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.     

企业战略管理风险评价指标体系的构建与Fuzzy属性测度模型

企业战略风险管理是企业管理的核心问题之一。战略风险的测度与评判是管理者跟踪经营过程，实施动态控制，进行科学管理的前提。建立关于战略风险测评的属性测度模型并将其应用于实际，可为风险管理的量化决策提供一种可供选择的易于操作的方法。     

对我国现时夫妻财产制度的探讨

夫妻财产制度，是有关夫妻财产的使用、归属、管理、收益，以及夫妻债务的清偿，夫妻家庭生活等费用的负担，婚姻终止时夫妻财产的清算和分割等的法律制度。夫妻财产制度是夫妻婚姻家庭生活得以正常运转的物质保证，因而它的完善关系到夫妻财产关系平等与否，关系到与夫妻发生交易的第三人的利益安全问题，关系到社会经济的发展问题。     

Valuation of ecosystem services provided by irrigated rice agriculture in Thailand: a choice experiment considering attribute nonattendance

This research investigates how the public of a middle‐income country, Thailand, values ecosystem services associated with irrigated rice agriculture using a choice experiment. The results show a significant willingness to pay for services such as drought mitigation, water quality and the environment and maintenance of rural lifestyles and rice landscapes. The iterative procedure developed to fully analyze the incidence of attribute nonattendance (ANA) improved the model fit when compared with a multinomial logit model or an ANA model with potentially only one attribute ignored at a time (ANA‐1). Moreover, the inferred probability of the class of respondents having attended all attributes was 45%, compared to 9% with ANA‐1 model. However, it also suggests that 55% of the respondents made their choices by considering only two of the five attributes. Finally, this research also suggests that failing to consider ANA does not change the public ranking of scenarios contrasted by the services they would provide but would overestimate the WTP for these scenarios.     

Test for the real option in consumer behavior

Consumers become indecisive when facing too many choices. Economic analysis suggests that when a decision involves uncertain outcome, can be delayed and is irreversible, there will be a real option in the cost–benefit analysis. For example, the option to keep alive a consumer's purchasing decision has a significant value. It allows the consumer to take advantage of any future advantageous deals while avoiding the bad choices. This renders the consumer more hesitant. When a consumer decides to exercise his buying decision, he demands a compensation for the loss of this option. Hence, the benefits of a purchase must be over and above its costs by a wide margin (the option value). Data from a survey at a Turkish university on hypothetical purchase decisions confirmed the existence of this real option. We conclude with marketing policy recommendations and future research directions. Connection to the Prospect Theory is briefly explored.Note: Although the 3rd person singular pronoun he/his was used throughout to describe the consumer, he was intended to be gender-neutral.     

属性层次模型在课程负责人选聘中的应用

在高校众多的课程模块中，要充分调动、整合教学资源形成专业化的团队，科学地选拔课程负责人显得尤为重要。文章利用交叉学科的优势，通过属性层次模型（AHM）建立一个课程负责人的选聘评价体系，把以往对课程负责人定性的问题定量化．为课程负责人的选聘提供一种科学而且易于操作的方法。     

Attribute Identities Matter: Subjective Perceptions of Attribute Characteristics

Recent research indicates that attributes vary along multiple dimensions with implications for how trade-offs are resolved during choice. We present an exploratory study of the dimensionality underlying naïve subjects ratings of attributes on the characteristics commonly discussed in the literature on tradeoff resolution and decision difficulty. Factor analysis of attribute characteristic assessments indicates that subjects view decision attributes in a multi-dimensional fashion, including an importance/loss aversion dimension, an emotional potential/protection from tradeoffs dimension, and a cognitive difficulty dimension. These results suggest that a one-dimensional measure of attribute characteristics, such as a standard attribute importance rating, may obscure some factors determining individual responses to attributes during decision processing. However, the results also suggest that developing a relatively succinct set of scales in order to characterize the dimensions along with subjects response to attributes is a viable goal for future research.     

The influence of activity importance and similarity on perception of recreation substitutes

Abstract

This study examines how substitutes are selected for a fly‐angling and camping recreation activity. Results show that although people choose substitutes similar to their intended activity, the degree of similarity between substitute and original is unrelated to perceived quality of substitute. Also, both the quality of a substitute and the number of available substitutes are inversely related to the importance of an activity's attributes. The lack of a relationship between activity/substitute similarity and quality of the substitute poses problems for application of the substitutability concept.     

A comparison of ranking,rating and reservation price measurement in conjoint analysis

This paper empirically compares the traditional preference measures of ranking and rating in conjoint analysis with a direct monetary measure of product value — reservation prices. Experimental results are as expected. While reservation prices do very well in terms of fit, they are inferior in terms of predicting choice on a holdout sample. In addition, surprisingly little difference is found in the performance of ranks and ratings.     

Investment in private water development: Property rights and contractual opportunism during the California Gold Rush

This paper explores the development of water supplies by private ditch companies during the California Gold Rush. Using data taken from newspaper stories, mining camp by-laws, and state Supreme Court and district court cases, the paper documents the presence of institutional conditions that were unfavorable to support private water investments including property rights uncertainty, imperfect capital markets, and significant contractual enforcement costs that may have provided opportunities for contractual holdup by miners. Some evidence suggests that water development was likely discouraged to some extent. Nevertheless, the larger response was a major expansion in water supplies through an extensive ditch system, suggesting that there were factors that limited the ability of miners to capture rents, including various ditch company strategies to limit their exposure to opportunistic behavior and recognition by miners of their reliance on ditch companies.