Expanding the repertoire of evaluation tools so that evaluation recommendations can assist nonprofits to enhance strategic planning and design of program operations

Data are the lifeblood of decision-making and provide a critical component into the complex mosaic from which decisions emerge. Evaluators and decision-makers should, therefore, continuously seek to explore the use of tools that can produce more meaningful, insightful, and useful data so that decision-making can be enhanced and improved. Traditional economic appraisal methods offer much and are very useful and relevant. Standard financial accounting reporting for tax purposes also provide insightful information on the organization’s financial health and that of its individual programs. However, neither offer insight into cost behavior—an important consideration for making program operations more efficient and for long-term strategic planning, forecasting, and design of program operations. Before COVID-19, programs were already challenged with competition for donor dollars and the pursuit for financial sustainability. The COVID-19 environment has considerably exacerbated these challenges. In this current environment, it is more important than ever for nonprofits to optimize limited financial resources to do more societal good. This paper will illustrate how selected concepts from cost and management accounting can be used by both independent program evaluators to improve their recommendations, as well as program administrators in-charge of nonprofits to enhance decision-making.     

Compliance costs caused by agency action? Empirical evidence and implications for tax compliance

Compliance costs of taxpayers should not only be affected by the tax law itself but also by its implementation through the tax authorities. In this paper we analyze the effect of authority behavior on the burden of complying with tax regulations. Using survey data of Belgian businesses, we develop an estimation strategy to overcome simultaneity bias by the construction of proxy variables. According to our estimate, a customer-unfriendly tax administration increases the average compliance burden by about 27%. Our outcome has interesting implications for further research. First of all, authority behavior does not only affect “soft” tax compliance factors like fairness and trust, but also “hard” aspects like costs. Second, the distribution of administrative cost burdens between the taxpayer side and the authorities may be important regarding the cost-efficiency of the tax system as a whole.     

基于交易人员的广东省交易费用测算：1993-2002

利用Wallis和Noah关于经济体交易活动和转换活动的划分，将所有的从业人员分成交易人员和转换人员，将职工工资作为交易费用和转换费用，测算了广东省1993—2002年的交易费用水平。结论表明：交易费用随着经济增长而增长，经济越发达，交易费用比重越大，交易费用的增长并不妨碍经济增长；随着经济的增长，转换人员的比重不断下降，单位转换人员的效率不断提高；不同行业交易费用的平均增长速度差异较大，交易服务部门特别是信息交易服务中介行业发展迅速，而传统的工农业等行业交易人员和交易费用增长缓慢。     

The Elderly Mentally Retarded

No abstract available for this article.     

Estimates of trade-related adjustment costs in Syria

The scope and complexity of international trading arrangements in the Middle East, as well as their spotty historical record of success, underscore the urgent need for an adequate understanding of the relative costs and benefits of participation in preferential trading arrangements and, more generally, of changes in the domestic import regimes. This paper seeks to address this problem by providing estimates of the adjustment costs associated with two broad classes of hypothetical trade policy scenarios for Syria: participation in the proposed EU-Syria Association Agreement, and border tax-related changes affecting the domestic import regime. We find that the revenue consequences of the first scenario are likely to be low if an appropriate stepwise implementation of the agreement can be ensured; our analysis of the second scenario suggests that all border taxes can be eliminated, and the number of tariff bands reduced, while ensuring revenue neutrality, if a VAT of a reasonable size is introduced.     

新医改后中国个人现金卫生支出的趋势分析

基于新医改中政府做出的投入承诺以及近十年的卫生总费用和相关经济数据,分析估算了2009—2012年中国个人现金卫生支出占卫生总费用的比例以及个人现金卫生支出占家庭可支配收入的比例的发展趋势。结果表明：短期内降低趋势比较明显,但要保证长期的降低趋势,不仅需要政府的持续投入,还需要社会支出的同期大力支持及尽快地完善收入分配制度。     

多资产下组成比例交易费用的投资消费最优策略

交易费用的存在使用最优投资消费策略问题非常复杂。当存在交易费用的时候,持续对股票进行交易将会导致交易费用无限增加。因此不能频繁进行股票交易。对只考虑两种资产的情况已经有较多的研究,但是对于多种资产的情况却没有引起人们的重视。本文对HARA效用函数下,有限期间和无限期间具有成比例交易费用的最优投资消费策略的价值函数的解析解进行了研究。在多种风险资产可以用来进行交易的情况下,利用价值函数的凹性和近似性,通过变量代换的方式,将HJB方程从偏微分方程(PDE)转化常微分方程(ODE),对价值函数进行求解,给出交易区解析解的形式和非交易区要满足的HJB方程。      

市场经济条件下的利润和伦理

在重义轻利的传统文化背景下建立市场主体追求利润最大化的社会主义市场经济体制本身就是个矛盾。这个矛盾是根本对立的还是可以调和的以及如何调和这个矛盾是文章试图阐述的问题。一方面市场经济的利润追求排斥了伦理、导致了道德风险;另一方面伦理的存在减轻了市场上的交易成本,因此寻求利润和伦理的和谐是市场经济的发展路径。     

Application of the Kindling Hypothesis to the Long-Term Effects of Racism

Abstract

This theoretical article proposes that the kindling hypothesis has significant potential impact in the conceptualization of the global impact of racism over time in the lives of black Americans. The kindling hypothesis describes how repeated shocks within the brain can trigger seizure activity. This same phenomenon has been applied to mental health in the areas of affective disorders and psychological trauma. In these circumstances, repeated minor traumas occurring over time are theorized to trigger clinical threshold depression and trauma.