The Impact of the 2007-09 Credit Crunch on the Funding of Public Sector Infrastructure in the UK

The 2007-09 credit crunch has not only created problems for the UK’s public finances in meeting the costs of bailing out commercial banks and dealing with recession but also for providing better public services. This paper analyses the causes of the credit crunch, government policies to address it and its impact on the financing of new public sector infrastructure in the UK. It finds that provision of new public sector infrastructure and related services has been adversely affected by the impact of the credit crunch on Private Finance Initiatives (PFIs). Commercial banks are now generally only willing to lend to replace collapsed PFI bond financing if new PFI contracts reduce financial risks. By such means, PFIs can be expected to survive but within an increasingly diverse mixture of procurement methods

Pricing joint use of municipal services : theoretical perspectives and regulatory issues

This paper analyses price regulation of inter-municipal contracts in Finland to demonstrate interpretative problems of regulatory rules specifying full-cost or market prices and, by so doing, deepen understanding of the theoretical underpinnings for pricing collaborative municipal services. It considers how to price inter-municipal services taking into account the specific socio-economic nature of inter-municipal cooperation, including both financial and non-financial objectives, through a new joint-use pricing model of municipal services that challenges the supremacy of full-cost pricing requirements in cases of inter-municipal collaborative contracting. Acknowledging limitations and benefits, it concludes European Single Market rules militate against municipal discretion and localism.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Initiative procurement documents : the difference between The United Kingdom and Malaysia / Nooriha Abdullah, Darinka Asenova and Stephen J. Bailey.

The aim of this paper is to analyse the risk transfer issue in Public Private Partnership/Private Finance Initiative (PPP/PFI) procurement documents in the United Kingdom (UK) and Malaysia. It utilises qualitative research methods using documentation and interviews for data collection. The UK documents (guidelines and contracts) identify the risks related to this form of public procurement of services and make explicit the appropriate allocation of those risks between the public and the private sector PPP/PFI partners and so the types of risks each party should bear. However, in Malaysia, such allocation of risks was not mentioned in PPP/PFI guidelines. Hence, a question arises regarding whether risk transfer exists in Malaysian PPP/PFI projects, whether in contracts or by other means. This research question is the rationale for the comparative analysis of documents and practices relating to risk transfer in the PPP/PFI procurements in both countries. The results clarify risk-related issues that arise in implementing PPP/PFI procurement in Malaysia, in particular how risk is conceptualised, recognised and allocated (whether explicitly or implicitly), whether or not that allocation is intended to achieve optimum risk transfer, and so the implications for achievement of value for money or other such objectives in PPP/PFI

Outsourcing in Sandy Springs and Other US Cities: Insights for Other Countries

This paper analyses the partnership-based outsourcing model of service transformation in USA local government, focusing on the city of Sandy Springs which became widely known for its large-scale ‘turnkey’ outsourcing of provision of its services in the mid-2000s. This city has been referred to in the literature as a special case not applicable to other countries, such as the UK, because of their very different contexts. However, there is now a public sector austerity context within which to reassess Sandy Springs’ use of turnkey outsourcing to achieve significant cost savings and improve services. The paper reports empirical research which it uses to derive insights for municipalities considering outsourcing. Those insights can help improve both policy and professional practice by outlining key issues for consideration when trying to ‘do more with less’ money

O2 uptake kinetics as a determinant of exercise tolerance

Abstract Oxygen uptake ( O2) kinetics determine the magnitude of the O2 deficit and the degree of metabolic perturbation and is considered to be an important determinant of exercise tolerance; however, there is limited empirical evidence to demonstrate that O2 kinetics is a direct determinant of exercise tolerance. The purpose of this thesis was to investigate O2 kinetics as a determinant of exercise tolerance and to consider its potential interaction with the maximum O2 ( O2max) and the W′ (the curvature constant of the hyperbolic power-duration relationship) in setting the tolerable duration of exercise. Recreationally-active adult humans volunteered to participate in the investigations presented in this thesis. Pulmonary O2 kinetics was assessed on a breath-by-breath basis and exercise tolerance was assessed by a time-to-exhaustion trial, with exhaustion taken as the inability to maintain the required cadence. A period of repeated sprint training (RST) resulted in faster phase II O2 kinetics (Pre: 29 ± 5, Post: 23 ± 5 s), a reduced O2 slow component (Pre: 0.52 ± 0.19, Post: 0.40 ± 0.17 L•min-1), an increased O2max (Pre: 3.06 ± 0.62, Post: 3.29 ± 0.77 L•min-1) and a 53% improvement in severe exercise tolerance. A reduced O2 slow component and enhanced exercise tolerance was also observed following inspiratory muscle training (Pre: 0.60 ± 0.20, Post: 0.53 ± 0.24 L•min-1; Pre: 765 ± 249, Post: 1061 ± 304 s, respectively), L-arginine (ARG) administration (Placebo: 0.76 ± 0.29 L•min-1 vs. ARG: 0.58 ± 0.23; Placebo: 562 ± 145 s vs. ARG: 707 ± 232 s, respectively) and dietary nitrate supplementation administered as nitrate-rich beetroot juice (BR) (Placebo: 0.74 ± 0.24 vs. BR: 0.57 ± 0.20 L•min-1; Placebo: 583 ± 145 s vs. BR: 675 ± 203, respectively). However, compared to a control condition without prior exercise, the completion of a prior exercise bout at 70% Δ (70% of the difference between the work rate at the gas exchange threshold [GET] and the work rate at the O2max + the work rate at the GET) with 3 minutes recovery (70-3-80) speeded overall O2 kinetics by 41% (Control: 88 ± 22 s, 70-3-80: 52 ± 13 s), but impaired exercise tolerance by 16% (Control: 437 ± 79 s, 70-3-80: 368 ± 48 s) during a subsequent exercise bout. When the recovery duration was extended to 20 minutes (70-20-80) to allow a more complete replenishment of the W′, overall kinetics was speeded to a lesser extent (by 23%; 70-20-80: 68 ± 19 s) whereas exercise performance was enhanced by 15% (70-20-80: 567 ± 125 s) compared to the control condition. In addition, the faster O2 kinetics observed when exercise was initiated with a fast start (FS; 35 ± 6 s), compared to an even start (ES; 41 ± 10 s) and slow start (SS; 55 ± 14 s) pacing strategy, allowed the achievement of O2max in a 3 minute trial and exercise performance was enhanced. Exercise performance was unaffected in a 6 minute trial with a FS, despite faster O2 kinetics, as the O2max was attained in all the variously paced trials. Therefore, the results of this thesis demonstrate that changes in exercise performance cannot be accounted for, purely, by changes in O2 kinetics. Instead, enhanced exercise performance appears to be contingent on the interaction between the factors underpinning O2 kinetics, the O2max and the W′, in support of the proposed ‘triad model’ of exercise performance

Principal Component Analysis with Noisy and/or Missing Data

We present a method for performing Principal Component Analysis (PCA) on noisy datasets with missing values. Estimates of the measurement error are used to weight the input data such that compared to classic PCA, the resulting eigenvectors are more sensitive to the true underlying signal variations rather than being pulled by heteroskedastic measurement noise. Missing data is simply the limiting case of weight=0. The underlying algorithm is a noise weighted Expectation Maximization (EM) PCA, which has additional benefits of implementation speed and flexibility for smoothing eigenvectors to reduce the noise contribution. We present applications of this method on simulated data and QSO spectra from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.Comment: Accepted for publication in PASP; v2 with minor updates, mostly to bibliograph