COST ACCOUNTING IN US CITIES: TRANSACTION COSTS AND GOVERNANCE FACTORS AFFECTING COST ACCOUNTING DEVELOPMENT AND USE

Cost accounting in government is a topic that has an oddly uncertain place in public financial management. Many people know what it is as an ideal construct but do not know what it is in practice. This uncertainty of practice and strong expectations about what it should be creates a tightrope that must be consciously attended to and exacts a toll on those who study its practice. For example, activity based costing, or ABC, was generally presumed to be the state of the art for cost accounting in government (Geiger, 2010). While there has been much research about cost accounting in the context of private organizations, the literature on cost accounting in public organizations has not kept pace with its development for the past two decades, especially when many public organizations are experiencing fiscal stress and there is a renewed interest in the subject of cost measurement and containment. This thesis reviews the development of cost accounting research and practices, including the practice of a hybrid of traditional cost accounting and ABC. The research then applies transaction cost theory and a variety of contextual factors that are supported in the literature to create a theoretical model of how cost accounting is used in public organizations. The model is tested on a case study of an ABC implementation in a small city. The insights from this analysis are corroborated through the analysis of the cost accounting practices in a sample of 30 large US cities. The hierarchical logistic regression of 1122 services in these cities finds that the transaction cost variables of asset specificity and uncertainty are significant factors that influence which services get measured in the cost accounting plans. The final empirical chapter looks at why cost accounting is used in US cities and shows that fiscal stress is related to US cities using cost accounting. The last chapter draws conclusions from the current research and discusses avenues for future research

Accounting in Networks. Hkan Hkansson, Kalle Kraus and Johnny Lind. New York: Routledge. 2010. 368 pp. $155 (cloth).

While networks are increasingly seen as the right thing for public administrators to do (O'Leary & Gerard, 2013), there is little research on the financial accountability of public networks and collaborations (Thurmaier & Mitchell, 2013).  Even though surveys of public managers reveal that some of the top reasons for collaborating and network service delivery are financial (O'Leary & Gerard, 2013), practical knowledge of how networks are financially managed is quite limited.  As a field of study, accounting is much more directed toward these issues.  While the book Accounting in Networks (Hakansson, Kraus, & Lind, 2010a) reflect that its subject is a new area of study even for the broader field of accounting, the publication of this book marks a foundational work for those that are interested in the subject of accounting and financial management of public networks as well

Taking Stock: Assessing and Improving Performance Budgeting Theory and Practice

This is the author's final draft. Copyright 2015 Taylor & Francis.Since the passing of the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) of 1993, the past 20 years represent one of the most remarkable eras for performance budgeting initiatives in the United States. As a result, many studies about this tool have also been conducted and published. Based on a systematic review of articles on performance budgeting-related research in major journals in the ten years between 2002 and 2011, this study assesses how performance budgeting research has evolved over time, reviews its accomplishments, and suggests a few directions for future studies, such as the need to control for different intervening factors to establish causality, the need for more coherent theoretical frameworks to guide empirical work and structure the relationship between causal factors, and the need for methodological diversity. We also present a few long-standing questions of performance budgeting that future studies may revisit carefully

Ranking the efficiency of gas hydrate anti agglomerants through molecular dynamic simulations

Using both computational and experimental methods, the capacity of four different surfactant molecules to inhibit the agglomeration of sII hydrate particles was assessed. The computational simulations were carried out using both steered and non-steered Molecular Dynamics (MD), simulating the coalescence process of a hydrate slab and a water droplet, both covered with surfactant molecules. The experimental work was based on rocking cell measurements, determining the minimum effective dose necessary to inhibit agglomeration. Overall, good agreement was obtained between the performance predicted by the simulations and the experimental measurements. Moreover, the simulations allowed to gain additional insights that are not directly accessible via experiments, such as an analysis of the mass density profiles, the diffusion coefficients, or the orientations of the long tails

Presence of Symptoms 6 Weeks After COVID-19 Among Vaccinated and Unvaccinated US Healthcare Personnel: A Prospective Cohort Study

OBJECTIVES: Although COVID-19 vaccines offer protection against infection and severe disease, there is limited information on the effect of vaccination on prolonged symptoms following COVID-19. Our objective was to determine differences in prevalence of prolonged symptoms 6 weeks after onset of COVID-19 among healthcare personnel (HCP) by vaccination status, and to assess differences in timing of return to work. DESIGN: Cohort analysis of HCP with COVID-19 enrolled in a multicentre vaccine effectiveness study. HCP with COVID-19 between December 2020 and August 2021 were followed up 6 weeks after illness onset. SETTING: Health systems in 12 US states. PARTICIPANTS: HCP participating in a vaccine effectiveness study were eligible for inclusion if they had laboratory-confirmed symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 with mRNA vaccination (symptom onset ≥14 days after two doses) or no prior vaccination. Among 681 eligible participants, 419 (61%) completed a follow-up survey to assess symptoms reported 6 weeks after illness onset. EXPOSURES: Two doses of a COVID-19 mRNA vaccine compared with no COVID-19 vaccine. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Prevalence of symptoms 6 weeks after onset of COVID-19 illness and days to return to work. RESULTS: Among 419 HCP with COVID-19, 298 (71%) reported one or more COVID-like symptoms 6 weeks after illness onset, with a lower prevalence among vaccinated participants compared with unvaccinated participants (60.6% vs 79.1%; adjusted risk ratio 0.70, 95% CI 0.58 to 0.84). Following their illness, vaccinated HCP returned to work a median 2.0 days (95% CI 1.0 to 3.0) sooner than unvaccinated HCP (adjusted HR 1.37, 95% CI 1.04 to 1.79). CONCLUSIONS: Receipt of two doses of a COVID-19 mRNA vaccine among HCP with COVID-19 illness was associated with decreased prevalence of COVID-like symptoms at 6 weeks and earlier return to work

31st Annual Meeting and Associated Programs of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC 2016) : part two

Background The immunological escape of tumors represents one of the main ob- stacles to the treatment of malignancies. The blockade of PD-1 or CTLA-4 receptors represented a milestone in the history of immunotherapy. However, immune checkpoint inhibitors seem to be effective in specific cohorts of patients. It has been proposed that their efficacy relies on the presence of an immunological response. Thus, we hypothesized that disruption of the PD-L1/PD-1 axis would synergize with our oncolytic vaccine platform PeptiCRAd. Methods We used murine B16OVA in vivo tumor models and flow cytometry analysis to investigate the immunological background. Results First, we found that high-burden B16OVA tumors were refractory to combination immunotherapy. However, with a more aggressive schedule, tumors with a lower burden were more susceptible to the combination of PeptiCRAd and PD-L1 blockade. The therapy signifi- cantly increased the median survival of mice (Fig. 7). Interestingly, the reduced growth of contralaterally injected B16F10 cells sug- gested the presence of a long lasting immunological memory also against non-targeted antigens. Concerning the functional state of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), we found that all the immune therapies would enhance the percentage of activated (PD-1pos TIM- 3neg) T lymphocytes and reduce the amount of exhausted (PD-1pos TIM-3pos) cells compared to placebo. As expected, we found that PeptiCRAd monotherapy could increase the number of antigen spe- cific CD8+ T cells compared to other treatments. However, only the combination with PD-L1 blockade could significantly increase the ra- tio between activated and exhausted pentamer positive cells (p= 0.0058), suggesting that by disrupting the PD-1/PD-L1 axis we could decrease the amount of dysfunctional antigen specific T cells. We ob- served that the anatomical location deeply influenced the state of CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes. In fact, TIM-3 expression was in- creased by 2 fold on TILs compared to splenic and lymphoid T cells. In the CD8+ compartment, the expression of PD-1 on the surface seemed to be restricted to the tumor micro-environment, while CD4 + T cells had a high expression of PD-1 also in lymphoid organs. Interestingly, we found that the levels of PD-1 were significantly higher on CD8+ T cells than on CD4+ T cells into the tumor micro- environment (p < 0.0001). Conclusions In conclusion, we demonstrated that the efficacy of immune check- point inhibitors might be strongly enhanced by their combination with cancer vaccines. PeptiCRAd was able to increase the number of antigen-specific T cells and PD-L1 blockade prevented their exhaus- tion, resulting in long-lasting immunological memory and increased median survival

Acquisition in a World of Joint Capabilities: Methods for Understanding Cross-Organizational Network Performance

Naval Postgraduate School Acquisition Research Progra

Replication Data for: More Gender Bias in Academia? Examining the Influence of Gender and Formalization on Student Worker Rule Following

Dataset and replication code for statistical analyses provided in SPSS format