Bricks and Behavior: The Repair and Maintenance Costs of Housing for Persons with Mental Illness

Comprehensive data on 153 properties offering independent living for persons with mental illness are used to examine the effects on repair and maintenance (RM) costs of building quality, neighborhood quality, building size, proportion of tenants with mental illness, and management experience with mentally ill tenants. We find an inverted U-shaped relationship between the proportion of mentally ill tenants in a building and its RM costs, which suggests favorable behavioral effects on mentally ill tenants of living in the same building with others who are mentally ill. We also find amenity features are associated with higher RM costs in properties where more tenants are mentally ill.     

Optimal abatement of sulphur emissions in Europe

This study presents a mathematical model for determining cost-effective emissions' control strategies in Europe, by minimizing sulphur abatement costs subject to different pollution control targets. The purpose is to compare the efficiency of a uniform percentage emissions reduction with a scenario that takes variation in environmental conditions into account. Underlying the proposed model is the belief that a full cost-benefit analysis of acid rain abatement is infeasible. The model focuses on the costs of abatement and provides an estimation of the gains (or losses) that countries could achieve if they co-operate in their policies rather than act independently.     

An empirical test of the job satisfaction-turnover relationship: Assessing the role of job performance for retail managers

The role of job performance in the turnover process has been a problematic issue for researchers and managers alike. The present study provides a preliminary test of two key predictions derived from a conceptual model refining the role of job performance as a direct impact on turnover, and a moderator of the job satisfaction-turnover relationship. The results support differing roles for intrinsic and extrinsic satisfaction components in their relationship with turnover for retail store managers performing at low, average and high levels.     

POVERTY AND INCOME INEQUALITY IN LATIN AMERICA DURING THE 1980s

On average, poverty and income inequality increased in Latin America during the 1980s. Forty-six percent of the increase in poverty took place in the cities of Brazil alone, though part of this reflects the migration of poor rural inhabitants to urban areas. There is strong evidence that both income inequality and poverty mirrored the economic cycle, rising during recession and falling during recovery. Economies that grew (e.g. Colombia, Costa Rica) performed better with respect to poverty and income inequality than those that stagnated. In particular, countries that failed to stabilize effectively (e.g. Brazil, Peru) experienced substantial increases in poverty. Educational attainment has the greatest correlation with both income inequality and the probability of being poor. From a policy standpoint, there is a clear association between the provision of education, lessening of income inequality, and poverty reduction.     

Public and Private Management: What’s the Difference?

Critics of New Public Management argue that differences between public and private organizations are so great that business practices should not be transferred to the public sector. In this paper the theoretical arguments on the differences between private firms and public agencies are reviewed, and 13 hypotheses are identified on the impact of publicness on organizational environments, goals, structures and managerial values. Evidence from 34 empirical studies of differences between public agencies and private firms is critically evaluated. Only three of the publicness hypotheses are supported by a majority of the empirical studies: public organizations are more bureaucratic, and public managers are less materialistic and have weaker organizational commitment than their private sector counterparts. However, most of the statistical evidence is derived from studies that use narrow measures of publicness and fail to control for other relevant explanatory variables. Whether the existing evidence understates or overstates the distinctiveness of public agencies is therefore unclear. A research agenda and methods are identified for better comparisons of management in public and private organizations.     

The Impact of New Zealand's Public Sector Accounting Reforms on Performance Control in Museums

Accounting by most New Zealand museums was subject to public sector reforms requiring private sector -style financial reporting, and service performance reporting. This study into the impact of the reforms on how museum managements pursue successful performance found museums adopting a more accounting-oriented approach to planning and evaluation. Service performance reporting has facilitated the periodic evaluation of non-financial targets by managements, but as currently constituted the reporting model is flawed, particularly in its implications for essential long-term resource capacity of museums. This threatens its effectiveness for promoting good performance. Non-accounting based professional practices also have a role in museum success.     

Strategic planning for technology products

A DELPHI Questionnaire study was completed that evaluates the relative importance of management of technology (MOT) problems and ranks 24 problems in order of importance, as perceived by MOT expert participants in industry and academia. The problem of 'Strategic Planning for Technology Products' ranked well above all others in terms of its evaluated importance. A follow‐up DELPHI study was completed to clarify the nature and dimensions of the top problem. This second study identifies the 21 top ranked sub‐problems within the Strategic Planning for Technology Products general problem and ranks these sub‐problems in order of importance. The two most important of these sub‐problems are 'Linking Technology Strategic Planning to Corporate Strategic Planning', and 'Linking R&D Strategic Planning to Business Unit Product Development Planning'. Seen as closely related, these two problems are discussed in this article as 'the linkage problem'. The 11 highest ranked problems of this second study are considered individually in this article. This follow‐up study has important implications for both academic researchers and company managers. For researchers the results suggest specific avenues of research that can fruitfully be followed. For technology managers as well as corporate managers the study offers strong indications of areas where company planning performance may be weak, as well as steps that can be taken to deal with any planning weaknesses perceived.     

Aid Disaggregation and the Public Sector in Aid-Recipient Economies: Some Evidence from Cote D'Ivoire

The present paper examines the impact of different aid types, namely project aid, program aid, technical assistance, and food aid on the fiscal sector of the aid‐recipient economy by using time‐series data for Côte d’Ivoire over the period 1975–99. Our empirical results show that when a single value (or aggregated) for aid is used, foreign aid is fully consumed in the case of Côte d’Ivoire. However, results obtained under the assumption of aid heterogeneity clearly suggest that the government responds differently according to the nature of the aid inflows. Our approach tries to illuminate the response of the aid‐recipient government to different categories of foreign aid inflows and the empirical findings clearly demonstrate the importance of the aid disaggregation approach for delving deeper into aid effectiveness issues.