Performance in Private Clubs: Criteria Utilized by Managers

As the first step toward developing performance benchmarks for non profit private clubs, the authors identify the criteria that club managers use to evaluate club performance. Responses from 254 club managers across the US. indicate that all 16 performance criteria included in the survey were utilized to some extent, but the top three were membership satisfaction, quality of services offered, and quality of staff.

The political economy of inequality and growth: Essays on sovereign debt, democracy and saving

This dissertation addresses three issues in the political economy of growth literature. The first study empirically tests the hypothesis that income inequality influences the size of a country's sovereign debt for a sample of developing countries for the period 1970–1990. The argument examined is that governments tend to yield to popular pressures to engage in redistributive policies, partially financed by foreign borrowing. Facing increased risk of default, international creditors limit the credit they extend, with the result that borrowing countries invest less and grow at a slower pace. The findings do not seem to support the negative relationship between inequality and sovereign debt, as there is evidence of increases in multilateral, countercyclical flows until the mid 1980s in Latin America. The hypothesis would hold for the period 1983–1990. Debt flows and levels seem to be positively correlated with growth as expected. ^ The second study empirically investigates the hypothesis that pronounced levels of inequality lead to unconsolidated democracies. We test the existence of a nonmonotonic relationship between inequality and democracy for a sample of Latin American countries for the period 1970–2000, where democracy appears to consolidate at some intermediate level of inequality. We find that the nonmonotonic relationship holds using instrumental variables methods. Bolivia seems to be a case of unconsolidated democracy. The positive relationship between per capita income and democracy disappears once fixed effects are introduced. ^ The third study explores the nonlinear relationship between per capita income and private saving levels in Latin America. Several estimation methods are presented; however, only the estimation of a dynamic specification through a state-of-the-art general method of moments estimator yields consistent estimates with increased efficiency. Results support the hypothesis that income positively affects private saving, while system GMM reveals nonlinear effects at income levels that exceed the ones included in this sample for the period 1960–1994. We also find that growth, government dissaving, and tightening of credit constraints have a highly significant and positive effect on private saving. ^

Private Club Financial Performance

This article reveals the median financial results for the club industry for 2011 using 24 financial ratios. The results are based on the submission of balance sheet and selected income statement numbers from 80 clubs. The ratios are reported as median results for the entire sample as well as the median results for the top and low performing clubs delineated by return on assets. The biggest differences between the two extreme groups of clubs are (1) average collection period, (2) operating cash flows to current liabilities and long-term debt, (3) fines interest earned, (4) fixed charge coverage ratio, (5) food and beverage inventory turnovers, (6) profit margin, (7) return on assets, (8) operating efficiency ratio, (9) labor cost percentage.

The Nevada Gaming Debt Collection Experience

In the discussion - The Nevada Gaming Debt Collection Experience - by Larry D. Strate, Assistant Professor, College of Business and Economics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Assistant Professor Strate initially outlines the article by saying: “Even though Nevada has had over a century of legalized gaming experience, the evolution of gaming debt collection has been a recent phenomenon. The author traces that history and discusses implications of the current law.” The discussion opens with a comparison between the gaming industries of New Jersey/Atlantic City, and Las Vegas, Nevada. This contrast serves to point out the disparities in debt handling between the two. “There are major differences in the development of legalized gaming for both Nevada and Atlantic City. Nevada has had over a century of legalized gambling; Atlantic City, New Jersey, has completed a decade of its operation,” Strate informs you. “Nevada's gaming industry has been its primary economic base for many years; Atlantic City's entry into gaming served as a possible solution to a social problem. Nevada's processes of legalized gaming, credit play, and the collection of gaming debts were developed over a period of 125 years; Atlantic City's new industry began with gaming, gaming credit, and gaming debt collection simultaneously in 1976 [via the New Jersey Casino Control Act] .” The irony here is that Atlantic City, being the younger venue, had or has a better system for handling debt collection than do the historic and traditional Las Vegas properties. Many of these properties were duplicated in New Jersey, so the dichotomy existed whereby New Jersey casinos could recoup debt while their Nevada counterparts could not. “It would seem logical that a "territory" which permitted gambling in the early 1800’s would have allowed the Nevada industry to collect its debts as any other legal enterprise. But it did not,” Strate says. Of course, this situation could not be allowed to continue and Strate outlines the evolution. New Jersey tactfully benefitted from Nevada’s experience. “The fundamental change in gaming debt collection came through the legislature as the judicial decisions had declared gaming debts uncollectable by either a patron or a casino,” Strate informs you. “Nevada enacted its gaming debt collection act in 1983, six years after New Jersey,” Strate points out. One of the most noteworthy paragraphs in the entire article is this: “The fundamental change in 1983, and probably the most significant change in the history of gaming in Nevada since the enactment of the Open Gaming Law of 1931, was to allow non-restricted gaming licensees* to recover gaming debts evidenced by a credit instrument. The new law incorporated previously litigated terms with a new one, credit instrument.” The term is legally definable and gives Nevada courts an avenue of due process.

Crocodile on the bank in Buttonwood Slough

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation through the Florida Coastal Everglades Long-Term Ecological Research program under Cooperative Agreements #DBI-0620409 and #DEB-9910514. This image is made available for non-commercial or educational use only.