Regional governance: strategies and disputes in health region management

OBJECTIVE To analyze the regional governance of the health systemin relation to management strategies and disputes.METHODOLOGICAL PROCEDURES A qualitative study with health managers from 19 municipalities in the health region of Bahia, Northeastern Brazil. Data were drawn from 17 semi-structured interviews of state, regional, and municipal health policymakers and managers; a focus group; observations of the regional interagency committee; and documents in 2012. The political-institutional and the organizational components were analyzed in the light of dialectical hermeneutics.RESULTS The regional interagency committee is the chief regional governance strategy/component and functions as a strategic tool for strengthening governance. It brings together a diversity of members responsible for decision making in the healthcare territories, who need to negotiate the allocation of funding and the distribution of facilities for common use in the region. The high turnover of health secretaries, their lack of autonomy from the local executive decisions, inadequate technical training to exercise their function, and the influence of party politics on decision making stand as obstacles to the regional interagency committee’s permeability to social demands. Funding is insufficient to enable the fulfillment of the officially integrated agreed-upon program or to boost public supply by the system, requiring that public managers procure services from the private market at values higher than the national health service price schedule (Brazilian Unified Health System Table). The study determined that “facilitators” under contract to health departments accelerated access to specialized (diagnostic, therapeutic and/or surgical) services in other municipalities by direct payment to physicians for procedure costs already covered by the Brazilian Unified Health System.CONCLUSIONS The characteristics identified a regionalized system with a conflictive pattern of governance and intermediate institutionalism. The regional interagency committee’s managerial routine needs to incorporate more democratic devices for connecting with educational institutions, devices that are more permeable to social demands relating to regional policy making.

Disputes, Debt and Equity

We show how the prospect of disputes over firms’ revenue reports promotes debt financing over equity. These findings are presented within a costly state verification model with a risk averse entrepreneur. The prospect of disputes encourages incentive regimes which limit penalties and avoid stochastic monitoring, even when the lender can commit to stochastic enforcement strategies. Consequently, optimal contracts shift away from equity and toward standard debt. For a useful special case of the model, closed form solutions are presented for leverage and consumption allocations under efficient debt contracts.

Should I go to court?: an assessment of the role of the Judiciary in disputes between cattle raisers and meatpackers in Brazil

The main objective of this perspective paper is to analyze the role of the judiciary in resolving conflicts between cattle raisers and meatpacking firms in Brazil. Looking at the transaction for the acquisition of cattle for slaughter in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul (the central-western region of Brazil), the analysis encompasses three steps. First, the authors describe the transaction pattern between cattle raisers and meatpacking firms, identifying a guarantee vacuum within the supply chain. Secondly, the authors present evidence that the guarantee vacuum may give rise to legal conflicts of non-payment, which are indeed prevalent in disputes that reach the courts. Finally, the role of the judiciary in resolving these conflicts is investigated. Results suggest that, on average, producers have little confidence in the legal system, indicating the potential function that informal mechanisms may play in the supply chain. The paper concludes by suggesting some implications for public and private strategies.

Consumer Advisory Bulletin, Prevent Home Repair Scams and Disputes, May 2007

The Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division receives hundreds of calls and consumer complaints every year. Follow these tips to avoid unexpected expense and disappointments. This record is about: New Iowa “Foreclosure Hotline”

Consumer Advisory Bulletin, Prevent Home Repair Scams and Disputes, May 2007

The Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division receives hundreds of calls and consumer complaints every year. Follow these tips to avoid unexpected expense and disappointments. This record is about: Prevent Home Repair Scams and Disputes

Consumer Advisory Bulletin, Prevent Home Repair Scams and Disputes, Mach 2008

The Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division receives hundreds of calls and consumer complaints every year. Follow these tips to avoid unexpected expense and disappointments. This record is about: Prevent Home Repair Scams and Disputes

Residence advantage in heterospecific territorial disputes of Erythrodiplax Brauer species (Odonata, Libellulidae)

Residence advantage in heterospecific territorial disputes of Erythrodiplax Brauer species (Odonata, Libellulidae). Territories are the outcome of interactions determining where and how long individuals settle. To odonate species, aggressive disputes are not so common since the outcome can be predetermined by advantages such as residency, age, and body size. However, it is possible to predict that at heterospecific disputes, larger body-sized or more aggressive species have some profits overcoming these individual advantages, generating patterns of species hierarchy. Here, I studied the aggressiveness of five Erythrodiplax species (Odonata, Libellulidae) during territorial disputes and verified if larger body-sized species are more aggressive than smaller ones or if the residence advantage prevails on the heterospecific disputes. Larger species were not more aggressive than smaller ones and winners of intra- and interspecific territorial disputes were defined mainly by the residence. So, the residence advantage between heterospecific opponents appears to prevail over any other asymmetry among these species. This pattern may occur because, despite the territorial behaviour in dragonfly males, heterospecific disputes may not increment male reproductive success because it may not increase their access to females.

Consumer Advisory Bulletin, Prevent Home Repair Scams and Disputes, April 2009

The Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division receives hundreds of calls and consumer complaints every year. Follow these tips to avoid unexpected expense and disappointments. This record is about: Prevent Home Repair Scams and Disputes

Consumer Advisory Bulletin; Prevent Home Repair Scams and Disputes, May 2010

The Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division receives hundreds of calls and consumer complaints every year. Follow these tips to avoid unexpected expense and disappointments. This record is about: Prevent Home Repair Scams and Disputes

Consumer Advisory Bulletin, Credit Cards vs. Nailing Down Home Repair Rip-Offs & Disputes, April 2011

The Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division receives hundreds of calls and consumer complaints every year. Follow these tips to avoid unexpected expense and disappointments. This record is about: Nailing Down Home Repair Rip-Offs & Disputes

The mutual agreement procedure and arbitration of double taxation disputes

It is in the interest of most states to eliminate double taxation (i.e. the payment of the same tax in two jurisdictions) of transnational commercial enterprises. Because such disputes involve, on the one hand, the state imposition of taxes, a right universally asserted by all states, and private entities on the other, taxation disputes between such parties are not, on their face, easily susceptible to arbitration. This article analyzes two dispute settlement procedures-the OECD First Model Tax Convention and a similar EU Convention-with the exclusive focus on disputes relating to the imposition of double taxation. It will look at the ways in which state roles may vary under these procedures from assisting in the negotiation process to taking a part similar to, but with important differences from, diplomatic protection on behalf of an affected enterprise. The article will examine the situations under which the settlement procedure is required and/or available, how the procedures are triggered, the obligations and parts played by the parties, the means by which the disputes are resolved (from negotiations to tribunals) and the limitations of the procedures. Are they “taxpayer friendly”? As a result the reader may draw comparisons between the two procedures. Finally, the article will look at the proposed OECD Arbitration Clause which is intended to be incorporated into Article 25 of the OECD Model Tax Convention as well as how these mechanisms relate and/or conflict with bilateral tax treaties and the GATS.

Examples of chapter 11 NAFTA disputes, a trade-investment-environment experience

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