Allocation of research grants to university research proposals

In this paper we examine the optimal allocation of research money to incoming research proposals in a university environment. Since a university has no obvious objective to maximize when allocating research money, but rather has several, possibly conflicting, goals it would like to achieve, the method of goal programming is proposed as a solution technique, and the meaning and estimation of the priority weights in the resulting objective function in the goal programming problem, with regard to tradeoffs between goals, are discussed thoroughly. Finally, calculations based upon hypothetical sample data re presented in order to test the sensitivity of the model to different sets of priority weights.     

The State of Public Sector Unionism: Challenges and Opportunities

The face of unionism in the United States is becoming increasingly public sector. On the surface, public sector unionism appears as a bright spot for labor. A more careful examination of the data, however, reveals that such unionism is at a standstill. Absolute growth has been insufficient to offset losses in private industry, and it is largely tied to increases in public employment. Public employee unions face numerous serious challenges, and questions have been raised in the federal service about the very legitimacy of union representation. Future scenarios suggest that public sector unionism as a whole will likely remain in a more or less stagnant position.     

Cooperation between agroindustry and the UN

This article provides a current assessment of cooperation between business and the UN system in agricultural development.The authors describe the experience, needs, and attitudes of UN agencies and a representative sample of the agroindustry firms in order to increase understanding between the two diverse sets of resources and to better define areas of mutual interest and effective cooperation.They suggest specific new initiatives for business and UN cooperation in agricultural development, to help interested parties to translate mutual economic goals and rhetorical good will into results and concrete cooperative projects.