relief for for highly indebted poor countries (HIPC). As the communique said, ‘The central objective of this initiative is to provide a greater focus on poverty reduction by releasing resources for investment in health, education and social needs’. The resources that could be available through the new debt relief initiative if not drained away in other directions are significant. According to estimates provided by Jeffrey Sachs (1999), the amounts are about 5 billion dollars annually for over 40 countries with a population of about 750 million. Thus we are considering about $7 per capita or $120 million per country. If health were allocated half of this, health spending could amount to $60 million per country. This has come at just the right time to accelerate our development of concepts and policies. In May a meeting between WHO and international development agencies dealt with the role of specific strategies in health to achieve poverty reduction ( WHO 1999a). In education the simple notion is that poor people are illiterate, so to secure basic schooling for the poor is paramount, and indeed much evidence supports that view. Similarly, the basic assumption in health is that the first priority in is to fight diseases from which the poor suffer most, i.e. their excess burden. Further analyses of what these conditions are, their quantitative relation to poverty country by country and relative importance as targets for investment to reduce poverty have been initiated. This has now become a priority for WHO (1999b). The major conditions linked to excess burden among the poor and their global importance in terms of mortality are set out in Table 1. According to ongoing work by Gakidou and Jamison (personal communication), they all show a strong excess in poor populations. Tuberculosis is 10 times more prevalent in people earning < $1 a day; maternal mortality about eight times, and childhood mortality (< 5 years) four to five times more common in children of poor families. One effect of this poverty reduction perspective is prioritizing and focusing. Thus we are faced with a limited set of predominantly infectious diseases. The question is, then, how to address them most effectively. What are the relative merits of the available tools in addressing disease burden? How cost-effective are they and what is their potential for reaching the populations in need? Clearly we need modules of different sets of interventions and need to look for synergies. From an immunization perspective we believe that with the pneumococcal vaccine soon becoming available, about 3.5 million deaths can potentially be prevented by immunization ( Table 2). Three and a half of 12.7 million (and let us add 2.3 million equivalents for family planning) would suggest that immunization could justify use of more than 20% of the resources on this basis alone, without taking into account cost effectiveness or capacity to reach the poor. In both these parameters immunization would, of course, score very high ( Miller & Hinman 1999). Based on the HIPC calculations with about $60 million per country where on average one million children are born every year, $12 would be available per child for immunization services. One of the advantages of investing in excess burden for poor people is that the investments become self-targeting, i.e. one does not need to consider specialized services for the poor, as they are notorious for becoming ‘poor’ services. While this does not exclude the possiblity of using vouchers and other mechanisms where payments are required for systems reasons, services for those conditions could be free or almost free in a poverty reduction programme. Moreover, if one focuses on outcomes, one does not necessarily have to target investments at specific disease categories. A very good example of this comes from Ghana ( Adjei 1999). Ghana has undertaken profound health sector reforms by adopting and implementing a sector-wide approach. The government agreed with international agencies and bilateral donors that resources would be pooled and and used towards an agreed strategic framework. During 1997, &, 1998, immunization coverage has increased by about 20% (from approximately 50%–70% for measles). What are the reasons? There appear to be several: Vaccine procurement was protected in a general procurement mechanism. There was a shift in resources from tertiary care to district care. District support increased from 22% in 1996 to 39% in 1998 in national health budgets. Private healthworkers including midwives have become involved in immunization activities. This has dramatically increased the number of sites at which immunizations take place. Outreach points have increased from 7 to 11 per health facility. Immunization coverage has become an outcome measure used in the negotiation between central government and districts regarding resource allocation. The impact of health reforms on immunization in other countries appears to be mixed, but hard data is difficult to come by. Decentralization appears to have had a negative effect in many countries because central functions such as procurement suffered. In Latin America at least these effects were temporary (Ciro de Quadros, personal communication). In Uganda the reform process apparently led to the cutting of all resources of outreach services, which had a dramatic effect on coverage ( Ngoma 1999). A detailed review of the impact of sector-wide reforms is in preparation by the WHO. It is important in this context to conclude that reforms do not necessarily have a negative impact. The issue is therefore not whether the investments go into one pot or not – this will depend on the stage of reform in each country. Strategies for investments in health in relation to poverty reduction may with appropriate know-how be used to promote reforms to achieve better services rather than inhibit them. We should be able to overcome vertical in favour of horizontal entrenchment. To reach out to poor populations represents a great challenge. This is where the biggest gains of poverty reduction are likely to be achieved, as illustrated by the striking differences in coverage between routine polio 3 immunization and national vaccination days ( Table 3). Similarly high coverage has been achieved with ivermectin distribution in Africa, where quantitative randomized trials showed that a community-driven approach resulted in better coverage than health centre-driven ones ( TDR 1996b). Thus it would appear that we now have several successful models: Polio national immunization days with community mobilization; Ivermectin distribution directed by communities; Health sector reforms shifting resources from tertiary to primary care; Contracting of privately practicing midwives and other health personnel; Securing resources for mobile services including transport. The optimal mix of these would of course depend on geography and other local factors. The costing of outreach services is a priority in this perspective. They may bring up the cost of services severalfold, depending on the circumstances. Over the last 1½ years, kick-started by a meeting in the World Bank, an analysis of immunization services has taken place. The analysis showed: stagnation of immunization services globally with a decline of EPI coverage for certain countries as well as marked regional discrepancies ( WHO 1999c); newly developed, efficacious vaccines against major killers are not being introduced into poorer countries, the gap between the number of vaccines used in the ‘North’vs. the ‘South’ is widening; limited investment into vaccine research for diseases that predominate in the poorest developing countries. As a result of this analysis the major partners in the field decided to strengthen their global effort in this field, leading to the formation of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) in July 1999 ( GAVI 1999a). GAVI has the following strategic objectives: Improve access to sustainable immunization services; Expand use of all existing, safe and cost-effective vaccines where they address a public health problem; Accelerate development and introduction of new vaccines and technologies; Accelerate R & D efforts for vaccines needed primarily in developing countries; Make immunization coverage a centrepiece of international development efforts. The main instruments created for GAVI to advance these objectives ( GAVI 1999a) are; A Global Fund for Children's Vaccines (GFCV) with the aims of purchasing vaccines and safe injection materials, financing access, infrastructure and R & D. The fund's first priority is to secure availability of newer vaccines (Hepatitis B, Haemophilus influenza b, yellow fever) ( Figure 2); A Governing Board comprising 11 members from partner constituencies. Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland, Director General of WHO, will chair for the first two years followed by Ms Carol Belamy, Executive Director of UNICEF, for the following two years; A small secretariat to implement the directions of the Board and ensure the involvement and representation of the broader immunization community; A Partners' Working Group to ensure Board decisions are translated into operational actions appropriate to each lead agency; Task forces of limited duration to address specific issues; A biannual meeting to bring together the broader immunization community. Structure of the Global Fund for Children's Vaccines. The intention of GAVI's modus operandi is to ensure that the partners do the work and that the secretariat remains small to avoid duplication of efforts. The working group with its weekly teleconferences appears to be an important mechanism for coordination with strongly dedicated people of the main partners. The Fund became reality before the end of the year 1999 with a contribution of $150 million per year for five years from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This needs to be matched by a 30% contribution from other sources to become a charity with tax-free status. The UNICEF national committee of the US has taken on that challenge. Initially the Fund will be used to supply HEP B, HIB and yellow fever vaccines to the poorest countries with a per capita GNP < $1000. China, Indonesia and India are considered special cases because of their purchasing power and vaccine production capacity. Thus GAVI will discuss with these countries how best to support them through mechanisms other than external purchase. Countries are invited to submit proposals which will be reviewed on the basis of clearly defined eligibility criteria ( Unicef 1999b), giving considerable scope for synergy with HIPC-based investments. With an estimated $1 billion potentially available over the next five years, Figure 3 illustrates the possible disbursement of funds to sets of countries in $50 million increments. These countries would receive fully funded vaccines for three years; support would then be tapered off by 25% per year with the last 25% continuing for three years, giving a total support period of eight years. $1 Billion distributed in 4 separate $250 million trunches each starting with $50 million for 3 years. Different shaded areas relate to different cohorts of countries with different implementation rates. The cost of vaccines and safe injection material for a fully immunized child is approximtely $10. Thus $200 million will cover 20 million children, i.e. about half of the total child cohort in eligible countries. Assuming that many countries would need to strengthen their immunization services first, both in terms of infrastructure and access to qualify, the programme is being phased in to reach maximum capacity in the third year. With the Fund, GAVI has extraordinary new opportunities in relation to immunization, but if they are to materialize fully, some problems need to be resolved. Many countries targeted for this programme have low coverage of DPT3, often < 60%. Their infrastructure was eroded in the 1990s and coverage capability is limited. A substantial proportion of children may not receive a full immunization schedule. However, the polio eradication initiative greatly strengthened infrastructure in recent years. As outlined above, clear successes have been achieved in sector and community-based research. Strengthening current services is a challenge to GAVI partners already involved in supporting health and immunization services, notably the countries themselves, UNICEF, WHO, bilateral agencies and the development banks. We do not consider it likely that the GFCV will play an instrumental role here initially. GAVI will support the strengthening of existing mechanisms. HEP B and HIB vaccines will be required for newborns every year in the poorest countries. Thus their continued financing must be secured. While the costs of the vaccines is likely to continue to fall, substantial investments will be required on a continuing basis, necessitating collaboration of all parties concerned. The governments of eligible countries have a particularly important role to play: Only if it is a priority to them can bilateral agencies provide assistance and development banks concessionary loans. New vaccines, such as one agains pneumococcal pneumonia, are in the pipeline. This vaccine alone could save more than a million children from dying of acute respiratory infection. Unless we can secure the funding of currently available vaccines, we cannot ensure funding of new ones. On the other hand, if we are successful with the former, we will have a good chance to raise the resources required to introduce new vaccines. This is illustrated in Figure 4. The need to secure sustainable financing to secure funding for new vaccines. Since the last biotechnological revolution, we have seen a continuos trend towards a sharper distinction between public and private sector, which has accelerated after the collapse of the communist system. Within R & D the roles have also become more distinct: The public sector plays a key role in supporting basic, clinical, epidemiological and operational research while the private sector tends to be responsible for product development. Product development is, in part due to rules and regulations imposed by the public sector, a complex operation spanning intellectual rights related to discovery, preclinical and clinical development, production, marketing and post marketing surveillance. The driving force for the private sector is profit. Through a century of competitive development, the R & D industry has become the most effective actor in this field, and continues to undergo change to retain that competitive edge especially in a globalized market. A problem arises for unprofitable products; so far, the public sector has had to take a responsibility for these. Most who have been involved in public sector product development realize that it is difficult to match the range of expertise and competence required. Thus, if the public sector could guarantee a market that would engage the private sector, many obstacles would be overcome. This is what is called the ‘pull’ mechanism. For some products, such as the pneumoccocal vaccine which has a market in the industrialized countries, the pull mechanism does not need to be very substantial. Potential availability of $100–200 million for the poorest countries is expected to be sufficient. On the other hand, vaccines that are of greater use to poor populations and countries, such as vaccines against malaria, HIV/AIDS or tuberculosis, would require a stronger pull, on the order of magnitude of a billion dollars or more per year for at least five years. We are awaiting private sector assessments. There is considerable interest in pursuing this mechanism by the World Bank, by Jeffrey Sachs and colleagues at Harvard, and the US government. If the GFCV were to become a vehicle for such a pull mechanism, it would need to be substantially strengthened. If increased investments in vaccine R & D can be achieved, many resent discoveries and tools provided by basic science would become part of a development effort. These include identification of protective antigens selectively synthesized in vivo where tissue damage occurs; functional and structural characterization of antigens derived from genomics efforts; rationalization of the immunization process itself through improved methods for introduction and expression of vaccine DNA and selective targeting to the presentation mechanisms of the immune system ( Hoffman & Liu 1999); and simpler The most important challenge for GAVI is to that all whether in the or in the field, will as part of this effort to and health, through the use of safe
In this article, we propose a comprehensive conception of what personality traits are and what they mean in lay personology. Our conception is a pragmatic one that relies on the ecological concept of affordance and the theory of dual knowledge. It is not based on the same knowledge-building process as other pragmatic conceptions in that it distinguishes evaluative knowledge, produced by the generalization of affordances, from descriptive knowledge, deemed to be of limited importance in trait usage. It posits that an essential component of the meaning of traits is how others act towards the persons who possess these traits. We present a compilation of ten experimental studies in various areas of interest (statistical studies of trait/behavior associations, semantic decision-making, person memory, judgments at zero acquaintance) to prove the importance of the evaluative component composed of others' behaviors (OBs). These experiments show that the evaluative component 1. includes a repertoire of behaviors that is just as reliable for encoding traits as the repertoire of behaviors ascribed to the target; 2. can be just as accessible as the descriptive component for highly evaluative traits; 3. is very powerful in structuring mental representations of persons; 4. is more highly activated in social contexts, especially in workevaluation situations, and 5. is more discriminative than the descriptive component in immediate appraisals of persons.
this paper was presented at the Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC)-World Bank Institute Conference on &quot;Decentralization and the Making of Sub-national Policy&quot; at Bangalore on May 25, 1999.
This paper presents a general-equilibrium model where human capital investment increases specialization and exposes skilled workers to region-specific earnings risk. Interjurisdictional mobility of skilled labor mitigates these risks; state-contingent migration of skilled labor also improves efficiency. With perfect capital markets, labor-market integration raises welfare and reduces ex post earnings inequality. If instead human capital investment can only be financed through local taxes, labor-market integration leads to interjurisdictional fiscal competition, shifting the burden of taxation to low-skilled immobile workers. Decentralized public provision of human capital investment creates earnings inequalities and is inefficient. (JEL H00)
In their study of Chicago school reform, the authors discovered that the principals of productive elementary schools skillfully use a number of strategies to promote the efforts of both parents and teachers who work directly with children. EIGHT YEARS of research on Chicago school reform show that local control has facilitated significant improvements in student achievement in a large proportion of elementary schools. It is also clear that, under Chicago's decentralization plan, the quality of the principal's leadership is a critical factor in determining whether a school moves forward to improve learning opportunities for students. Evidence comes from investigations carried out by the Consortium on Chicago School Research, including surveys of teachers, principals, local leaders, and students, as well as in-depth case studies of dozens of schools.1 Previous longitudinal analyses of standardized test scores had produced an estimate of the value added to student learning by each elementary school and whether this measure had been improving.2 We have linked our data to these analyses and are now in a position to share what we have learned about successful principal leadership aimed at improving academic achievement. During the 1990s, Chicago witnessed gradual but consistent improvement in student test scores. In 1990, about a quarter of the students in grades 3 through 8 reached national norms in reading and mathematics. By 1999, this proportion had grown to 35% in reading and 43% in math. One-third of the elementary schools (most include eighth grade) raised the percentage of students reaching national norms in reading by at least 15%. Almost half of the schools showed an increase of between 5% and 14%.3 While far too many students still fail to reach national norms, this steady upward trend is encouraging. This same period saw the establishment of local control under the framework of the 1988 Chicago School Reform Act. The law created parent-dominated Local School Councils (LSCs) for each school and gave them the power to hire and fire their principals. Principals gained greater autonomy in selecting their staff, and they received new resources relative to the number of low-income students their school served. Eventually, elementary schools received an average of $500,000 a year, which could be used to finance improvements.4 In 1995, the state legislature handed control of the school system to the mayor, giving him the right to name a five-member school board and the chief executive officer of the system. With the extensive news coverage of the mayor's new team, most outsiders failed to realize that the 1995 reform left local control intact: LSCs were not affected, and neither were their formal authority or their resources.5 Key Elements of Principal Leadership in Productive Schools The underlying assumption behind the Chicago reform is that local actors, if given adequate authority and resources, will be able to solve local problems effectively. Along with granting this autonomy, the 1988 reform law dramatically reshaped the sanctions and incentives for principals. Instead of reporting to their central administration superiors, principals became locally accountable. They now work under four-year performance contracts subject to LSC review. Most important, when they successfully introduce improvements, local leaders recognize and appreciate their efforts. We found three common elements among principals of productive schools: their leadership style, their strategies, and the issues on which they focus. A central theme emerging from our research is that principals of improving Chicago elementary schools skillfully use a combination of support and pressure to promote the efforts of adults who work directly with children. Leadership Style Several features characterize the leadership style of principals of productive schools: an inclusive, facilitative orientation; an institutional focus on student learning; efficient management; and a reliance on a combination of pressure and support to motivate others. …
The study of maths curriculum in the last grades of secondary schools in France along 30 years brings to light important variations that took place since 1962 in the contents of calculus at this level. These evolutions concern the objects of calculus that are taught as well as the procedures used by students and teachers. The suggested methods affect the knowledge that students are likely to use when doing the given tasks; and we observe that since the 90ths', the tasks given to students do not valorise validation. We study the possibilities of establishing an real relationship to the knowledge in calculus, at this level of teaching, and to allow the students to build appropriate methods.<br />We study the question of validation in teaching analysis through the following directions:<br />- the mathematical theory; its organisation; the methods of proof and the formalization; how these methods can be introduced in the teaching, in a way that students can understand;<br />- the existence of fundamental situations concerning the concepts of function and limit, and the possibility of implement such situations in the class.<br /><br />Besides, the study of the different settings of representation that are at stake to build a suitable environment for the teaching of function and limit makes new potentialities come to light, particularly in the graphic and formal settings.<br />The experimentation is carried through the building of situations with an a-didactical component for the teaching of function and limit, and through the observation of their implementation in a scientific class of 17 years-old students. This makes us first question the knowledge and professional knowing a teacher uses to manage a teaching situation in analysis, with an a-didactical component, and then draw a pattern to the teacher's milieu.<br />We also submit a test to the students and analyse the results with statistic tools so as to test the main features of the learning.<br />In the last chapter we study lectures at undergraduate level, and student's papers with lots of errors about calculus definitions. This leads us to question the knowledge that is compulsory at University level; we wonder how it is possible to link it with Secondary school's knowledge and habits.<br />As a conclusion, we shall suggest some remarks about the balance between definitive knowledge and what students must get as an experience in the teaching of a new mathematical theory; this balance affects the possibilities of validation and finally, the future prospects of teaching analysis from Secondary Schools to University.
Active tax competition, in short, tends to produce either a generally low level of state–local tax effort or a state–local tax structure with strong regressive features . George Break (1967) The mobility of individual economic units among different localities places fairly narrow limits on the capacity for local income redistribution . Wallace Oates (1977) Policies that promote residential mobility and increase the knowledge of the consumer–voter will improve the allocation of government expenditures in the same sense that mobility among jobs and knowledge relevant to the location of industry and labor improve the allocation of private resources . Charles Tiebout (1956) If jurisdictions compete with each other and taxpayers/consumers are able to vote with their feet, there may be fairly strong pressures for subnational governments to respond to the wishes of the electorate . Charles McLure, Jr. (1986) Assignment of Government Functions and Mobility Assignment of Government Functions Issues of public finance appear in a new light when an economy is divided into several regions. If a state consists of many jurisdictions, the question arises of how to assign the various government activities to different governmental levels. The general functions of the government – to support an efficient allocation of scarce resources (where the private sector fails to do so) and to guarantee a fair income distribution – must first be divided into several components. Once a fundamental line of government policy is chosen, these functions must be assigned to the jurisdictions.
The China-US trade relation has been plagued by the threat of MFN revocation in the past 10 years. The recent passage of China WTO bill in US House of Representatives paves the way for eventually granting China the Normal Trade Relations (NTR, formerly MFN) status on a permanent basis. As a result, the annual review of China?s trading status in the US mandated by the 1974 Jackson-Vanik legislation will come to an end. However, as the ideological and political hostility between the two countries which has motivated the MFN debate still exists, the bilateral trade relation will continued to be haunted by similar threats, though may in different semantics and under different legal justifications. Using GTAP, this paper tries to assess the stakes of the US permanent NTR with China by simulating the MFN removal. Given the fact that 75% of US-China trade is handled by the Hong Kong traders, and textile and clothing accounts for a large portion of China and Hong Kong export to the US, this study focuses on how the Hong Kong?s re-export trade and the Multi-fibre Arrangement (MFA) will complicate the assessment. The US trade sanctions against China will seriously disrupt the bilateral trade and both countries will suffer substantial welfare loss. The trade sanctions will also devastate Hong Kong?s economy, as it serves as a middleman in the US-China trade and will be caught in crossfire. The trade conflict between the US and China will make the countries involved (US, China and Hong Kong) less integrated with rest of the world and others more integrated with the rest of the world. Thus, while the US, China and Hong Kong all suffer welfare losses, other countries all have welfare gains. The assessment of the impact of MFN removal on Hong Kong is made possible by the inclusion of the author?s work on Hong Kong?s re-export margins into GTAP database. Based on this work and the US tariff schedules, the author is able to estimate the effective tariff on Hong Kong?s services export to the US induced by the US trade sanctions against China. A scenario that does not consider the role of Hong Kong?s re-export in US-China trade will over-estimate the damage done to the US, as it ignores the expansion of Hong Kong?s exports of non-services sectors, which will lower the cost of the US import replacement. The US welfare loss is conditional on the existence of MFA. If the US unilaterally relaxes the MFA quota, it will reverse the welfare loss to welfare gain. This is in part because the MFA keeps the prices of the textile and clothing high and this gives the high potential of welfare gain from removing MFA on the US part alone. But if the MFN and the worldwide MFA are removed simultaneously, the US will suffer a welfare loss. In fact, the MFA is going to be phased out in 2005 under the Uruguay round agreement. Without MFA, this paper shows that the US sanctions against China will cause the US $2.9 billion loss. This will be the only outcome and the US will not have any options to buffer the damage. Thus, it is a wise move for the US to grant China the permanent NTR.
Bitcoin is the first digital medium to allow global, "purely peer-to-peer" exchange. At the height of the Great Recession, Bitcoin's pseudonymous creator introduced the electronic cash to sidestep political and economic institutions. Today, it is praised as an opportunity for the unbanked, a liberating force, and a pioneering technology. It is also infamously associated with volatility, illicit activities, and profligate energy consumption. Bitcoin has also flown under the radar of political science, whereas computer scientists, economists, and legal scholars have written extensively about it. To address the gap in the literature, I describe Bitcoin as an actor in global affairs, explain how Bitcoin and blockchain technology work, and discuss why Bitcoin is relevant to political science as the archetypal case of blockchain technology. I argue that Bitcoin is a form of contentious politics uniquely suited to the twenty-first century. Examining Bitcoin as a form of contentious politics sheds light on how a purportedly borderless technology has actually fared in subverting state authority: not entirely well. Nonetheless, Bitcoin has succeeded in at least two respects: it is an unprecedented form of untraceable electronic cash that coordinates unrivaled levels of computing resources from voluntary contributors and it has become a resilient, global social movement. As an archetype of blockchain technology, Bitcoin inspires research of blockchain's capacity to facilitate collective action, uses in international cooperation and competition, and prospects for human development. The thesis concludes with a set of implications for blockchain research and policy.
Guillém López i Casasnovas, Esther Martínez Garcia
The authors analyse the magnitude and composition of the fiscal imbalance between Catalonia and the Spanish Central government for 1995-1998, and its evolution since 1986. A flow approach is adopted, whereas the usual incidence hypothesis is followed in alloating tax revenues. The results show a rather stable net contribution of Catalonia to the Spanish Central government in 1998 of 1.3 trillion pesetas (8.37% of Catalan GDP). Calalonia participated in 19.60 % of Central government revenues, but received only 15.03% of expenditures. Catalan population is 15.5% of the Spanish total. Overall, in 1994 constant terms, the evolution of the per capita imbalance rises from 117,133 PTAs. in 1986, to 192,294 PTAs. in 1998. The authors also introduce an explicit way to deal with the effects of Central government budget deficits on fiscal revenues, in computing the financial distortions of the political and economic central role of Madrid, different tax compliance among regions, the impact of inflation differentials, and the evaluation of the social security flows on regional imbalances. In general, the authors favour an estimation of the amount of revenues at the disposal of Catalonia in order to finance its own expenditure, without the mediation of the Central government, but maintaining a single Spanish fiscal system. This approach may force the contribution of Catalonia as any other region to finance the joint expenditures of the Central government, and/or to finance its owm public sector, but in a rather more dear way. As a result, with regard to the financial decentralization system, territorial solidarity and social cohesion is enhanced, at the same time that autonomy and self-governance,
in a better way than it is today.
The Italian National Health Service was established in 1978 as three-tier system, involving State, Regions, USLs (Unità sanitarie locali, Local Health Care Units). The division between the responsibility of determining the general features of health care policy and financing it, on one side (the State), and that of managing services, on the order side (Regions and USLs), was bound to lead to increasing levels of expenditure and large financial deficits. An important reform has been carried out over the last five years, aiming toward a more decentralized system, which, although still public, were based on competition among suppliers and free choice for consumers. We argue that although the reform seems to have been successful in containing public expenditure, it has left some important issues still unresolved: the relationship between patients' freedom of choice and competition among providers, and the definition of a model of rationing the bundle of health services financed by the public sector.
As a self-financing organization, which did not expect project acquisition to increase in the near future, UNOPS had to keep its costs carefully in check. This could only be done with the full cooperation of all employees in the field, decentralized offices, and headquarters. As before, these employees would need to implement reforms in addition to their normal work. The proposed merger, the separation from UNDP, and the early stages of the reform process took attention away from improving staff-management relationships. As the reform progressed, the relationship between staff and management received more attention, in particular with regard to the self-financing principle. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
This Article argues that the restoration of a communitarian approach to taxation can help soften the widespread anti-tax sentiment that has engulfed the United States. It proposes and analyzes a concrete plan for the collection of revenue that taps into the same sense of shared community sacrifice that was invoked in fourteenth-century England. It proposes that the United States adopt a modernized, decentralized system of revenue collection modeled after the requisition, which was the chief means of raising revenue in the early American republic. Whereas the federal government currently collects approximately seventy percent of the nation's tax dollars, and the state and local governments collect the remaining thirty percent, this Article contemplates how the United States, and the individual states themselves, might differ if those numbers were reversed. The article begins by explaining why, due to the historical peculiarities of America's fiscal history, a decentralized approach to collecting revenues is not currently under consideration. Further, the article proposes a tax system in which the federal government would abolish the individual income tax, and discusses the likely effects of such a program on governmental spending by the states and on citizen mobility. The Article then explores the justifications for such an approach to taxation. The Article also consists of a utilitarian analysis of the costs and benefits of shifting to requisitions finance. Finally, the Article confronts the serious policy challenges that would arise if society were to implement requisitions finance, and ends with a discussion of several variations on the requisitions finance model that can address several of the communitarian and utilitarian criticisms.
The decentralization of state competency began with the use of the resource established in article 137 of the National Constitution of Venezuela, where the Congress of the Republic approved in 1989 the Organic Law of Decentralization as a strategy of the Venezuela state to propitiate political administrative, and management changes. This law opened the possibility for states to assume a number of areas of competence aimed at the development of the regions in as self-sustaining entities. This paper develops an analysis in reference to the determination of the reach of those policies of state decentralization in the area of higher education, and especially in the area of research in the university sector. There are decisions which refer to incidents in the politics of state decentralization at the regional level in financing priorities and pertinence of the scientific activity in the sector where it intervenes, as to its relationship with the social and productive surroundings, to the weaknesses and fortitudes of the universities in attending the increasing demands of the region, in the inherent aspects to their fundamental programs, and in other aspects that have appeared in the process of regional development management and decentralization.
Counterfeit products, especially in the pharmaceutical sector, have plagued the international community for decades. To combat this problem, many anti-counterfeiting approaches have been proposed. They use either Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) or Near Field Communication (NFC) physical tags affixed to the products. Current anti-counterfeiting approaches detect two counterfeiting attacks: (1) modifications to a product's tag details, such as changing the expiration date; and (2) cloning of a genuine product's details to reuse on counterfeit products. In addition, these anti-counterfeiting approaches track-and-trace the physical locations of products as the products flow through supply chains. Existing approaches suffer from two main drawbacks. They cannot detect tag reapplication attacks, wherein a counterfeiter removes a legitimate tag from a genuine product and reapplies it to a counterfeit or expired product. Second, most existing approaches typically rely on a central server to authenticate products. This is not scalable and creates tremendous processing burden on the server, since significant volumes of products flood through the supply chain's nodes. In addition, centralized supply chains require substantial data storage to store authentication records for all products. Moreover, as with centralized systems, traditional supply chains inherently have the problem of a single-point of failure. The thesis of this dissertation is that a robust, scalable, counterfeiting-resistant supply chain that addresses the above drawbacks and can be simultaneously achieved by (i) using a combination of NFC tags on products and a distributed ledger such as blockchain for reapplication-proof, decentralized, and transparent product authentication (ii) a novel game-theoretical consensus protocol for enforcing true decentralization, and enhancing the protocol's security and performance. In this dissertation, we first propose a new Tag Reapplication Detection (TRD) system to detect reapplication attacks using low-cost NFC tags and public key cryptography. To detect reapplication attacks, TRD tracks the number of times a tag has been read in the supply chain using a 'central' authentication server. Second, leveraging the blockchain technology, we propose the Block-Supply Chain, a transformation of TRD into a decentralized supply chain. In this chain, each node maintains a blockchain (distributed public ledger) per product. This blockchain comprises chained blocks, where each is an authentication event. The Block-Supply Chain can detect tag reapplication attacks and can replace the centralized supply chain design, thus overcoming the centralization issues. One of the fundamental characteristics of blockchain technology is the consensus protocol. Consensus protocols ensure that all nodes in the blockchain network agree on the validity of a
The studies collected in this chapter are emblematic of the wider universe of non-binding instruments, illustrating the flexibility in substantive content and procedural context that is a principal hallmark of non-binding undertakings.Taken as a group, the studies reveal cleavages characteristic of the legal and policy dynamics surrounding non-binding instruments, as they vary in: (l) choice of non-binding rather than binding format; (2) institutional setting; (3) relationship to binding international law; (4) identity of norm-creating entities; (5) identity of parties addressed; (6) processes for adoption and implementation; (7) impact on domestic policy and law: and (8) the role of the public in norm formulation, implementation, and compliance.Beth Simmons' analysis highlights many attributes of a 'classical' or 'traditional' non-binding vehicle, to the extent such a model can be identified among the extraordinarily diverse examples assembled in this volume.Her study consequently is useful as a benchmark, providing a reference point against which the others can be compared.The Forty Recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) are a policy response to an archetypal collective action problem: how to overcome the incentives inherent in the decentralized and consent-based international system, which often rewards holdouts, scofflaws, free riders, and laggards.As described by Professor Simmons, the efforts of the United States to encourage or, indeed, leverage higher standards of performance on the part of other states-to 'harmonize up' -was a principal motivating factor explaining the nature of the FATF's activities generally and the Forty Recommendations in particular.Professor Simmons identifies characteristics frequently cited as benefits of a non-binding approach, which might be described as the 'choice of instrument' question.The commitment of states other than the United States is described as tentative or equivocal.In such a context, states might commit to binding obligations only of a modest character, if at all, while a non-binding 'soft' instrument can allow them to gain experience with more ambitious, aspirational goals in a less risky milieu.non-binding instruments also may be appropriate for circumstances in which consensus is elusive or illusory.Thus, they may be attractive alternatives to an inertial downward spiral towards the 'least common denominator' characteristic of many multilateral efforts.For these reasons, among others, non-binding instruments are often phrased, as