The structure of middle management remuneration packages: An application to Australian mine managers

This paper investigates the composition of remuneration packages for middle managers and relates the structure of remuneration contracts to firm-specific attributes. A statutorily defined position in a single industry is studied as an example of middle management. This allows us to control for differences in task complexity across managers and industry-induced factors that could determine differences in remuneration contracts. Higher-risk firms are expected to pay their mine managers a greater proportion of variable salaries and market and/or accounting-based compensation than low-risk firms. Results indicate that high-risk firms pay a higher proportion of variable salaries and more compensation based on market and/or accounting performance.

The paradox of commercialising public sector intellectual property

The juxtapositioning of government providing a public good through research and development investment on one hand and engaging in commercialisation of the research outcome on the other is a paradox. Using agricultural research as an example, we examine the nature of the paradox to determine if commercialisation potentially leads to a conflict in the role of public research institutions set up to fulfil public good responsibilities. We identify the reasons for the shift in policy towards commercialisation and greater exploitation of public sector intellectual property and how this has contributed to the emergence of the apparent inconsistency. We argue that the belief in working for public good is inherent and embedded in an organisation's history and its wider operating environment. We propose that the creation of public sector intellectual property and its commercialisation are influenced by the political, social and economic environment in which the public institutions operate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A reforma administrativa da Nova Zel??ndia nos anos 80-90: controle estrat??gico, efici??ncia gerencial e accountability

O artigo discute o processo de reforma administrativa implementada na Nova Zel??ndia a partir de 1984, com a chegada do Partido Trabalhista ao poder, abordando seus principais desdobramentos nos anos 90. Parte de uma apresenta????o do modelo administrativo em vigor na Nova Zel??ndia antes das reformas empreendidas em 1984, delimitando dessa forma o quadro referencial para comparar a situa????o anterior com a atual, de maneira que proporcione uma avalia????o sobre os impactos das medidas empreendidas. Em seguida, apresenta uma descri????o dos objetivos e princ??pios norteadores da reforma tais como, separa????o das fun????es comerciais das n??o-comerciais; separa????o entre as fun????es administrativas e de assessoria; princ??pio do ???quem usa paga???, user pays; transpar??ncia na concess??o de subs??dios; neutralidade competitiva, descentraliza????o e aumento do poder discricion??rio do administrador; melhoramento da accountability, entre outros. A seguir, s??o apresentadas as principais medidas empreendidas pelo governo trabalhista entre 1984 e 1990, dando ??nfase ?? metodologia adotada para a implementa????o e accountability dos contratos de gest??o firmados entre os executivos- chefe e os ministros. Posteriormente, o autor apresenta as modifica????es introduzidas nas regras de contrata????o de pessoal no servi??o p??blico neozeland??s e, de um modo mais geral, na pol??tica de recursos humanos. Finalmente, ?? tra??ado um perfil da situa????o atual da Nova Zel??ndia, bem como ?? feita a apresenta????o sucinta daqueles que o autor considera como sendo os ???suportes conceituais da reforma???: o movimento gerencialista, a teoria do Public Choice e a teoria Principal-Agente.

Use of performance information by local politicians: a field study in the Portuguese context.

This paper seeks to investigate the use of performance information by politicians and whether the institutional reforms on performance management (PM) have been operationalized by local politicians. Differences on the policy field and the organizational context have been analyzed. Our goal is contribute to knowledge on PM in the political sphere and understand the different responses of politicians to government change initiatives (mainly coercive pressures). Our findings show that local politicians support the notion that greater attention should be devoted to the use of performance information on the evaluation process. Nevertheless they are very skeptic in relation to effective execution of government reforms. There is an internal culture where agencies are embedded, strongly influenced by the high degree of politicisation among senior managers, that lead politicians to be more concerned about personal opinions and informal performance information rather than to use more sophisticated information (output and outcome measures). The institutional approach helps us to identify political responses to institutional pressures and understand the reasons for a reduced use in the Portuguese context.

Evaluation of collaborative strategies for ecotourism and recreational activities in natural parks of Rio de Janeiro

In the city of Rio de Janeiro, the management agencies of environmental conservation units of the park type have been attempting to meet five primary objectives set by the National System for Conservation Units (NSCU), using participatory management guidelines for these units. Two of these objectives relate to the development of recreation activities that involve contact with nature and ecological tourism. This article presents the analyses and conclusions regarding the implementation of collaborative strategies with businesses to achieve such objectives; it is part of a series of research studies having a broader scope. Case studies were conducted in eight parks by means of dozens of interviews with managers and other interested social actors, as well as by documentary research and direct observation. The results suggest that the ecotourism objective is still far from being reached, and that the collaborative strategies used are not sufficient to compensate for the organizational, material and human limitations that encumber these agencies. It was also concluded for the sample that there lacks a strategic vision on the part of the three branches of government involved in the management of these parks in the sense of viewing ecotourism in the city's conservation units as a powerful means to foster local sustainable development.

Monetary channels of social inclusion: a case study of basic income and the Caixa Econômica Federal in Brazil

This article reports evidence of new monetary channels for social inclusion involving basic income policies and the Caixa Econômica Federal, a Brazilian government savings bank. Since the Plano Real (Brazilian currency) and the liberalization of banking in the 1990s, the realization of competitive advantages by the Caixa as social policy agent and the importance of citizenship cards differ from existing theories of bank change, financial inclusion and monetary policy. Multi-method research reveals the importance of 1) political theories of basic income, 2) conceptions of citizenship and social justice, and 3) a back to the future modernization of government banking. This provides alternatives to contemporary market-based banking theory, neo-liberal policies, private and non-governmental microfinance strategies, and theories in political economy about fiscal constraints to social policies. New monetary channels of change also suggest that zero sum theories about politics, monetary authority and social inclusion are amiss.

Estágio profissional: Câmara Municipal da Trofa

Relatório de Estágio apresentado ao Instituto Superior de Contabilidade e Administração do Porto para a obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Auditoria Orientador: Rodrigo Mário Oliveira Carvalho, Dr. Coorientador: Vicente António Fernandes Seixas, Dr.

The impact of pharmaceutical policy measures: a structural-break approach

Pharmaceutical spending in many other countries has had a steep increase in the last decade. The Portuguese Government has adopted several measures to reduce pharmaceutical expenditure growth, ranging from increased co-payments to price decreases determined administratively. Promotion of generic consumption has also ranked high in political priorities. We assess the overall impact of the several policy measures on total pharmaceutical spending, using monthly data over the period January 1995 – August 2008. Endogenous structural breaks (time-series) methods were employed. Our findings suggest that policy measures aimed at controlling pharmaceutical expenditure have been, in general, unsuccessful. Two breaks were identified. Both coincide with administratively determined price decreases. Measures aimed at increasing competition in the market had no visible effect on the dynamics of Government spending in pharmaceutical products. In particular, the introduction of reference pricing had only a transitory effect of less than one year, with historical growth resuming quickly. The consequence of it is a transfer of financial burden from the Government to the patients, with no apparent effect on the dynamics of pharmaceutical spending. This strongly suggests that pharmaceutical companies have been able to adjust to policy measures, in order to sustain their sales. It remains a challenge for the future to identify firms’ strategies that supported continued growth of sales, despite the several policy measures adop

Humor and the framing of the public sphere and public opinion in Portugal (1797-1834)

In his Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment (1784), Kant puts forward his belief that the vocation to think freely, which humankind is endowed with, is bound to make sure that “the public use of reason” will at last act “even on the fundamental principles of government and the state [will] find it agreeable to treat man – who is now more than a machine – in accord with his dignity”. The critical reference to La Mettrie (1747), by opposing the machine to human dignity, will echo, in the dawn of the 20th century, in Bergson’s attempt to explain humor. Besides being exclusive to humans, humor is also a social phenomenon. Freud (1905) assures that pleasure originated by humor is collective, it results from a “social process”: jokes need an audience, a “third party”, in order to work and have fun. Assuming humor as a social and cultural phenomenon, this paper intends to sustain that it played a role in the framing of the public sphere and of public opinion in Portugal during the transition from Absolute Monarchy to Liberalism. The search for the conditions which made possible the critical exercise of sociability is at the root of the creation of the public sphere in the sense developed by Habermas (1962), whose perspective, however, has been questioned by those who point 2 out the alleged idealism of the concept – as opposed, for example, to Bakhtin (1970), whose work stresses diversity and pluralism. This notwithstanding, the concept of public sphere is crucial to the building of public opinion, which is, in turn, indissoluble from the principle of publicity, as demonstrated by Bobbio (1985). This paper discusses the historical evolution of the concept of public opinion from Ancient Greece doxa, through Machiavelli’s “humors” (1532), the origin of the expression in Montaigne (1580) and the contributions of Hobbes (1651), Locke (1690), Swift (1729), Rousseau (1762) or Hume (1777), up to the reflection of Lippman (1922) and Bourdieu’s critique (1984). It maintains that humor, as it appears in Portuguese printed periodicals from 1797 (when Almocreve de Petas was published for the first time) to the end of the civil war (1834) – especially in those edited by José Daniel Rodrigues da Costa but also in O Piolho Viajante, by António Manuel Policarpo da Silva, or in the ones written by José Agostinho de Macedo, as well as in a political “elite minded” periodical such as Correio Braziliense –, contributed to the framing of the public sphere and of public opinion in Portugal.

Movilidad social en barrios de Córdoba: Villa La Tela y áreas colindantes. Social Mobility in Neighborhoods of Cordoba: Villa La Tela and Adjacent Areas.

Esta investigación propone aproximarse al conocimiento y comprensión de los diversos mecanismos de movilidad social en Villa La Tela barrios adyacentes (ciudad de Córdoba). Si bien las poblaciones objetivo poseen diferentes niveles de vida, este proyecto no se propone la comparación entre ambos sectores urbanos, sino la identificación de diversos patrones de movilidad social vigentes. Se intenta también aproximarse indirectamente al esquema de estratificación social vigente en la ciudad de Córdoba. El equipo se propone avanzar en la definición de una estrategia metodológica que permita comprender de una manera integral los diversos mecanismos de movilidad social. Se propone articular una triangulación de métodos cuantitativos y cualitativos que aproveche las fortalezas de cada enfoque para efectuar una mirada multidisciplinaria de las condiciones de vida de la población en estudio. Se intenta también aprovechar la inserción que ya tienen algunos de los investigadores del equipo en los barrios, a fin de aportar conocimientos útiles a las organizaciones que realizan actividades de intervención social. El trabajo se propone en tres fases constituidas por tres instancias que no necesariamente se corresponden con tiempos cronológicos: análisis de información secundaria (censos de población, relevamientos de organismos gubernamentales y civiles) y de resultados de investigaciones previas; en otra fase se generará un espacio recreativo en la comunidad que permita identificar las percepciones subjetivas de los actores locales en relación a las condiciones de vida y la experiencia de movilidad social (etnodrama, etnografía fotográfica); finalmente se realizará una fase de trabajo de encuestas y entrevistas en profundidad a partir de los insumos producidos en las dos fases antes mencionadas. Se tomará para ello, como unidad de análisis socio-económica a los hogares, considerados como el espacio físico y social desde el cual se diseñan e implementan las estrategias familiares de vida de sus miembros. Se considera que el proyecto puede transferir los resultados -parciales y finales- alcanzados a las instituciones intervinientes en los barrios considerados. Esta transferencia constituye una actividad de extensión concreta, dado que las intervenciones en marcha están destinadas a mejorar las condiciones de vida de la población en términos materiales y culturales. La acción sinérgica entre las diversas instituciones que intervienen o investigan sobre estas comunidades es un compromiso, ya que de ello depende la calidad del impacto en las propias comunidades. En este sentido, la descripción de las experiencias intergeneracionales de movilidad social de los hogares y su significación subjetiva, puede considerarse de interés tanto para las instituciones como para la comunidad misma. De esta manera se espera devolver a las comunidades lo que éstas le ofrezcan al equipo de investigación, como flujo de intercambio recíproco de conocimiento y desarrollo humano. Desde el punto de vista metodológico, el equipo espera realizar una evaluación de los distintos abordajes cuantitativos y cualitativos a escala microsocial, a fin de realizar propuestas válidas para nuevas investigaciones en ámbitos locales. This research proposes to approach the knowledge and understanding of the various mechanisms of social mobility in adjacent neighborhoods of Villa La Tela (Cordoba, Argentina). Although the target populations have different levels of life, this project does not intend to compare urban areas, but the identification of different patterns of social mobility nowadays. Indirect approach is also intended to outline the existing social stratification in Cordoba city. We plan to define a methodological approach based on triangulation of quantitative and qualitative methods, exploiting the strengths of each approach to make a multidisciplinary vision of the population living conditions. Project proposes phases consisting of three instances, that do not necessarily correspond with chronological time: 1) secondary data analysis (population censuses, surveys of government agencies and civilian organizations) and previous research results; 2) promotion of a recreation space in the community to identify the subjective perceptions of local actors in relation to living conditions and experience of social mobility; 3) finally there will be a phase of survey work and deep interviews from inputs produced in the two phases mentioned above. Households will be taken as socio-economic unit, also considered as social and physical space where family strategies of life are designed and implemented by its members. We considere this project can transfer the obtained results to the institutions involved in the concerned districts. This transfer is a specific outreach activity, since the interventions in place are aimed to improving the living conditions of population in material and cultural terms.

A comparison of environmental licensing systems in operation in the wood panel manufacturing industry in the Northern Hemisphere

The objective of this thesis is to compare and contrast environmental licensing systems, for the wood panel industry, in a number of countries in order to determine which system is the best from an environmental and economic point of view. The thesis also examines the impact which government can have on industry and the type of licensing system in operation in a country. Initially, the thesis investigates the origins of the various environmental licensing systems which are in operation in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, France, USA and Canada. It then examines the Environmental Agencies which control and supervise industry in these countries. The impact which the type of government (i.e. unitary or federal) in charge in any particular country has on industry and the Regulatory Agency in that country is then described. Most of the mills in the thesis make a product called OSB (Oriented Strand Board) and the manufacturing process is briefly described in order to understand where the various emissions are generated. The main body of the thesis examines a number of environmental parameters which have emission limit values in the licenses examined, although not all of these parameters have emission limit values in all of the licenses. All of these parameters are used as indicators of the potential impact which the mill can have on the environment. They have been set at specific levels by the Environmental Agencies in the individual countries to control the impact of the mill. Following on from this, the two main types of air pollution control equipment (WESPs and RTOs) are described in regard to their function and capabilities. The mill licenses are then presented in the form of results tables which compare air results and water results separately. This is due to the fact that the most significant emission from this type of industry is to air. A matrix system is used to compare the licenses so that the comparison can be as objective as possible. The discussion examines all of the elements previously described and from this it was concluded that the IPC licensing system is the best from an environmental and economic point of view. It is a much more expensive system to operate than the other systems examined, but it is much more comprehensive and looks at the mill as a whole rather than fragmenting it. It was also seen that the type of environmental licensing system which is in place in a country can play a role in the locating of an industry as certain systems were seen to have more stringent standards attached to them. The type of standard in place in a country is in turn influenced by the type of government which is in place in that country.

Valuation of defaultable bonds and debt restructuring

In this paper we develop a contingent valuation model for zero-coupon bonds with default. In order to emphasize the role of maturity time and place of the lender’s claim in the hierarchy of debt of a firm, we consider a firm that issues two bonds with different maturities and different seniorage. The model allows us to analyze the implications of both debt renegotiation and capital structure of a firm on the prices of bonds. We obtain that renegotiation brings about a significant change in the bond prices and that the effect is dispersed through different channels: increasing the value of the firm, reallocating payments, and avoiding costly liquidation. Moreover, the presence of two creditors leads to qualitatively different implications for pricing, while emphasizing the importance of bond covenants and renegotiation of the entire debt.

The Politics of Intergovernmental Fiscal Relations in Argentina

The search for political determinants of intergovernmental fiscal relations has shaped much of the recent literature on the economic viability of federalism. This study assesses the explanatory power of two competing views about intergovernmental transfers; one emphasizing the traditional neoclassical approach to federal-subnational fiscal relations and the other suggesting that transfers are contingent on the political fortunes and current political vulnerability of each level of government. The author tests these models using data from Argentina, a federation exhibiting one of the most decentralised fiscal systems in the world and severe imbalances in the territorial distribution of legislative and economic resources. It is shown that overrespresented provinces ruled by governors who belong to opposition parties can bring into play their political overrepresentation to attract shares of federal transfers beyond social welfare criteria and to shield themselves from unwanted reforms to increase fiscal co-responsibilty. This finding suggests that decision makers in federal countries must pay close heed to the need to synchronize institutional reforms and fiscal adjustment.

In Search of a theory of debt management

A growing literature integrates theories of debt management into models of optimal fiscal policy. One promising theory argues that the composition of government debt should be chosen so that fluctuations in the market value of debt offset changes in expected future deficits. This complete market approach to debt management is valid even when the government only issues non-contingent bonds. A number of authors conclude from this approach that governments should issue long term debt and invest in short term assets. We argue that the conclusions of this approach are too fragile to serve as a basis for policy recommendations. This is because bonds at different maturities have highly correlated returns, causing the determination of the optimal portfolio to be ill-conditioned. To make this point concrete we examine the implications of this approach to debt management in various models, both analytically and using numerical methods calibrated to the US economy. We find the complete market approach recommends asset positions which are huge multiples of GDP. Introducing persistent shocks or capital accumulation only worsens this problem. Increasing the volatility of interest rates through habits partly reduces the size of these simulations we find no presumption that governments should issue long term debt ? policy recommendations can be easily reversed through small perturbations in the specification of shocks or small variations in the maturity of bonds issued. We further extend the literature by removing the assumption that governments every period costlessly repurchase all outstanding debt. This exacerbates the size of the required positions, worsens their volatility and in some cases produces instability in debt holdings. We conclude that it is very difficult to insulate fiscal policy from shocks by using the complete markets approach to debt management. Given the limited variability of the yield curve using maturities is a poor way to substitute for state contingent debt. The result is the positions recommended by this approach conflict with a number of features that we believe are important in making bond markets incomplete e.g allowing for transaction costs, liquidity effects, etc.. Until these features are all fully incorporated we remain in search of a theory of debt management capable of providing robust policy insights.