Measuring the Fiscal Impact of At-Large Versus Ward-Based Political Representation in Ontario Municipalities

This research report analyzes whether Ontario municipalities with ward-based electoral systems spend more per capita than those with at-large elections. American literature suggests that ward-based municipalities spend more because of log-rolling and politicians\u27 greater responsiveness to neighbourhood electorates. The analysis considerd per-capita expenditures for all Ontario municipalities in the year 2011. Operating and capital expenditures were analyzed separately, as were lower-tier, single-tier, and upper-tier municipalities. Contrary to expectations, ward municipalities spend less per capita than at-large ones on average, however the difference between the two groups was not found to be statistically significant when controlling for municipality type, municipal population size, population density, and region

Measuring equity in health care financing - reflections on (and alternatives to) the World Health Organization's fairness of financing index

In its latest World Health Report, The World Health Organization (WHO) argues that a key dimension of a health system's performance is the fairness of its financing system. The report discusses how policymakers can improve this aspect of performance, proposes an index of fairness, discusses how it should be put into operation, and presents a league table of countries, ranked by fairness with which their health services are financed. The author shows that the WHO index cannot discriminate between health financing systems that are regressive, and those that are progressive - and cannot discriminate between horizontal inequity, and progressiveness, or regressiveness. The index cannot tell policymakers whether it deviates from 1 (complete fairness) because households with similar incomes spend different amounts on health care (horizontal inequity), or because households with different incomes spend different proportions of their income on health care (vertical inequity, given the WHO's interpretation of the ability-to-pay principle) - although the two have different policy implications. With the WHO's index, progressiveness, and regressiveness are both treated as unfair. This makes no sense, because policymakers who may be strongly averse to regressive payments (which worsen income distribution) may in the name of fairness be quite receptive to progressive payments (requiring that the better-off, who may be willing to spend proportionately more on health care, are required to pay proportionately more). The author compares the WHO index with an alternative, and more illuminating approach developed in the income redistribution literature in the early 1990s, and used in the late 1990s, to study the fairness of various OECD health care financing systems. He illustrates the differences between the approaches with an empirical comparison, using data on out-of-pocket payments for health services in Vietnam for 1993 and 1998. This analysis is of some interest in its own right, given the large share of health spending from out-of-pocket payments in Vietnam, and the changes in fees, and drug prices over the 1990s.

A Paradox of Plenty? Rent Distribution and Political Stability in Oil States

Resource curse theory claims that resource abundance encourages violent conflict. A study of 37 oil-producing developing countries, however, reveals that oil states with very high levels of oil revenue are remarkably stable. An analysis of the ways in which governments spend oil revenues identifies two distinct types of rentier systems – the large-scale distributive state and the patronage-based system – which are strongly linked to instability or its absence. However, some deviant cases, such as Equatorial Guinea and Gabon, illustrate the need for further research. Apparently, the notion of a “paradox of plenty” has neglected rentier mechanisms that avoid conflict.Resource Curse, Paradox of Plenty, Oil, Rentier State, Violent Conflict, Political Stability, Developing World

Promarc: An Online Skills and Projects Marketplace

Technical projects can vary greatly in terms of cost, complexity, and time. Project leads spend a lot of valuable time and energy making sure that their teams are organized and on-task. A major part of their responsibilities includes putting together a team with the right skills in order to maximize efficiency. Having a platform where project leads can quickly find team members with the right skills would save them a lot of stress and trouble. The goal of this project is to deliver such a platform, where users can make posts about their projects and the technical skills that they require, and be connected to an entire network of potential viable team members. Our system consists of a web application connected to a database backend, accessible through different interfaces depending on the credentials of the user. This report will also provide an in-depth analysis on the systems requirements specifications, use cases, data flow, involved actors, architecture, testing procedures, risk analysis, development timeline, final results, and societal impact

Evaluating cost taxonomies for information systems management

The consideration of costs, benefits and risks underpin many Information System (IS) evaluation decisions. Yet, vendors and project-champions alike tend to identify and focus much of their effort on the benefits achievable from the adoption of new technology, as it is often not in the interest of key stakeholders to spend too much time considering the wider cost and risk implications of enterprise-wide technology adoptions. In identifying a void in the literature, the authors of the paper present a critical analysis of IS-cost taxonomies. In doing so, the authors establish that such cost taxonomies tend to be esoteric and difficult to operationalize, as they lack specifics in detail. Therefore, in developing a deeper understanding of IS-related costs, the authors position the need to identify, control and reduce IS-related costs within the information systems evaluation domain, through culminating and then synthesizing the literature into a frame of reference that supports the evaluation of information systems through a deeper understanding of IS-cost taxonomies. The paper then concludes by emphasizing that the total costs associated with IS-adoption can only be determined after having considered the multi-faceted dimensions of information system investments

Development programs for one-shot systems using multiple-state design reliability models

Design reliability at the beginning of a product development program is typically low and development costs can account for a large proportion of total product cost. We consider how to conduct development programs (series of tests and redesigns) for one-shot systems (which are destroyed at first use or during testing). In rough terms, our aim is to both achieve high final design reliability and spend as little of a fixed budget as possible on development. We employ multiple-state reliability models. Dynamic programming is used to identify a best test-and-redesign strategy and is shown to be presently computationally feasible for at least 5-state models. Our analysis is flexible enough to allow for the accelerated stress testing needed in the case of ultra-high reliability requirements, where testing otherwise provides little information on design reliability change. --development programs,one-shot systems,multiple-state design reliability,test,redesign,optimal programs,dynamic programming,accelerated testing

A Methodological Toolkit to Reform Payment Systems: An Example of Applied Cost-Benefit Analysis

In principle, a careful evaluation of costs and benefits should be a wise rule for everyone who has to take any important decision. In particular, it is very important when a payment system reform is at stake. Since many stakeholders are involved in a payment system reform, the final decisions are going to be the result of several cost-benefit analyses and of “negotiation” among economic agents, in particular system providers, system participants, and end users. In this paper we will only focus on cost-benefit analysis, providing both theoretical guidelines and numerical examples. We conclude that past evaluations of payment system reforms mainly focused on qualitative assessments, hence overlooking quantitative ones. So, we suggest that it would be worthy for international institutions to spend some efforts to build, manage and make available to all countries a database on payments systems, with both relevant data and methods to assess costs and benefits

Designing for frustration and disputes in the family car

This article appears with the express permission of the publisher, IGI Global.Families spend an increasing amount of time in the car carrying out a number of activities including driving to work, caring for children and co-ordinating drop-offs and pickups. While families travelling in cars may face stress from difficult road conditions, they are also likely to be frustrated by coordinating a number of activities and resolving disputes within the confined space of car. A rising number of in-car infotainment and driver-assistance systems aim to help reduce the stress from outside the vehicle and improve the experience of driving but may fail to address sources of stress from within the car. From ethnographic studies of family car journeys, we examine the work of parents in managing multiple stresses while driving, along with the challenges of distractions from media use in the car. Keeping these family extracts as a focus for analysis, we draw out some design considerations that help build on the observations from our empirical work.Microsoft Research and the Dorothy Hodgkin Awar