Policy Analysis of The Regional Government of Bengkulu Province in Supporting Fiscal Independence in The Autonomy Era

This study aims to measure how the degree of fiscal independence of Bengkulu Province in the era of autonomy and to find out how the policies of the Bengkulu Province local government in supporting fiscal independence in the era of autonomy. This research uses descriptive quantitative method using secondary data. Data analysis was performed using multiple linear regression model data analysis techniques. Based on the results of the study, it is known that the degree of fiscal independence of Bengkulu Province in the period 2013-2017 is for the proportion of PAD to TPD obtained an average of 31.79% based on the interval scale is stated to be sufficient, BHPBP against TPD obtained an average result of 4, 37% based on the interval scale was stated to be very poor, while the DAU and DAK against the TPD obtained an average result of 54.30% with the interval scale declared very good. The policy of the Bengkulu Province local government in supporting fiscal independence has made policies to create a conducive climate for investors, policies to encourage regional economic growth and regional spending are strived to support the achievement of development goals effectively and efficientl

Functional Mobility and Balance of College-Age Adults Before and After TRX® Suspension Training

The suggestion that functional mobility and balance can be improved with targeted physical activity interventions for individuals to maintain efficient movement patterns and independence throughout the life span is the cause for many current lines of research. Understanding how muscle activation contributes to efficient movement patterns is coupled with the need to use assessment tools that can measure functional mobility and balance in an individual over time; however, the need for effective exercise intervention programs designed to improve functional mobility and balance persists throughout current research literature. The purpose of this study was to investigate how TRX® Suspension Training impacted the functional mobility and balance of college-age adults. Undergraduate and graduate students (n = 12; 20.3 ± 1.5 years) participated in a six-week TRX® Suspension Training program. Functional mobility and balance were assessed pre- and post-intervention using the Functional Movement System (FMS) and the Y Balance Test (YBT). Eleven participants completed the study. A significant difference was found for the FMS composite scores as well as in the left YBT (p = 0.02) and right YBT (p = 0.01) composite scores pre- to post-intervention. Significant differences were found in the individual FMS test for left shoulder mobility (p = 0.034) and in the following directional YBTs: left posteromedial (p = 0.036), right posteromedial (p = 0.050), left posterolateral (p = 0.014), and right posterolateral (p = 0.050). While the benefits of TRX® Suspension Training intervention shows promise in improving functional mobility and balance in these college age adults, more research in other populations such as older adults and in various settings such as rehabilitation and sports performance could be useful in determining the degree of change that TRX® Suspension Training can provide for functional mobility and balance improvements

Shall the law set them free? The formal and actual independence of regulatory agencies

Regulation by independent agencies, rather than ministries, is believed to result in better policy outcomes. Yet this belief requires one to accept a complex causal chain leading from formal independence to actual independence from politics, to policy decisions and, ultimately, to policy outcomes. In this study, we analyze the link between the formal and actual independence of regulatory agencies in Western Europe. New data on the appointment of chief executives of these agencies is used to create a proxy for the actual independence of agencies from politics. The analysis demonstrates that formal independence is an important determinant of actual independence, but the rule of law and the number of veto players matter as well

Power Sharing and the Rule of Law in the Aftermath of Civil War

What effect do power-sharing institutions agreed to as part of civil war settlements have on the development of the rule of law in post–civil war states? We contend that power-sharing measures facilitate the emergence of the rule of law in two ways. First, they establish a form of institutional constraint that promotes judicial autonomy and independence. Second, they foster a sense of security among judges and other political actors that bolsters commitment to the law. We demonstrate the plausibility of a positive relationship between power sharing and the rule of law through an analysis of post–civil war states between the years 1948 and 2006. Our findings suggest that civil war settlements can help to establish the rule of law when they include mechanisms aimed at allaying the insecurities of political actors in the postconflict environment

De Facto Judicial Independence and Physical Integrity Rights

Economists, political scientists, and legal scholars have argued that independent judiciaries have an important role to play in promoting economic development and protecting property rights. We argue that judicial independence can also have a positive impact on the protection of human rights. To assess the human rights impact of a de facto independent judiciary, we also argue that scholars must account for the potential of endogeneity between judicial independence and protection of human rights. We examine whether greater de facto independence improves government respect for citizens’ physical integrity rights, using a comprehensive dataset of 193 countries from 1981 to 2010. Employing an instrumental variables approach to control for endogeneity, we find strong support for the argument that greater levels of de facto judicial independence improve government respect for physical integrity rights. These findings are robust to changes in measurement, estimation techniques, and model specification. Failing to account for endogeneity will tend to overemphasize the ability of completely independent courts to improve government respect for physical integrity rights

Defections From The Inner Circle: Social Exchange, Reciprocity, And The Diffusion Of Board Independence In Us Corporations

This study seeks to reconcile traditional sociological views of the corporate board as an instrument of elite cohesion with recent evidence of greater board activism and control over top management. We propose that CEO-directors may typically support fellow CEOs by impeding increased board control over management but that CEO-directors may also foster this change if they have experienced it in their own corporation. Drawing on social exchange theory, we develop and test the argument that these CEO-directors may experience a reversal in the basis for generalized social exchange with other top managers from one of deference and support to one of independence and control. Using data from a large sample of major U.S. corporations over a recent ten-year period, we show (1) how CEO-directors ''defect'' from the network of mutually supportive corporate leaders, (2) how defections have diffused across organizations and over time, and (3) how this has contributed to increased board control, as measured by changes in board structure, diversification strategy, and contingent compensation. We also provide evidence that a social exchange perspective can explain the diffusion of these changes better than more conventional perspectives on network diffusion that emphasize imitation or learning.Business Administratio

Judging Measures

The question of how to optimally design judicial institutions is one of central importance to the scholarship focused on courts. Basic questions such as whether there should be mandatory retirement for judges, whether judges should be expected to write their own opinions and whether greater racial or gender diversity on the courts improves decision making are optimal design questions. Given the vast variation in the types of judicial system designs used around the world (and even within the United States), it should be possible to conduct a comparative analysis of the relative efficacy of the different designs. These comparisons cannot be evaluated, however, without first tackling the matter of how to measure justice or judicial performance. Although within the legal academy and the judiciary there is considerable skepticism and hostility to the measurement project, we argue that the project is worth attempting for both judges and academics. That said, the simple measures often used today, while necessary, cannot be relied on exclusively. To achieve a more reliable and useful measurement, judges must be involved in the process of arriving at the right characteristics to measure and the right ways to measure them. If judges get involved in improving the quality of data collection and measurement, the inherent dangers in empirical analysis of the judiciary will both be recognized and more effectively navigated. At the same time, empirical analysis with judicial participation is more likely to assist judges and judicial policymakers

The study of probability model for compound similarity searching

Information Retrieval or IR system main task is to retrieve relevant documents according to the users query. One of IR most popular retrieval model is the Vector Space Model. This model assumes relevance based on similarity, which is defined as the distance between query and document in the concept space. All currently existing chemical compound database systems have adapt the vector space model to calculate the similarity of a database entry to a query compound. However, it assumes that fragments represented by the bits are independent of one another, which is not necessarily true. Hence, the possibility of applying another IR model is explored, which is the Probabilistic Model, for chemical compound searching. This model estimates the probabilities of a chemical structure to have the same bioactivity as a target compound. It is envisioned that by ranking chemical structures in decreasing order of their probability of relevance to the query structure, the effectiveness of a molecular similarity searching system can be increased. Both fragment dependencies and independencies assumption are taken into consideration in achieving improvement towards compound similarity searching system. After conducting a series of simulated similarity searching, it is concluded that PM approaches really did perform better than the existing similarity searching. It gave better result in all evaluation criteria to confirm this statement. In terms of which probability model performs better, the BD model shown improvement over the BIR model