Measuring the capability to raise revenue: process and output dimensions and their application to the Zambia Revenue Authority

The worldwide diffusion of the good governance agenda and new public management (NPM) principles has triggered a renewed focus on state capability and, more specifically, on the capability to raise revenue in developing countries. However, the analytical tools for a comprehensive understanding of the capability to raise revenue remain underdeveloped. This article aims at filling this gap and presents a model consisting of the three process dimensions ‘information collection and processing’, ‘merit orientation’ and ‘administrative accountability’. ‘Revenue performance’ constitutes the fourth capability dimension which assesses tax administrations' output. This model is applied to the case of the Zambia Revenue Authority (ZRA). The dimensions prove to be valuable not only for assessing the how much but also the how of collecting taxes. They can be a useful tool for future comparative analyses of tax administrations' capabilities in developing countries. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Bounding the number of contributors to mixed DNA stains

We derive a simple inequality for the probability of observing a given DNA profile when assuming a fixed number of unknown persons have contributed to the mixed stain. We then show how this inequality can be used to obtain an upper bound for the number of unknown contributors needed to be considered.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">Ansgar Klein,Ruud Koopmans,Heiko Geiling</Emphasis> (Hg.): Globalisierung,Partizipation, Protest

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

The belief systems of protesting college students

A group of 29 college students who had been arrested or nominated as having participated in a street disturbance aimed at producing social change were interviewed. The interview schedule was highly similar to one which had been used to investigate attitudes toward violence in a random, representative sample of American men. The data collected from the arrestees are compared with data from college students in the national sample. This study shows that the arrestees are more likely to think that violence is necessary to produce social change than are college students generally, and are more likely to believe that existing social institutions are inadequate. As a group, the arrestees are more identified with white student demonstrators and black protestors than are college students generally. The arrestees are also likely to regard the police as untrusworthy, looking for trouble, and apt to dislike people like themselves. In addition to the negative attitudes toward the police held by the student arrestees, they are more likely to regard police actions as violence (and hence provocative) than are other college students. The arrestees are far more likely than other college students to cleave to humanistic values. However, most of the differences between the arrestees and other American college students could be predicted from a general model of the justification of violence, so that it appears that the student activists' beliefs differ not so much in kind from those of other Americans as they do in degree.This research was funded by NSF Grants GS 2424 and GS 28295 under a project codirected by Monica D. Blumenthal, Robert L. Kahn, and Frank M. Andrews.Currently Program Director at the Institute for Social Research in the Survey Research Center, and Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Michigan Medical School. Obtained M.D. from the University of Michigan Medical School and Ph.D. in physiology from the University of California, Berkeley. Currently engaged in social psychological research, with main interests focused on violence and the epidemiology of depressive disorders. Psychiatric interests are biologically oriented and focused on adult psychiatry.     

The who, what, and why of risk adjustment: a technology on the cusp of adoption

Risk adjustment (RA) consists of a series of techniques that account for the health status of patients when predicting or explaining costs of health care for defined populations or for evaluating retrospectively the performance of providers who care for them. Although the federal government seems to have settled on an approach to RA for Medicare Advantage programs, adoption and implementation of RA techniques elsewhere have proceeded much more slowly than was anticipated. This article examines factors affecting the adoption and use of RA outside the Medicare program using case studies in six U.S. health care markets (Baltimore, Seattle, Denver, Cleveland, Phoenix, and Atlanta) as of 2001. We found that for purchasing decisions, RA was used exclusively by public agencies. In the private sector, use of risk adjustment was uncommon and scattered and assumed informal and unexpected forms. The most common private sector use of RA was by health plans, which occasionally employed RA in negotiations with purchasers or to allocate resources internally among providers. The article uses classic technology diffusion theory to explain the adoption and use of RA in these six markets and derives lessons for health policy generally and for the future of RA in particular. For health policy generally, the differing experiences of public and private actors with RA serve as markers of the divergent paths that public and private health care sectors are pursuing with respect to managed care and risk sharing. For the future of RA in particular, its history suggests the need for health service researchers to consider barriers to use adoption and new analytic technologies as they develop them.     

Comparison of gasolines using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry and target ion response

Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry was used to compare gasoline samples obtained from different sources based on the difference in amounts of certain components found in the headspace of gasoline using target response data. Many suspected arson cases involve comparing an ignitable liquid extracted from fire debris to a liquid found in a suspect's possession to determine if they could have had a common source. Various component ratios are proposed for determining if an unevaporated gasoline sample could have originated from the same source as an evaporated gasoline extracted from fire debris. Fifty and 75% evaporated gasoline samples were both found to contain similar ratios of certain components when compared with its unevaporated source gasoline. The results of the comparisons in this study demonstrate that for cases involving gasoline that has been evaporated up to 50% and extracted from pine, it is possible to eliminate comparison samples as originating from the same source. The results of the 75% comparisons suggest it may be possible to apply the same type of comparison to cases involving 75% evaporated gasoline.