Budget Categories Research Articles

Rational and Feasible Budget Allocation

Scarce resources can be allocated to budget categories by processing a set of goals to be achieved, alternative budget categories and relations between each budget category and each goal expressed in whatever terms with which the user is comfortable. A concrete example is given involving the allocating of a $500,000 budget to the police and the courts in the light of the goals of crime reduction and fair procedure in separating the innocent from the guilty. The police do better than the courts on crime reduction, but the courts do better than the police on fair procedure. Fair procedure, it is suggested, is considered more important than crime reduction. With that tentative assumption one can determine what proportion of the budget should be allocated to the police and what proportion to the courts. Initial allocations may be changed in the light of whatever constraints exist concerning minimum amounts that need to be allocated to the police or the courts. The initial allocations can also be subjected to a sensitivity analysis, to see how responsive they are to changes in the inputs concerning the relative importance of the goals and the nature of the relationships between each budget category and each goal.

A theory of rational and feasible budget allocation

The purpose of this article is to describe a method of allocating scarce resources across budget categories in a way that is both rational and feasible. It is rational because it allocates in proportion to proxies for elasticity coefficients in accordance with classical calculus optimization. It is, however, feasible in the sense that the proxies are of such a nature that they are easily obtained and can be easily worked with.

Estimating the consumption block of the HERMES models: an Application to the Netherlands

In this paper we apply the maximum likelihood method in order to estimate the Rotterdam model of consumer demand. As we dispose of 23 observations and want to distinguish 15 budget categories, well-defined estimators and test statistics can only be obtained by constraining the model in some way. In applied research this is usually done by imposing constraints on the contemporaneous covariance matrix of the disturbances of the model. The purpose of the present paper is to present a new and more flexible restricted specification of this covariance matrix, to compare its performance with those that are usually applied and to investigate the estimation results which it generates.

Achieving fiscal fitness: Budgeting basics for patient education managers

Patient education managers must be adept at developing and employing mechanisms for management planning and control; the operating budget is among the most powerful of such management tools. As a component of operational planning, the budget must be based upon clearly formulated program goals and objectives. Focusing on characteristics relevant to budgeting, the organization of one patient education department is described in this article. The budget categories employed by that department are presented as one possible budget framework. A simplified example of estimating costs for a new patient education activity is then illustrated. Emphasizing the imperative of linking funding appeals to administrative priorities, basic guidance concerning justification of funding requests is offered. The use of budget reports to analyze variance between actual and budgeted expenditures is subsequently examined. Finally, the article underscores the fact that continual effort to cultivate administrative support is a requisite for securing increased funding for patient education programs.

Congress takes on budget, other matters

This year's running of the Congressional budget marathon has officially started, with Senate passage of the first concurrent budget resolution for 1987. That resolution, which is nonbinding, sets budget ceilings for 21 separate budget functions or categories ranging from national defense to undistributed offsetting receipts. In general, the resolution calls for higher spending for civilian R&D programs than the Administration requested. As approved by the Senate, the budget authority ceiling for general science, space, and technology is $10.2 billion, 8% more than the Administration requested. That category includes the budgets of the National Science Foundation, the National Aeronautics & Space Administration, and the Department of Energy's general science programs. The ceiling for health programs—which includes budgets for the National Institutes of Health and consumer and occupational safety and health programs—is $38 billion, 7% more than requested by the Administration. The Senate approved a floor am...

1985 survey of biomedical & clinical engineering departments in U.S. hospitals.

The Journal of Clinical Engineering has conducted a broad scope survey of hospital biomedical and clinical engineering departments throughout the U.S. An earlier report provided salary and job responsibility data. This second report provides, for the first time, numerical data on the administration, facilities, budgets, department workload, personnel workload, employment benefits, quality assurance, and other professional aspects of the departments. The present report represents approximately 6% of all U.S. hospitals, 10% of all U.S. hospital beds, and over $1.1 Billion dollars worth of hospital equipment service responsibilities. Readers are cautioned not to use the statistical averages presented here as standards or guidelines because of the substantial and appropriate differences between departments. Nevertheless, the survey data provide a useful overview of the hospital-based clinical and biomedical engineering field. The survey determined that 58% of hospital biomedical activities are organized as separate departments reporting to hospital administration. From 1984 to 1985, department budgets increased by +12% overall. While all budget categories increased, wages were the greatest factor (+11%). Teaching facilities have substantially higher budgets than non-teaching. Department floor space increased +3.2% from year to year. Nationwide, an average of 226 sq. ft. is used per department staff member. Department test equipment increased by +11.4% from 1984 to 1985. During the same period, the total dollar value of equipment serviced by the departments increased by +10.5% and the number of devices serviced increased by +4.8%. Nationwide, the statistically average department serviced 2,220 devices worth $7,068,000. Department employment is growing at +10.8% per year (teaching department staffs +7.6%; non teaching +15.9%). Employment of BMETs grew by +8.6%; Clinical Engineers by +11.5%. A measure called Devices Per Person was steady at 500 devices per person from year-to-year. A second measure called Beds Per Person was, on average, 95 beds per department staff member (lower in teaching, higher in non teaching). Other averages are 136 Beds/BMET; 402 Beds/CE; and 390 Beds/Supervisor. Hospital employment benefits are detailed. Only 23% of departments are now equipped to use telecommunications. Virtually all departments have major Q.C. procedures in place.

Budget Allocation Patterns in Educational Evaluations

How are resources typically allocated across budget categories in evaluation studies? To address this question, data from two studies of evaluation budgeting practices are presented. In the first study, estimated budget figures were provided for formative and summative evaluations by evaluators in 29 state department of education evaluation units. In the second study, initial budget figures, final costs, and study characteristics were abstracted from the records of 85 evaluations conducted by an evaluation contracting firm. A common pattern of budget allocations was identified in which approximately 61% of the total evaluation budget was allocated to personnel, overhead added an additional 13% to 14% to the cost of the evaluation, and all other budget categories consisted of about 15% or less of the total budget. These allocation patterns were found to vary according to certam study characteristics, however, such as size of total budget, purpose of the evaluation (formative or summative), study design, and other client-related factors.

A Note on Geographic Living Cost Differentials

Recent papers have found that there is a systematic relationship between urban size and geographic living cost differentials (Cebula 1980 and 1984; Hogan 1984). These papers have analyzed Bureau of Labor Statistics' Urban Family Budgets for 37 metropolitan areas because they are one data source that provides required geographically comparable data. This paper provides further evidence on this subject by offering new empirical evidence using county-based cost of living data. A unique data set on prices of six commodity groups for Florida counties makes this analysis possible. Cebula (1980) predicts a negative relationship between population size and cost of living because of agglomeration economies that are associated with lower costs of production. Population density was assumed to exert upward pressure on cost of living because congestion would lead to greater transportation and marketing costs. Cebula includes in model SMSA per capita income, business property taxes, and a dummy variable indicating if SMSA was located in a right-towork state. Population size has predicted negative coefficient while that of population density was positive. Hogan (1984) questioned validity of these results because Cebula's model does not satisfactorily explain disaggregated budget categories. Hogan tested Cebula's model for twelve individual budget categories, concluding the shelter component was only major consumption category with relatively large differences for which Cebula's model was able to explain more than half variance. In his reply, Cebula (1984) argued

Measuring third world security expenditure: A research note

There is growing evidence that important amounts of security expenditure may not enter the budgets or the national accounts of many developing countries. This article outlines five of the most common mechanisms used by governments to obscure their security-related outlays: double bookkeeping, use of extra-budgetary accounts, highly aggregated budget categories, military assistance and governmental manipulation of foreign exchange. Delineating those countries which have used these — or other — mechanisms is difficult but some examples do exist and are used here to illustrate how countries have hidden security-related expenditure from public scrutiny.

Demographic Impacts on Demand Patterns in the Low-Income Setting

Examines the impact of alternative demographic structures (number and ages of children) on the composition of household demand in order to ascertain the appropriate functional form of such relationships and to identify the most useful demographic specification which captures household structure for use in macroeconomic-demographic simulation models. The Box and Cox transformation is utilized to identify Engel curves using macroeconomic household data from the Kenya Urban Household Budget Survey for the years 1968-69. An analysis of the likelihood function and the expenditure elasticities for 6 budget categories 3 functional forms and 4 demographic specifications is carried out to assess whether this functional form is an improvement and alternative demographic specifications are explored. It is concluded that the Box and Cox model adds little to the simple log-linear formulation and the complex demographic specifications yield relatively little insight. Over sizable ranges of income and family size in low income settings very simple expenditure-allocation models describe empirical reality quite well; households alter their spending and saving less in response to family size and composition than in terms of total resources available.

Patterns of Budgeting

Budgeting is such a universal and essential activity of governments, that it is often assumed it may be discussed in terms of a single set of concepts, and that research findings from experience may be extrapolated beyond their specific context without further thought. All governments appear to have to undertake very similar functions in mobilizing and spending revenues. It is, therefore, not surprising that for a long time budgeting has been subjected to a principles or how-to approach, which abstracts it from the environment altogether. Budgeting has been seen as a technique operating in a closed system, whose success depends on the enlightment and cooperation of those within the system. The dependence of those budgetary techniques upon specific conditions beyond the control of the direct participants has often not been appreciated, and the failure of advanced techniques of budgeting to gain acceptance or to accomplish their aims has left a wake of suspicion against attempts at generalized theorizing. The danger now is of over-reaction, and of contentment by scholars with anarchy, a superfluity of unconnected findings.' Facts may be built up without coherence, waiting for the one big computer which will magically glue them together. The fallacies that more equals better, and that theorizing must await comprehensiveness may impede clear thinking about what is already at hand, and result in random fact collection in place of focused research. What appears to be required is a comparative approach. The need for empirical research, whether confined to country or even a single jurisdiction or administrative unit, should not be downgraded. It remains essential, but it is also necessary to provide a perspective upon the methods and findings of that research-a self-awareness guarding against total and uncritical immersion in things as they are at the moment, and allowing room for comparison with things as they are in some place else, or as they have been in the past. At present even a vocabulary, outside formal budget categories, is lacking for this purpose. The need is to link budgeting and public finance with their environment, and to endeavor to promote meaningful hypotheses regarding mutual relationships between modes of handling financial resources and specific contextual features, between institutional constraints and possible budgetary outcomes. Any move toward theory along these lines is fraught with difficulties over and above the normal problems of comparative research. Public budgeting stands at the cross-roads of many disciplines2 and is open to many perspectivese.g., administrative theory, policy analysis, economics, political science-which tend to pull in different directions, and whose efforts cannot easily be added to another to provide an integrated account. Depending on the perspective chosen, therefore, there

A National Policy and Budgetary Framework for Housing and Community Development*

Recent legislation has determined that federal budget allocations and tax expenditures for housing should be tied to specific housing goals or “missions.” The major issues of national housing policy can be organized within six problem areas—three relating to production and three to consumption. Current federal housing programs can be classified into four broad budget categories (involving mortgage credit and thrift institutions, housing assistance, community development, and tax expenditures) and a fifth off‐budget category of credit market activities. By examining a matrix that relates these five areas of federal involvement to the six broad problem areas, this article attempts to provide an analytical foundation for a national policy and budgetary framework for housing, housing finance, and community development.

The safe, cheap and known: A content analysis of the first (1974) PBS program cooperative

With continued austerity in programming (and all other) budget categories, something has to give in the world of national public television programs—and here the authors support their contention that innovative, controversial, minority interest, and just plain esoteric programs are not chosen when placed up against what Natan Katzman terms “the safe, cheap and the known” programs. Expense is the excuse—but not always the reason for such choices. Mr. Reeves is a masters candidate in meteorology and mass communication (and a weatherman for WTVT television, St. Petersburg) while Dr. Hoffer is chairman of the department of mass communication, both of Florida State University.

A Coherent System for Manitoba

The emphasis of this Report is on the creation of a coherent system of post-secondary education in Manitoba, including the universities, the community colleges, and a new regional organization for non-institutional education. In order that this system should be effectively planned and coordinated, it is proposed that it be managed by an autonomous Commission on Post-Secondary Education with some advisory and many executive powers. To assure equality of opportunity and an increase in the role of the public in post-secondary education, a new instrument is proposed which would encourage local districts to take the initiative in meeting their own needs—to a large extent by using their own talents, though with support from the central government. Like most other recent reports on higher education, the theme of lifelong learning is central, as is the problem of financing. Of special interest in connection with the proposals for financing universities and colleges is the Task Force's proposal that the current formula for the allocation of operating funds on the basis of weighted student numbers should be replaced by assessment of institutional need in nine budget categories, only one of which (academic costs) would be based on student enrolment. In a sense, this would amount to a compromise between line-by-line budgeting and formula-based block financing.

Estimation of Demand Parameters under Consumer Budgeting: An Application to Argentina

AbstractThis study assumes that consumer expenditures occur in a stepwise fashion in which income is fist allocated to budget categories and then to optimum quantities within each category. With this assumption, a model was developed to estimate the price and icome elasticities of demand of all items in one budget category—like food—and the cross‐price elasticities of these items with all others. The approach permits one to specify the changes in expenditure levels on budget categories from cross‐section information and the flexibility of money. The model was empirically applied to Argentine consumption data.

Congress and the Defense Budget: 1960–1970

It is commonly held that Congress has made only inconsequential changes in the President's requests for defense appropriations. Scholarly studies of the budgetary process, notably the work of Fenno and Wildavsky, do not include defense spending in their analyses. For nondefense spending they find that Congress has primarily afiscalrather thanprogrammaticorientation toward appropriations.House and Senate changes in the President's defense appropriations requests were analyzed for the fiscal years 1960 through 1970. It was found that small Congressional changes in total defense spending obscured more substantial activity in particular budget categories. The concentration of Congressional activity in two of these categories—Procurement and R&D—indicates that Congress has had a significant programmatic orientation toward defense spending. Changes in the level of Congressional activity across time confirm this hypothesis.Efforts to measure the relative influence of the House and Senate proved inconclusive. The Senate dominated the conference committee, but the Senate's influence was concentrated in the least important budget categories. The House made most of the changes in the President's budget requests, but very few of such changes were appealed by the Defense Department to the Senate.

What are the programs in planning, programming, budgeting?

As organizations of all kinds grow larger, more diverse and more decentralized, they come to share a common error … that of unrealistic, imbalanced long-range planning. The application of program budgeting and systems analysis to this problem can establish realistic goals and more balanced and nearly optimal programs. In order to adapt the theories of planning-programming-budgeting systems to an educational organization, certain technical decisions must be made concerning program structure. For a multi-campus university such as the University of California, the question became one of projecting future resource and monetary requirements in such form that key policy decisions affecting resource requirements were readily apparent and that programmed requirements were translatable into budget categories. The base projections are the numbers of students by level and discipline. From these, resource and dollar requirements are assessed with regard to faculty, support (instructional equipment and supplies), capital outlay, plant maintenance and operation, and libraries. Those areas not based on student projections include organized research and public service. General administration projections are based on total expenditures. This breakdown provides a working structure from which to make finer allocations according to individual campus needs. Another technical consideration is the determination of the degree of centralization of decision-making. Program budgeting makes possible a higher degree of centralization but is consistent with any degree which is appropriate in the circumstances. The objective at the University of California is the progressive decentralization to the individual campuses not only of operating authority, but also of much initiative in planning. There are constraints, such as a dollar ceiling related to a specific student enrollment, but these do not prevent experimentation and diversity. The university-wide program model can serve as a standard, with allowances for advantageous transfers of funds with full understanding of their future consequences and implications, thus maintaining both local initiative and the systems approach.