Performance Measurement in Government Service Provision: The Case of Police Services in New South Wales

The NSW Government is implementing a financial framework which is designed to encourage government service providers to become more efficient and effective. NSW Treasury is using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to measure the efficiency of major government service providers, such as police, courts and hospitals. This paper outlines the progress in implementing the new financial framework and illustrates the way NSW Treasury will use DEA to help improve the efficiency of government service providers by describing an analysis of the NSW Police Service. The results suggest that NSW police patrols (local police districts) could, on average, reduce input usage by 13.5 percent through better management, and by 6 percent if the patrols could be restructured to achieve the optimal scale. Results also indicate that differences in operating environments, such as location and socioeconomic factors, do not have a significant influence upon the efficiency of police patrols.     

Athleticism and the reproduction of gender and ethnic marginality

Our paper explores the construction of ethnic and gender identities through sport and physical education, arguing that the social attitudes of women and members of ethnic minorities to sport helps to define their marginal position in society. We analyse the literature with respect to ethnicity, gender and sport within the framework of recent ethnographic research, and show how gender and ethnic factors markedly affect attitudes to sport. The wider implications of these attitudes are examined and related to work, unemployment and marginal social status. Attitudes to sport are seen to be significant in establishing attitudes to leisure as a whole, which is discussed in terms of social reproduction and the state. We extend the notion of marginality to take account of the importance of leisure behaviour in explaining and justifying the status of women and ethnic minorities in society.     

International Benchmarking for Monopoly Price Regulation: The Case of Australian Gas Distribution

Price-cap regulation is widely applied to network industries. However, regulators often encounter the problem of asymmetric information on efficient costs. Benchmarking can help reduce this problem. We present a benchmarking analysis, conducted for an Australian regulator, that derives measures of efficiency for Australian gas distributors relative to U.S. counterparts. Several techniques, such as data envelopment analysis and stochastic frontier analysis, are used to ensure that our measures are robust to methodology choice. We conclude with a discussion of how the regulator used the benchmarking results, along with other information, to help it determine appropriate price caps.     

von Neumann/Morgenstrn Decision Making and Harsanyi's Theory of Justice: After Rawls and Nozick If It Risks Personal Freedom and Individual Liberty,Can It Be Really Just?

Abstract . John C. Harsanyi has developed a theory of justice based on the von Neumann-Morgenstern (vN-M) theory of decision making under uncertainty. Instead of applying the vN-M theory strictly, however, Harsanyi proposes to modify his approach so as to exclude decisions which seem to be the result of rashness, strong excitement and other circumstances which might hinder rational choice. The result is a theory of justice which is internally inconsistent and potentially hostile to liberty and individual freedom.     

Why Do Earnings Fall with Job Displacement?

Displaced workers experience reduced earnings for many years. While this empirical phenomenon is well established, the theory of displacement‐induced earnings loss is scattered. Policy discussion often interprets displacement‐induced losses through the lens of specific human capital theory but there are other credible theories with different causal mechanisms and different interpretations. This paper reviews theories of costly job displacement and discusses their consistency with the available empirical evidence for the United States. We find that specific human capital theory and matching theory have considerable but far from conclusive empirical support. We suggest avenues for better discriminating among theories.     

The Client as a Source of Institutional Conformity for Commitments to Core Values in the Auditing Profession*

Based on an analysis of questionnaire data from a large sample of certified auditors, we examine how the main type of client being served influences auditor conformity to the core values of their profession. We contrast auditors of (primarily) listed companies with auditors of (primarily) single member companies, that is, limited liability companies with a single owner who typically is also the only employee of the company. We show that these two groups of auditors differ in the extent to which they hold certain values important (i.e., show compliance) and in the closeness with which these values are held within each group of auditors (i.e., show convergence). Our results also demonstrate that the type of client predominantly served by an auditor is relevant for explaining variation in professional values both within and between organizational contexts. In addition, we offer a new theoretical approach to classifying auditors and analyzing their commitment to core values of the profession. We analyze commitment to values via both compliance and convergence, two often overlooked aspects of conformity to value commitments in professions.     

Long-term cost-effectiveness of home versus clinic-based management of chronic heart failure: the WHICH? study

Background: The cost-effectiveness of a heart failure management intervention can be further informed by incorporating the expected benefits and costs of future survival.

Methods: This study compared the long-term costs per quality-adjusted life year (QALY) gained from home-based (HBI) vs specialist clinic-based intervention (CBI) among elderly patients (mean age = 71 years) with heart failure discharged home (mean intervention duration = 12 months). Cost-utility analysis was conducted from a government-funded health system perspective. A Markov cohort model was used to simulate disease progression over 15 years based on initial data from a randomized clinical trial (the WHICH? study). Time-dependent hazard functions were modeled using the Weibull function, and this was compared against an alternative model where the hazard was assumed to be constant over time. Deterministic and probabilistic sensitivity analyses were conducted to identify the key drivers of cost-effectiveness and quantify uncertainty in the results.

Results: During the trial, mortality was the highest within 30 days of discharge and decreased thereafter in both groups, although the declining rate of mortality was slower in CBI than HBI. At 15 years (extrapolated), HBI was associated with slightly better health outcomes (mean of 0.59 QALYs gained) and mean additional costs of AU$13,876 per patient. The incremental cost-utility ratio and the incremental net monetary benefit (vs CBI) were AU$23,352 per QALY gained and AU$15,835, respectively. The uncertainty was driven by variability in the costs and probabilities of readmissions. Probabilistic sensitivity analysis showed HBI had a 68% probability of being cost-effective at a willingness-to-pay threshold of AU$50,000 per QALY.

Conclusion: Compared with CBI (outpatient specialized HF clinic-based intervention), HBI (home-based predominantly, but not exclusively) could potentially be cost-effective over the long-term in elderly patients with heart failure at a willingness-to-pay threshold of AU$50,000/QALY, albeit with large uncertainty.     

Interest rate differentials on short-term securities and rational expectations of inflation

This paper tests a theorem to the effect that the difference in nominal interest rates between two securities of the same maturity but different risk is an increasing linear function of the expected rate of inflation. When inflation is modelled in a way which is rational in the sense of Muth, the evidence is highly consistent with the theorem's inferences. Estimates are also obtained of the real risk premiums that certain types of securities generate over the three-month treasury bill rate (which is assumed to be risk-free). These range from three basis points for three-month finance paper to 16 basis points for three-month Eurodollar deposits.