Lessons from the PB Selayang Land consolidation project in Medan, Indonesia

The National Land Agency (BPN) carried out the PB Selayang Land Consolidation (LC) Project on 79 ha of urban fringe land in Medan from 1986 to 1990 as a pilot project for North Sumatra Province. Although it did not include the construction of the network infrastructure, the project provided valuable benefits and lessons. It demonstrated the feasibility of the LC technique in the Medan context, including the preparation of the needed land parcel map of the site and the 90% landowner support for the project. It created a planned layout of roads and public facility sites and reshaped land parcels with the public lands in government ownership and the private land parcels with registered titles. It also provided lessons to guide the future use of LC in Medan and for all urban LC projects by BPN, including the need to incorporate the construction of the network infrastructure in each project, the desirability of undertaking the projects as joint BPN/ municipal government projects, and the need to make each project self-financing by the sale of some of the new parcels/plots to recover the project costs.     

Implications of formal grammars for accounting policy development

The problems of accounting policy formulation are approached using the methods of formal language theory. The use of a formal grammar makes it possible to provide a clearer logical basis for the arguments for and against particular pronouncements of the FASB in three areas: possibility, consistency and resolution of accounting principles. Two examples are presented that suggest ways in which many different questions of accounting policy can be raised and answered. A linguistic framework for classifying accounting pronouncements is presented. Accounting as a formal language is evaluated together with speculation on the implications for accounting policy development.     

Supplier-managed inventory: schedule sharing

Supplier-managed inventory (SMI) is a methodology that provides a true win-win partnership between customers and suppliers. SMI supports flexibility for the customer to change schedules and flexibility to the supplier to decide when and how much to ship. All this is accomplished via electronic data interchange (EDI), which communicates the customer's gross requirements, inventory, and desired minimum/maximum inventory levels.     

Demographic variables in demand systems: The case for generality

This paper provides evidence in favour of greater generality in the demographic demand literature. We propose two demographic demand procedures. One extends the Gorman model by allowing non additive interaction between overheads and Barten scaling. The other extends Price Scaling, by allowing the equivalence scale to vary with utility, and offers a test of Equivalence Scale Exactness (ESE). The rejection of ESE is robust to the assumed demand functional forms (RNLPS, QAIDS), to items chosen, and the estimation method (MLE, GMM). The results show that published cell averages yield well determined estimates of the demographic generalisation parameters.This paper was written during my visit to the UBC in Vancouver, Canada in 1992/93. I am grateful to two anonymous referees for their helpful remarks on an earlier version. The disclaimer applies.     

A Comparison of HMO Efficiencies as a Function of Provider Autonomy

Current debates in the insurance and public policy literatures over health care financing and cost control measures continue to focus on managed care and HMOs. The lower utilization rates found in HMOs (compared to traditional fee‐for‐service indemnity plans) have generally been attributed to the organization's incentive to eliminate all unnecessary medical services. As a consequence HMOs are often considered to be a more efficient arrangement for delivering health care. However, it is important to make a distinction between utilization and efficiency (the ratio of outcomes to resources). Few studies have investigated the effect that HMO arrangements would have on the actual efficiency of health care delivery. Because greater control over provider autonomy appears to be a recurrent theme in the literature on reform, it is important to investigate the effects these restrictions have already had within the HMO market. In this article, the efficiencies of two major classes of HMO arrangements are compared using “game‐theoretic” data envelopment analysis (DEA) models. While other studies confirm that absolute costs to insurance firms and sponsoring companies are lowered using HMOs, our empirical findings suggest that, within this framework, efficiency generally becomes worse when provider autonomy is restricted. This should give new fuel to the insurance companies providing fee‐for‐service (FFS) indemnification plans in their marketplace contentions.     

A Comparison of Income and Expenditure Inequality Estimates: The Australian Evidence, 1975–76 to 1993–94

Using Australian unit record data this paper compares income and expenditure inequalities over the period 1975–76 to 1993–94. The study finds inconsistencies between the two inequality movements over much of this period. We also observe differences in the nature of income and consumption disparities. Both approaches show that the 'within group' inequality dominates the 'between group' component when the population is divided into household types. The inequality estimates are sensitive to the equivalence scale used as the household size deflator but not to the cost of living index used as the price deflator.