Budgeting and resource allocation in universities, a public choice approach

The calls urging colleges and universities to improve their productivity are coming thick and fast in Brazil. Many studies are suggesting evaluation systems and external criteria to control universities production in qualitative terms. Since universities and colleges are not profit-oriented organizations (considering just the fair and serious researching and teaching organizations, of course) the traditional microeconomics and administrative variables used to measure efficiency do not have any direct function. In this sense, It could be created a as if market control system to evaluate universities and colleges production. The budget and the allocation resources mechanism inside it can be used as an incentive instrument to improve quality and productivity. It will be the main issue of this paper.

New models of old(?) payment questions

Is private money feasible and desirable? In its absence, is there a central bank policy that partially or fully substitutes for private money? In this paper, some recent modeling ideas about how to address these questioned are reviewed and applied. The main ideas are that people cannot commit to future actions and that their histories are to some extent unknown - are not common knowledge. Under the additional assumption that the private monies issued by diferent people are distinct, a strong recognizability assumption, it is shown that there is a role for private money.

Optimal growth in a two-sector model without discounting: a geometric investigation

We characterize optimal policy in a two-sector growth model with xed coeÆcients and with no discounting. The model is a specialization to a single type of machine of a general vintage capital model originally formulated by Robinson, Solow and Srinivasan, and its simplicity is not mirrored in its rich dynamics, and which seem to have been missed in earlier work. Our results are obtained by viewing the model as a specific instance of the general theory of resource allocation as initiated originally by Ramsey and von Neumann and brought to completion by McKenzie. In addition to the more recent literature on chaotic dynamics, we relate our results to the older literature on optimal growth with one state variable: speci cally, to the one-sector setting of Ramsey, Cass and Koopmans, as well as to the two-sector setting of Srinivasan and Uzawa. The analysis is purely geometric, and from a methodological point of view, our work can be seen as an argument, at least in part, for the rehabilitation of geometric methods as an engine of analysis.

Allocation of authority in franchise chains

This article investigates the level of delegation in franchise chains, distinguishing the two most relevant franchising models: Business Format Franchising and Learning Network Franchising. The two models basically differ on the level of real authority (effective control over decisions) exercised by the franchisors. Differences in business features, such as the required standardization, monitoring costs and consumer sensitivity to variations in product attributes (consumer measurement costs), explain the adoption of the different models of franchising. These variables affect the trade-off between the risk of brand name loss and the gains in knowledge sharing and learning within the network. The higher the need for standardization, the higher is the risk of brand name loss, and, consequently, the more likely the franchisor will adopt an organizational design that confers more control over franchisees’ decisions, such as business format franchising. This paper presents two case studies with Brazilian food franchise chains that illustrate the main argument and suggest additional propositions. Moreover, an empirical analysis of 223 franchise chains provides additional support to the hypothesis of a negative the effect of required standardization on the level of delegation.