U.S. community foundations: building a generous society in challenging times

Community foundations are nonprofit organizations promoting philanthropy for projects useful in a defined geographic area. This paper aims to highlight how U.S. community foundations are building a generous society with the engagement of multiple stakeholders. Our study analyses the marketing strategies of a sample of 100 of the largest U.S. community foundations in 2010 and 2013. A cluster analysis examines financial performance, aver- age number of recipients, and related organizations to discover the level of philanthropic activities and relationships, revenue diversi- fication, and the level of competition on the fundraising side

International Diversity in Measuring the Fair Value of Life Insurance Contracts*

This paper discusses international diversity in accounting for insurance contracts as reported under various Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAPs) in Australia, Canada, the U.K. and the U.S.A. Relative to statutory-based accounting principles, existing GAAPs allow insurance firms to match income to expenses over the term of an insurance contract in order to provide a more “realistic” basis for reporting to shareholders. However, those GAAPs do not employ a coherent and consistent view of how to measure the fair value of a life insurance firm's business. The International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) has tentatively concluded that fair value should be used in accounting for insurance contracts. This paper discusses how existing GAAPs differ from fair values and simulates their impact on the profits emerging on a simple endowment policy. We also consider Solvency II as providing a broader conceptual fair value-based framework within which additional risk-related disclosures can address currently unresolved conceptual and practical problems in implementing fair value for insurance contracts and related financial instruments. These recommendations are likely to bear upon current deliberations by the IASB on financial instruments and life insurance accounting. The Geneva Papers (2009) 34, 197–227. doi:10.1057/gpp.2009.7

The Contribution of University Spin-Offs to the Competitive Advantage of Regions

The regional knowledge creation is the dominant economic explanation of regional competitiveness. In view of this, the commercialization and diffusion of knowledge/technology, developed in academia, have increased the attention of policy makers as strategic and key element, supporting and fostering the regional socio-economic development and competitiveness. University spin-offs (USOs), companies created to exploit the knowledge and technology developed within a university, are a potential and active way to stimulate the knowledge growth of economies in different regional contexts. The paper tests the hypothesis that USOs may partly determine the competitive advantage of the regions. Based on a longitudinal sample of 952 USOs located in 20 Italian administrative regions and by applying 6 linear-mixed models, the results show that USOs effectively contribute in fostering regional competitiveness only in terms of number (count) of USOs from a given university, while the effect of their patent activity is weak. On the basis of the results, some remarkable theoretical, managerial, and policy implications are advanced