Why do municipalities cooperate to provide local public services? An empirical analysis

Intermunicipal cooperation is being increasingly adopted in various countries as a part of local service delivery reforms. This paper draws on survey data from Spain’s municipalities to examine the reasons underpinning the decisions of local governments to engage in intermunicipal cooperation and privatisation. Our empirical analysis indicates that small municipalities prefer to rely on cooperation for reducing costs, while their larger counterparts prefer to privatise the delivery of services. By cooperating, scale economies can be achieved with lower transaction costs and fewer concerns for competition than is the case via private production.

Co-opetition: Coexistence of cooperation and competition in public sector – A case study in one city’s public companies

Business actions do not take place in isolation. Complementary competencies and capabilities are the most important resources in the exponential knowledge growth. These resources are partially accessed via business partners. A company needs partners and the capability to cooperate, but also the awareness of the competitive tension, when operating in the market with multiple actors. The co-opetition research studies the occurrence and the forms of simultaneous cooperation and competition between companies or their units. Public sector’s governmental and municipal organs have been transformed into companies over the past years. Despite of their non-profit nature, public sector and public companies are adopting business doctrines from private sector towards efficient business operations. This case study aims to show, how co-opetition concept can be observed within public sector companies and in their operations with others, how public companies cooperate but also compete with others and why this happens. This thesis also explicates advantages and disadvantages of the co-opetition phenomenon.

Construcció d'un refugi situat al terme municipal de Vallfogona de Ripollès, pensat com a final d'etapa per a rutes a cavall

Els negocis relacionats amb les activitats de lleure i els esports d’aventura actualment es troben en expansió, buscant majoritàriament el contacte amb la natura. Les rutes a cavall formen part del gran ventall d’opcions, per aquesta qüestió s’ha pensat en construir un refugi utilitzat com a final d’etapa per a rutes a cavall. En la major part del territori, la presència de població humana es manifesta en pobles, viles i ciutats, les quals disposes d’aigua sanitària, corrent elèctric i sistema de clavegueram. Per altra banda en les urbanitzacions o cases aïllades poder gaudir d’aquests serveis suposa una inversió econòmica elevada, que implica la utilització de sistemes alternatius. En el present projecte s’ha triat un emplaçament on portar a terme el final d’etapa amb una sèrie de requisits a complir : bosc a les proximitats, disposar d’un o varis accessos per a vehicles (transport del material d’intendència), tranquil•litat, bones vistes, i cobertura de telèfon mòbil. S’han acceptat les següents limitacions : no disposar de xarxa pública d’electricitat ni d’aigua. I s’han dimensionat les instal•lacions per a un màxim de dotze persones i els seus respectius cavalls. El principal objectiu del projecte és el dimensionament de les necessitats elèctriques, d’aigua i d’aiguacalenta sanitària en condicions autònomes, i utilitzant energies renovables. La valoració de les possibles solucions per condicionar les instal•lacions, i oferir una resposta eficient per la demanda. No és un objectiu específic del treball la potabilització de l’aigua ni el tractament dels residus produïts. S’han aprofitat els diferents desnivells que presenta l’emplaçament triat a l’hora de distribuir les instal•lacions, i s’ha utilitzat un antic cobert de dos pisos ja existent. Com a residència s’ha triat un model de casa prefabricada de muntanya. Com a sistema de subministrament elèctric, s’instal•laran plaques solars fotovoltaiques i un generador de corrent com a sistema auxiliar. La captació d’aigua s’efectuarà a partir d’un pou que es troba en el terreny i de la recollida d el’aigua pluvial, instal•lant dipòsits d’emmagatzemament d’aigua segons les necessitats. S’utilitzarà un equip de cloració per potabilitzar l’aigua de consum utilitzada a la residència. En la producció d’aigua calenta sanitària s’utilitzaran plaques solars tèrmiques i una caldera instantània de gas propà com a suport. Per cuinar s’ha triat una cuina de gas propà i una barbacoa que s’instal•larà a l’exterior. S’instal•larà una llar de foc amb recuperador d’aire a la residència i una fosa sèptica amb un sistema d’infiltració per poder abocar les aigües provinents de la residència. Els fems dels cavalls podran ser utilitzats com adob pel terreny.

Implementation of a trauma registry in a brazilian public hospital: the first 1,000 patients

OBJECTIVE: Show the steps of a Trauma Registry (TR) implementation in a Brazilian public hospital and evaluate the initial data from the database.METHODS: Descriptive study of the a TR implementation in João XXIII Hospital (Hospital Foundation of the state of Minas Gerais) and analysis of the initial results of the first 1,000 patients.RESULTS: The project was initiated in 2011 and from January 2013 we began collecting data for the TR. In January 2014 the registration of the first 1000 patients was completed. The greatest difficulties in the TR implementation were obtaining funds to finance the project and the lack of information within the medical records. The variables with the lowest completion percentage on the physiological conditions were: pulse, blood pressure, respiratory rate and Glasgow coma scale. Consequently, the Revised Trauma Score (RTS) could be calculated in only 31% of cases and the TRISS methodology applied to 30.3% of patients. The main epidemiological characteristics showed a predominance of young male victims (84.7%) and the importance of aggression as a cause of injuries in our environment (47.5%), surpassing traffic accidents. The average length of stay was 6 days, and mortality 13.7%.CONCLUSION: Trauma registries are invaluable tools in improving the care of trauma victims. It is necessary to improve the quality of data recorded in medical records. The involvement of public authorities is critical for the successful implementation and maintenance of trauma registries in Brazilian hospitals.

Imagining a New Society: Public Painting as Politics in Postwar Finland

The thesis is the first comprehensive study on Finnish public painting, public artworks generally referred to as murals or monumental paintings. It focuses on the processes of production of public paintings during the post-WWII decades in Finland and the complex relationships between the political sphere and the production of art. The research studies the networks of agents involved in the production of public paintings. Besides the human agents—artists, assistants, commissioners and viewers—also public paintings were and are agents in the processes of production and in their environments. The research questions can be grouped into three overlapping series of questions: First, the research investigates the production public paintings: What kinds of public paintings were realised in postwar Finland—how, where, by whom and for what purposes? Second, it discusses the publicness of these paintings: How were public paintings defined, and what aspects characterised them as “public”? What was their relation to public space, public authorities, and audience? And third, it explores the politics of public paintings: the relationship between Finnish public painting, nationalism, and the memory of war. To answer these questions, extensive archival work has been performed, and over 200 public paintings have been documented around Finland. The research material has been studied in a sociological framework and in the context of the political and economic history of Finland, employing critical theories on public space and public art as well as theories on the building of nationalism, commemoration, memory, and forgetting. An important aim of this research was to open up a new field of study and position public painting within Finnish art history, from which it has been conspicuous by its absence. The research indicates that public painting was a significant genre of art in postwar Finland. The process of creating a national genre of public painting participated in the defining of municipal and state art politics in the country, and paintings functioned as vehicles of carrying out the agenda of the commissioning bodies. In the formation of municipal art policies in Finland in the 1950s, public painting connected to the same tendency of democratising art as the founding of public art museums. Public painting commissions also functioned as an arena of competition and a means of support for the artists. Public paintings were judged and commissioned within the realm of political decision-making, and they suggested the values of the decision-making groups, generally conveyed as the values of the society. The participation of official agents in the production allocated a position of official art to the genre. Through the material of this research, postwar public painting is seen as an agent in a society searching for a new identity. The postwar public painting production participated in the creation of the Finnish welfare society as indications of a humane society. It continued a tradition of public art production that had been built on nationalist and art educational ideologies in the late 19th and early 20th century. Postwar public paintings promoted the new national narrative of unification by creating an image of a homogeneous society with a harmonious communal life. The paintings laid out an image of Finnishness that was modern but rooted in the agrarian past, of a society that was based on hard work and provided for its members a good life. Postwar public painting was art with a mission, and it created an image of a society with a mission.

Public-private partnership investments in dry ports – Russian logistics markets and risks

The investments have always been considered as an essential backbone and so-called ‘locomotive’ for the competitive economies. However, in various countries, the state has been put under tight budget constraints for the investments in capital intensive projects. In response to this situation, the cooperation between public and private sector has grown based on public-private mechanism. The promotion of favorable arrangement for collaboration between public and private sectors for the provision of policies, services, and infrastructure in Russia can help to address the problems of dry ports development that neither municipalities nor the private sector can solve alone. Especially, the stimulation of public-private collaboration is significant under the exposure to externalities that affect the magnitude of the risks during all phases of project realization. In these circumstances, the risk in the projects also is becoming increasingly a part of joint research and risk management practice, which is viewed as a key approach, aiming to take active actions on existing global and specific factors of uncertainties. Meanwhile, a relatively little progress has been made on the inclusion of the resilience aspects into the planning process of a dry ports construction that would instruct the capacity planner, on how to mitigate the occurrence of disruptions that may lead to million dollars of losses due to the deviation of the future cash flows from the expected financial flows on the project. The current experience shows that the existing methodological base is developed fragmentary within separate steps of supply chain risk management (SCRM) processes: risk identification, risk evaluation, risk mitigation, risk monitoring and control phases. The lack of the systematic approach hinders the solution of the problem of risk management processes of dry port implementation. Therefore, management of various risks during the investments phases of dry port projects still presents a considerable challenge from the practical and theoretical points of view. In this regard, the given research became a logical continuation of fundamental research, existing in the financial models and theories (e.g., capital asset pricing model and real option theory), as well as provided a complementation for the portfolio theory. The goal of the current study is in the design of methods and models for the facilitation of dry port implementation through the mechanism of public-private partnership on the national market that implies the necessity to mitigate, first and foremost, the shortage of the investments and consequences of risks. The problem of the research was formulated on the ground of the identified contradictions. They rose as a continuation of the trade-off between the opportunities that the investors can gain from the development of terminal business in Russia (i.e. dry port implementation) and risks. As a rule, the higher the investment risk, the greater should be their expected return. However, investors have a different tolerance for the risks. That is why it would be advisable to find an optimum investment. In the given study, the optimum relates to the search for the efficient portfolio, which can provide satisfaction to the investor, depending on its degree of risk aversion. There are many theories and methods in finance, concerning investment choices. Nevertheless, the appropriateness and effectiveness of particular methods should be considered with the allowance of the specifics of the investment projects. For example, the investments in dry ports imply not only the lump sum of financial inflows, but also the long-term payback periods. As a result, capital intensity and longevity of their construction determine the necessity from investors to ensure the return on investment (profitability), along with the rapid return on investment (liquidity), without precluding the fact that the stochastic nature of the project environment is hardly described by the formula-based approach. The current theoretical base for the economic appraisals of the dry port projects more often perceives net present value (NPV) as a technique superior to other decision-making criteria. For example, the portfolio theory, which considers different risk preference of an investor and structures of utility, defines net present value as a better criterion of project appraisal than discounted payback period (DPP). Meanwhile, in business practice, the DPP is more popular. Knowing that the NPV is based on the assumptions of certainty of project life, it cannot be an accurate appraisal approach alone to determine whether or not the project should be accepted for the approval in the environment that is not without of uncertainties. In order to reflect the period or the project’s useful life that is exposed to risks due to changes in political, operational, and financial factors, the second capital budgeting criterion – discounted payback period is profoundly important, particularly for the Russian environment. Those statements represent contradictions that exist in the theory and practice of the applied science. Therefore, it would be desirable to relax the assumptions of portfolio theory and regard DPP as not fewer relevant appraisal approach for the assessment of the investment and risk measure. At the same time, the rationality of the use of both project performance criteria depends on the methods and models, with the help of which these appraisal approaches are calculated in feasibility studies. The deterministic methods cannot ensure the required precision of the results, while the stochastic models guarantee the sufficient level of the accuracy and reliability of the obtained results, providing that the risks are properly identified, evaluated, and mitigated. Otherwise, the project performance indicators may not be confirmed during the phase of project realization. For instance, the economic and political instability can result in the undoing of hard-earned gains, leading to the need for the attraction of the additional finances for the project. The sources of the alternative investments, as well as supportive mitigation strategies, can be studied during the initial phases of project development. During this period, the effectiveness of the investments undertakings can also be improved by the inclusion of the various investors, e.g. Russian Railways’ enterprises and other private companies in the dry port projects. However, the evaluation of the effectiveness of the participation of different investors in the project lack the methods and models that would permit doing the particular feasibility study, foreseeing the quantitative characteristics of risks and their mitigation strategies, which can meet the tolerance of the investors to the risks. For this reason, the research proposes a combination of Monte Carlo method, discounted cash flow technique, the theory of real options, and portfolio theory via a system dynamics simulation approach. The use of this methodology allows for comprehensive risk management process of dry port development to cover all aspects of risk identification, risk evaluation, risk mitigation, risk monitoring, and control phases. A designed system dynamics model can be recommended for the decision-makers on the dry port projects that are financed via a public-private partnership. It permits investors to make a decision appraisal based on random variables of net present value and discounted payback period, depending on different risks factors, e.g. revenue risks, land acquisition risks, traffic volume risks, construction hazards, and political risks. In this case, the statistical mean is used for the explication of the expected value of the DPP and NPV; the standard deviation is proposed as a characteristic of risks, while the elasticity coefficient is applied for rating of risks. Additionally, the risk of failure of project investments and guaranteed recoupment of capital investment can be considered with the help of the model. On the whole, the application of these modern methods of simulation creates preconditions for the controlling of the process of dry port development, i.e. making managerial changes and identifying the most stable parameters that contribute to the optimal alternative scenarios of the project realization in the uncertain environment. System dynamics model allows analyzing the interactions in the most complex mechanism of risk management process of the dry ports development and making proposals for the improvement of the effectiveness of the investments via an estimation of different risk management strategies. For the comparison and ranking of these alternatives in their order of preference to the investor, the proposed indicators of the efficiency of the investments, concerning the NPV, DPP, and coefficient of variation, can be used. Thus, rational investors, who averse to taking increased risks unless they are compensated by the commensurate increase in the expected utility of a risky prospect of dry port development, can be guided by the deduced marginal utility of investments. It is computed on the ground of the results from the system dynamics model. In conclusion, the outlined theoretical and practical implications for the management of risks, which are the key characteristics of public-private partnerships, can help analysts and planning managers in budget decision-making, substantially alleviating the effect from various risks and avoiding unnecessary cost overruns in dry port projects.

Arrêt du conseil d'Etat qui ordonne que le recouvrement de la finance de la vente des offices de greffiers secrétaires et gardes des archives des universités sera fait à la requête de Me E. Bertier

[Acte. 1704-02-16. Versailles]

Arrêt du Conseil d'Etat qui subroge François Fontaine au lieu et place de François Cheron pour faire le recouvrement de la finance qui doit provenir de la vente des offices de conseillers secrétaires de Sa Majesté, créés par édit du mois de décembre 1708

[Acte. 1712-03-15. Versailles]

Édit... portant suppression des offices de conseillers du Roy notaires et secrétaires dans les cours de Parlement, Chambres des Comptes et Cours des Aydes, Grand Conseil, Requestes de l'Hostel et du Palais, Conseils supérieurs et provinciaux, Cours des monnoies et Bureaux des Finances ; ordonne que les greffiers en chef des cours seront tous tenus de se pourvoir de l'un des offices de secrétaires, créez dans les chancelleries près les Cours par édit... de juin 1715 ; que la vente des offices de receveurs et payeurs des gages des officiers desdites chancelleries créez par édits... de novembre 1707 et décembre 1708 sera continuée ; et restablit les gardes des sceaux des chancelleries près les Cours dans leurs offices, en payant un supplément de finance... [Enregistré au Parlement le 13 juin 1716.]

[Acte royal. 1716-05-00. Paris]

Arrêt du conseil d'état qui ordonne que ceux des officiers des chancelleries près les cours et conseils supérieurs du royaume, qui payeront leur supplément de finance dans les termes y indiqués, seront déchargés des 2 sols pour livre

[Acte. 1755-11-25. Versailles]

Arrêt du conseil d'état qui ordonne que les quittances de finance pour l'acquisition des 1800000 livres de rentes héréditaires au denier vingt, créées sur l'imposition des deux sols pour livres en sus du dixième, seront expédiées au choix des acquéreurs en leur nom ou au porteur

[Acte. 1756-08-31. Versailles]

Instruction pour le recouvrement de la finance des jurez des arts et métiers, créez par édit du 12 mars 1691

[Acte. 1691]