Assessing Accrual Accounting Reform in Greek Public Hospitals: An Empirical Investigation

During the last decades, several countries worldwide have introduced financial management reforms, as an important part of the New Public Management (NPM) initiative at one or more levels of government sector, by either replacing or transforming their traditional budgetary cash accounting systems towards a business-like accrual accounting concept. Following the example of this upcoming managerial trend, the Greek government introduced in 2003 the accrual basis accounting into public hospitals, as the hospital sector is one of the areas where NPM reforms have been introduced in search of higher efficiency, effectiveness and economy in service production. The purpose of this paper is twofold. The first goal is to provide an overview of the government sector reform initiatives in Greece and to present empirical evidence regarding the adoption level of the accrual basis accounting standards in the Greek public Health sector. The second goal of the research is to investigate the impact of a range of potentially contingent factors on hospitals compliance with the accrual financial and cost accounting reform. The present analysis is based on the results of an empirical survey that took place during 2009. For the purposes of this survey, a structured questionnaire was prepared and sent to the Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) of 132 Greek public hospitals. In particular, a linear regression model analysis was used to examine the cross-sectional differences on a number of explanatory and implementation factors of the accounting reform adoption level. The empirical evidence reveals that the level of accrual and especially cost accounting adoption in Greek public hospitals is realized only to a limited extent. In particular, results show that the level of reform adoption is positively related to IT quality, reform related training, education level of accounting staff, and professional consultants’ support. However, no significant relationship was found between the level of reform adoption and hospital size, reform implementation cost, CEO educational background, experience effect, and absence of management-physicians conflict relationship. The main contribution of this study is the empirical evidence it provides on the approaches and processes used by the Government of Greece to implement accrual financial and cost accounting systems in the Greek National Health System (GNHS) and the role certain human, organizational and situational factors played in such implementations for enhancing researchers’ and managers’ understanding of major implementation processes and challenges as well as helping them refine models of effective implementation process and improve systems and processes on similar future projectsAccrual Accounting, Public Sector Accounting, Compliance, Public Hospitals, contingency factors

Meteorological Determinants Of Mosquito Populations In Connecticut

As climate change continues at an alarming rate, it is important to quantify and characterize its wide-ranging impacts at both the global and more localized scales. This study aims to build on this body of evidence that details the local impacts of climate change that have already begun to and will increasingly harm human health. The study explores time trends in Connecticut’s mosquito abundance, as well as potential meteorological determinants of abundance for one key species. Secondary analysis using computational techniques was performed on mosquito abundance data provided by the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station (CAES). Simple linear regression was performed on 27 mosquito species connected to viruses that cause human disease in the state of Connecticut. It was determined that the population sizes of 12 mosquito species are increasing in the state while 2 appear to be decreasing. The Culex pipiens mosquito was selected a priori for further analysis because of its strong connection to West Nile Virus in the state. A multiple linear regression model with an autoregressive time series function to control for temporal correlation between collected mosquito counts from year to year was fit and evaluated. This study concludes that the abundance of the Cx. pipiens is positively associated with both temperature and precipitation variables. As climate change continues to warm our planet and have impacts such as higher yearly temperatures and heavier rainfall, we can expect the abundance of certain mosquitos species to increase in Connecticut

Reviewer acknowledgement 2014

CONTRIBUTING REVIEWERS: The Editors of Human Genomics would like to thank all our reviewers who have contributed to the journal in volume 7 (2013)

Cypriot english literature: A stranger at the feast locally and globally

My focus in this essay revolves around a corpus of literature written by Cypriots in English that has yet to define itself either as a hyphened branch of a national literature or as a minor independent category. So from the outset, my paper has a twofold task: firstly, to draw attention to the paradoxical position of Cypriot English writers who remain outside the literary feast both at home and abroad; and secondly, to explore the literary vicissitudes of some works of this corpus, and to examine how their minor position locally in relation to the dominant literatures in Greek and Turkish, and internationally in relation to global English — a position that Deleuze and Guattari (1986) describe as ‘minor literature’— has engendered syncretic aesthetics

Situating Cypriot Anglophone Literature

This paper situates Cypriot Anglophone literature in relation to local and international literary categories. Discussing Cypriot Anglophone literature, it draws on Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of ‘minor’ literature that minorities construct within major languages. Cypriot Anglophone literature expresses itself in ways characteristic of ‘minor’ literature because it explores deterritorialisation with regard both to local cultural practices and the island’s English literary legacy. While official nationalist discourses on the island marginalise discourses that question nostalgia for ethnic purity and sexual heteronormativity, Cypriot Anglophone literature re-imagines communities beyond ethnic lines and across heteronormal sexual boundaries, enacting an experimental cosmopolitan aesthetic

The Employment Of Modern Financial Tools In The Exercise Of Historical Analysis: The Case Of The National Bank Of Greece (1842-1941)

The purpose of this paper is to show how we can use modern financial tools in the exercise of historical analysis.  In other words, this article is the first one, which illuminates the intersection between the two different economic disciplines of Financial Analysis and Economic History.  This is accomplished by shedding some light in the performance of the biggest Greek bank during the first hundred years of its operation; that is, the period 1842-1941. The main conclusions of the analysis is that the National Bank experienced a quite high (i.e. above 20%) return on equity during the period 1920-27, while its return on assets was quite high (i.e. above 2%) during the period 1843-89.  Last but not least, the National Bank utilised financial leverage heavily to increase return on equity during the period 1913-27

Regulation of L-periaxin by the Ubiquitin/Proteasome pathway

The morphological changes required for the ensheathment of peripheral nerve axons by Schwann cells are believed to be regulated by the cell cytoskeleton and its associated proteins. Control of the levels of these proteins is likely to be necessary for the assembly of compact myelin and the stability of the sheath.L-periaxin was initially identified as a putative cytoskeleton-associated protein expressed by myelin-forming Schwann cells based upon its insolubility in non-ionic detergent. The pattern of developmental expression of L-periaxin and its shift in localisation from the adaxonal to abaxonal membranes of myelinating Schwann cells following their association with axons, implied a role in the stabilisation of the myelin sheath. In this work, an F-box containing protein termed Fbxl6, was found to associate with the C-terminal acidic region of L-periaxin, in a search for binding partners of Lperiaxin using the yeast two-hybrid method. The observed interaction was verified by in vitro pull down assays using mouse sciatic nerve homogenate and L-periaxin generated by in vitro transcription/ translation.F-box proteins have been identified as components of a multi-enzyme complex termed SCF (Skp 1 / Cullin 1/F-box), which is responsible for the recruitment of substrates for ubiquitination and subsequent destruction. Fbxl6 belongs to the leucinerich repeat (LRR)-containing subfamily of F-box proteins. The C-terminal LRR region of the protein serves as the binding site for L-periaxin. whereas the F-box motif permits association with the core SCF complex. L-periaxin was detected as a ubiquitin conjugate in sciatic nerve explant cultures. Ubiquitination of the protein acts as a signal for degradation by the 26S proteasome, as revealed by stabilisation of L-periaxin upon inhibition of the proteasome by epoxomicin.The participation of L-periaxin in a recently identified dystroglycan- dystrophinrelated protein 2 (DRP2) complex, suggests an indirect role for Fbxl6 in the structural and signalling functions of the cortical cytoskeleton. Regulation of the levels of Lperiaxin by the ubiquitin/ proteasome pathway, mediated by Fbxl6, is likely to be important for the stabilisation of the Schwann cell-axon unit