Current Practices and Issues in Capital Budgeting and Reporting

Budgeting and accounting professionals, as well as other interested parties, are currently examining ways to improve governmental capital budgeting and reporting. Although progress has been made, major policy issues are still being analyzed and debated. This article provides an overview of current practices and the major policy issues that are being addressed. The discussion incorporates related ideas and observations made by Jesse Burkhead four decades ago. The author concludes that many of Burkhead's insights in the area of capital budgeting and reporting are still relevant and useful today.     

苏联为何、如何亡党亡国--苏联社会矛盾和叶利钦搞垮苏联的步骤

苏联灭亡的一条根本原因是苏联自 １９３６年宣布建成社会主义时起就存在三大矛盾并且日益发展，而苏共领导一直未能正确认识和解决这些矛盾。叶利钦分三步当上了俄罗斯总统，利用苏联社会的三大矛盾，先后逼死了苏共，搞垮了苏联。     

How Do Nonprofits Respond to Regulatory Thresholds: Evidence From New York's Audit Requirements

Nonprofits in the United States must comply with various state and federal regulations to maintain their tax‐exempt status. Despite persistent calls to increase accountability in the nonprofit sector, there is little research examining the burden imposed by existing regulatory requirements, especially at the state level. This paper uses a bunching design to estimate the avoidance behavior exhibited by tax‐exempt charities in response to New York State's audit requirements. There is clear evidence of bunching in response to the requirement that nonprofits above certain revenue thresholds file financial statements reviewed by or audited by an independent certified public accountant. Measuring the extent of bunching around the revenue notches yields estimates of the average revenue that nonprofits either forego or fail to report in avoidance of the requirements. Results from dynamic estimation show that charities near the threshold for a review engagement report approximately $1,300 less revenue than otherwise predicted by a counterfactual; charities near the threshold for a full audit report approximately $1,400 less. The results have implications for the optimal design of state‐level financial regulations.     

How and Why Bureaucrats Control their Governance Structure

This article assumes that bureaucrats, like other actors, follow their interests. However, it is also recognized that bureaucrats in political environments face a multilevel game situation with unstable property rights, where priorities between institutional position and more pecuniary goods, e.g. budget maximization, especially in reform situations have to be made. Thus, bureaucrats realize that in order to obtain the latter, the precondition is a secured institutional position and that this position has to be obtained through a bargaining process involving transaction costs, externally due to negotiations with the political principals, and internally through union organization. Empirically, the phenomenon it examined in the case of the Danish day care system which went through a reform period during the late eighties and early nineties. It suggests that although demand for day care rose significantly during this period, day care workers (and their unions) worked for – and succeeded in – securing their institutional position.     

Jones' Paradigm: The How,Why, and Wherefore of Scientific Intelligence

Scientific intelligence was coined during World War II, yet despite its age and relative importance it has not received the attention it should have. This is surprising given the recent and growing interest in WMD programmes. This article sets out the main components of scientific intelligence, seeking to explore how scientific intelligence has been defined, how it operates, and contemplates the key issues involved. In doing so it aims to set an agenda for future research into this crucial area.     

Why New Labour Wants the Euro

This article argues that membership of the single European currency would provide New Labour with a means of enhancing its rules-based and depoliticised approach to macroeconomic policy management. The move would enable the government to strengthen its anti-inflationary credibility and to impose further competitive discipline on business and labour, while at the same time also enabling it to increase its governing autonomy by placing core areas of economic policy outside the sphere of democratic control. Despite these advantages, however, formidable obstacles, most notably a high level of public antipathy towards the project, mean that New Labour's euro-vision is unlikely to be realised.     

How and Why Liberal and Representative Politics Emerged in India

How did liberal, representative politics take root in India during the first phase after independence? An adequate explanation must consider certain aspects of Hindu culture and Indian social structure, the distinctive character of British rule and the formidable Indian response to it. It must also assess the role of formal political institutions, which the British had created and the Indians adapted, and relations between Indian nationalists and key indigenous elites both before and after independence. Most important was the landowning elite that dominated the socioeconomic order in rural areas, where most Indians lived. Central to this story was the organization or 'machine' of the Indian National Congress, which integrated the two main sources of order in India - the institutions of state and the agrarian socioeconomic order - as well as the various regions and levels within the political system.     

马克思《资本论》为什么以对商品的分析为开篇?

马克思《资本论》是以对商品的分析为开篇的,而在作为《资本论》手稿的《1857—1858年经济学手稿》中,马克思则是以"货币章"为开篇的。马克思在《资本论》中之所以从对商品的分析开始,既是因为商品概念是马克思《资本论》唯一可能的开端范畴,而对商品的分析亦是《资本论》唯一可能的开篇之章,也是因为"商品章"作为《资本论》的开篇之章所具有的"外部性",使得《资本论》的整体文本结构与文本逻辑得以按照从抽象上升到具体的顺序展开。     

论构建和谐社会对社会保障的新要求

构建社会主义和谐社会,对现阶段我国社会保障制度的发展与目标提出了新要求。适应和谐社会的新要求,从当前和今后一个时期看,我们必须坚持以人为本的科学发展观,促进社会结构合理,协调各阶层利益,完善弱势群体的社会保障;以公平公正为宗旨,关注新兴阶层与特殊群体,创新社会保障体制;以“安定有序”为目标,防范社会生活重大风险,建立新型的、综合性的社会保障救助制度;体现“生活质量”原则,重视微观上公民心理的“和谐社会”的构建,促进社会福利保障制度的发展。     

A Report On Reporting: Why Peers Report Integrity and Law Violations in Public Organizations

The archives of three bureaus of integrity are analyzed in order to study the reasons for reporting integrity and law violations within public organizations. Peer reporting accounts for only a small percentage of cases; most investigations originate from routine and continuous institutional controls. What are the reasons peers choose to report or not report? A sense of justice is most important, followed by self‐protection and protection of the wrongdoer. The most important reason against coming forward is the reporter’s fear of negative consequences. One surprising rationale for not reporting is that an individual feels responsible for the wrongdoer’s punishment. Six propositions are elicited from this research as well as specific pragmatic recommendations for management procedures to improve reporting of integrity and/or law violations.     

人力资本投资与社会主义新农村建设

培养造就有文化、懂技术、会经营的新型农民是建设社会主义新农村,促进农村社会发展的关键。从总体上看,目前我国农村劳动力的知识技能不能满足改造传统农业、发展现代农业的需要,与全面建设小康社会、实现和谐社会的目标不相适应。大力进行农村人力资本投资,增加农村人力资本存量,全面提高农民的科学文化水平既是建设社会主义新农村的迫切要求,也是构建农村和谐社会的有机组成部分。     

Asset holdings of the newly disabled: findings from the New Beneficiary Survey

About 3 out of 4 new disabled-worker beneficiaries or their spouses owned some type of financial asset in 1982, but the median value of these assets was quite small, according to data obtained by the Social Security Administration in its New Beneficiary Survey. A smaller majority reported owning their own homes, and home equity accounted for most of the reported wealth. Barely a tenth reported that they owned farms, businesses, or commercial property. Differences in age and marital status within the newly disabled population were associated with large differences in asset holdings. Married couples and older disabled workers generally were more likely to own each kind of asset, and generally reported higher values for these assets. Older married men--the largest subgroup among the disabled--are also relatively well-off, though their median asset portfolios were worth only +3,600 when home equity was excluded. Younger single men, the third largest subgroup, reported median total assets worth less than +50, however home equity was treated. The asset ownership rates and median values reported by the new disabled-worker beneficiaries are much lower for every type of asset considered than the rates and values reported by a comparable sample of new retired-worker beneficiaries.     

国际金融危机下劳资关系利益均衡路径分析

自2008年下半年以来，国际金融危机对我国经济发展的不利影响开始逐步显现，从目前来看，这场国际金融危机还在蔓延和深化，国际金融市场仍处于动荡之中，全球实体经济受到的影响日益显现，世界经济增长明显减速。受其影响，我国经济运行也面临很多困难，未来一个时期，经济社会发展的总体环境将可能更加严峻。面对当前严峻复杂的国内外经济形势，如何处理当前的劳资关系问题，保持劳资关系的利益平衡，的确给工会带来了很大的挑战。     

New Urbanism and Selection Bias in the Formation of Social Capital

Over the past several decades, there has been a decline in social capital in American communities. New urbanism has been proposed as a tool to reverse some of this decline. This study seeks to understand the potential benefits of new urbanism in terms of social capital. Differences in social capital between a new urbanist subdivision (NUS) and a standard suburban subdivision (SSS) are compared. The findings of this study suggest that residents of NUSs have more social capital than residents of SSSs. However, many of the differences between the two communities disappeared when a social bias control was added to the model.