Government Costs Research Articles

How to carry out technological innovation in the rare earth industry?

As an important strategic industry in China, the rare earth industry needs to extend its industrial chain to the high-end by carrying out technological innovation. This paper discusses the dynamics of technological innovation in rare earth enterprises and how local governments regulate the behaviors of these enterprises. First, we establish an evolutionary game model between local governments and rare earth enterprises, considering direct and indirect factors of policy regulations regarding the rare earth industry. Second, we analyze the mechanism and evolution process of governance strategy selection and explain the efficiency and evolution path of the local governance system under different policy orientations by finding the stable point of the replication dynamic process. Finally, we use numerical simulation to analyze the impacts of initial willingness and direct and indirect factors on the dynamic evolution process. The results demonstrate that (1) the regulation cost of local governments and subsidies have negative impact on local government decisions and rewards generated by enterprises' technological innovation have positive impact on local government decisions; (2) benefits, direct subsidies from local governments, and indirect performance rewards from the central government have positive impact on enterprises' technological innovation decisions. Based on the empirical results, we recommend that to promote enterprises' participation in technological innovation, central and local governments should create policy for rules and regulations for rare earth enterprises by comprehensively considering the technological risks and spillover effects rather than increasing subsidies. Moreover, based on their characteristics, rare earth enterprises should create an environment for technological innovation and integrate into regional technological innovation platforms.

The impact of cost on quality of surgical management in non-metastatic extremity sarcoma: A cross-country narrative literature review with a systematic approach.

Extremity sarcoma surgery entails significant costs for patients, governments and insurers. Multiple studies have described individual costs, however, the overall impact of cost on the quality of surgical care remains unclear. A narrative review with a systematic approach was undertaken to compare the impact of cost on the quality of extremity sarcoma care across low-middle-income and high-income countries. MEDLINE, EMBASE, Cochrane, PsycInfo, DARE, NHS-EED, HTA. A systematic search was conducted using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) guidelines. Inclusion criteria were: discussion of costs and the surgical management of primary extremity sarcoma. There were no restrictions on study design, publication type, date, geographic location or publication status. A data extraction table was used to identify study location, type and findings. 1012 studies were retrieved and 44 met the inclusion criteria. Four additional studies were identified from the reference lists of included articles. 27 studies were published in high-income countries (HIC) including all four full health economic analyses and 20 studies were published in low-middle income countries (LMC). Within LMC, cost impeded access to diagnosis, resection and options for reconstruction. In HIC, cost varied with choice of management, particularly during the long-term postoperative period. Within LMC, cost impaired the provision of quality, curative care for patients with extremity sarcoma. Within HIC, while costs varied with chosen management, they were not prohibitive to the provision of quality care. Further research is required, specific to both socioeconomic contexts, to further describe the long-term cost-utility of different methods for the surgical management of extremity sarcoma.

Three dimensional (3D) printing in Orthopaedics: Scope of application and future perspectives

Three dimensional (3D) printing also known as additive manufacturing has the potential to change the paradigm of Orthopaedic practice. Modern times have witnessed exponential growth in 3D-printing technology as well as its uses. A wide spectrum of printers are now available, ranging from the desktop printer to high end manufacturing units. The ability to use a plethora of materials and create almost limitless geometric shapes with varying surface topography makes this method of production highly appealing. Certain inherent advantages include easy customizability, small production runs, less wastage of material, smaller footprint. Challenges such as lack of data, absence of established government regulations and cost considerations remain, but one can expect these to be overcome as the economy of scale plays out and the medical fraternity becomes more accommodating of the new technology. Keywords: Three dimensional printing, Recent Advances, Arthroplasty, Spine, Tumor Implants

Corporate governance and cost of equity: An empirical investigation of the United Arab Emirates stock market

The set of rules, laws, and procedures that lead and regulate a firm is known as corporate governance (Alqaraleh et al., 2022). The primary objective of this study was to investigate the effect of the corporate governance index on the cost of equity for businesses listed on the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Stock Exchange. This study gathers data from yearly reports from 2015 to 2021 in order to test hypotheses using multiple linear regression models to analyze the gathered data. The independent variable of the corporate governance index in our research consists of eight distinct corporate governance characteristics. According to the findings of our investigation, there is a negative correlation between corporate governance and equity capital cost. This indicates that the quality of corporate governance may lower the cost of capital. In order to improve the quality of financial reporting, we advocate implementing a robust corporate governance framework and reducing information asymmetry, i.e., increasing transparency and agency conflict, therefore, attracting financial investors and suppliers, enhancing the capital market, and absorbing the organization’s required financial resources at a reduced rate. The study results suggest that corporations might minimize the cost of equity by creating excellent corporate governance. In the cost of equality, the result of the study emphasizes the significance and efficacy of corporate governance.

The mediating effect of financial reporting quality on corporate governance effectiveness and cost of debt

The mediating effect of financial reporting quality on corporate governance effectiveness and cost of debt

An Approach to Assess the Governance Efficiency of Bulgarian Farms

There have been continuous debates about the essence and levels of efficiency of farms and agrarian organizations, with an increasing focus on governance aspects in recent years. Nevertheless, most of the existing assessments are at a conceptual or qualitative level due to well-known “measurement” problems related to transacting costs. This article incorporates the New Institutional and Transaction Costs Economics framework and suggests a practical approach for assessing the level and factors of governance efficiency of Bulgarian farms as a whole and of different types and locations. The evaluation of governance efficiency of the country’s farms is made on the basis of original micro-data collected by the managers of typical farms. The “Nature of the problems in effective organization for major class farm transactions for securing needed factors of production and marketing of output” is used as an indicator for the comparative efficiency (equal and greater compared to another farm/s or organisation/s) of individual farms. The study has found that the governance efficiency of farms is at a Good level but 60% of all farms in the county are with a Low efficiency and will likely cease to exist in near future. Major factors for inferior governance efficiency of Bulgarian farms are unsatisfactory efficiency in Supply of Necessary Labour, Innovations and Know-how, and Funding. There is a huge variation in the level and factors of governance efficiency of farms with different juridical types, sizes, product specializations, and geographical and ecological locations as well as in the share of farms with different levels of efficiency in each group. Also, there is a big discrepancy between the new assessments with dominating traditional approaches based on factors productivity. The suggested approach has to be further improved, and widely and periodically applied in economic analysis at various levels which require systemic collection of a novel type of micro-data on farms governance and transaction costs.

Evolutionary game analysis of low-carbon technology innovation diffusion under PPP mode in China.

With the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) mode playing an increasingly important role in the investment of infrastructure, promoting the diffusion of low-carbon technology innovation in PPP projects not only helps to reduce the carbon emissions of infrastructure, but also plays an important demonstration role in the low-carbon transformation of construction industry. In order to clarify the evolutionary mechanism of low-carbon technology innovation diffusion among stakeholders under the unique payment mechanism of PPP projects in China, the paper builds two different evolutionary game models respectively under government payment mechanism and consumer payment mechanism based on evolutionary game theory. The evolutionary relationship between the choice of behavior strategies and the change of influencing factors under different payment mechanisms are analyzed by numerical simulation. It is found that under government payment mechanism, the regulation cost of government to promote low-carbon technology innovation and the punishment of the superior regulatory authority for non-regulation behavior are the important factors affecting government's behavioral strategies. The low-carbon technology innovation cost of social capital and the intensity of government subsidy and punishment are the main factors affecting social capital's behavioral strategies; Under consumer payment mechanism, consumer becomes the ultimate payer of low-carbon products, and the income they get from purchasing low-carbon products and the subsidy provided by the government become the main factors determining consumer's behavioral strategies. Finally, from the perspective of government, social capital and consumer, countermeasures and management implications are put forward to effectively promote the diffusion of low-carbon technology innovation under different payment mechanism in PPP projects.

Regulatory Effect on Information Sharing of Industrial Internet Platforms Based on Three Differentiated Game Scenarios

This study constructs a regulatory system for information sharing on industrial internet platforms from a technical and socio-legal perspective. A differentiated game is used to construct decentralized, centralized, and cost-sharing contract decision-making scenarios to obtain the optimal level of efforts for information-sharing regulation. Through a comparative analysis, the optimal solutions under the three scenarios were derived. These solutions were then analyzed through numerical simulations using Matlab2016a. Our research demonstrates the following: (1) Centralized decision-making is most beneficial to the development of information-sharing regulatory systems. (2) Beyond a critical value for the local government cost subsidy coefficients, changes in these coefficients have a more pronounced effect on improving the economic efficiency of the regulatory system, and vice versa. That is, when the cost subsidy coefficient is higher than 1/2, increasing the cost subsidy coefficient has a more pronounced effect on improving the economic efficiency of the information-sharing regulatory system. (3) In all scenarios, an increase in the regulatory effort can effectively enhance the reputation of the information-sharing regulatory system. This study further extends the research on information-sharing regulations and provides a practical guide to industrial internet platforms.

The impact of using an income supplement to meet child poverty targets: evidence from Scotland

AbstractIn 2017 the Scottish Government passed the Child Poverty (Scotland) Act with the commitment to significantly reduce the relative child poverty rate from the current prevailing level of around 25% to 10% by 2030/31. In response, the government introduced the Scottish Child Payment (SCP) that provides a direct transfer to households at a fixed rate per eligible child – currently £25 per week. In this paper we explore, using a micro to macro modelling approach, the effectiveness of using the SCP to achieve the Scottish child poverty targets. While we find that the ambitious child poverty targets can technically be met solely using the SCP, the necessary payment of £165 per week amounting to a total government cost of £3 billion per year, makes the political and economy-wide barriers significant. A key issue with only using the SCP is the non-linearity in the response to the payment; as the payment increases, the marginal gain in the reduction of child poverty decreases – this is particularly evident after payments of £80 per week. A ‘policy-mix’ option combining the SCP, targeted cash transfers and other policy levels (such as childcare provision) seems the most promising approach to reaching the child poverty targets.

Nigeria’s Expensive Politics and Democracy: The Bane of Good Governance

The performance of Nigeria’s democracy coupled with its styled politics and governance has raised concern over its sustainability and survivability. One area where the democratic system in Nigeria has remained shamelessly scandalous is in the area of the expensive cost of managing the democratic structures of the state and the people that run them. The view being implied in this article is that Nigeria’s style of democracy with its expensive and corrupt tendencies is frustrating and inhibiting good governance. The extent of Nigeria’s expensive governance and politics is manifested in wasteful spending on personnel cost of political office holders such as Ministers, commissioners, special advisers and other executive and legislative aides who in most cases get paid without performing justifiable functions and responsibilities. Similarly, security votes which are appropriated and used by federal and state governments discretionarily have become conduit pipes for draining our national wealth. The suffocating impact of the high cost of governance on our national life has made it to assume a national emergency dimension. This paper therefore emphasises the need for government across all strata to reduce the cost of politics and governance, block all revenue leakages and channel the country’s wealth and resources to productive ventures so as to entrench good governance and set the country on the path of development. The paper recommends the discontinuation of appointing the ministers of state, the scrapping of security votes and the adoption of a unicameral legislature with a part-time arrangement among others as strategies for reducing the cost of governance. Keywords: politics, democracy, expensive, good governance, cost

Playdoyer for an EU Strategy Towards Reform of UNSC

In 2021, EU declared it as a policy to reform the United Nations Security Council, but failed to adopt a strategy. Thus, this paper outlines a three-tiered approach toward UNSC reform, consisting of a European approach encompassing (1) UNFCCC-diplomacy (2) Further IMF Reform (3) energy governance (4) Cost￾Benefit Analysis of UN human development goals. The second element is an incorporation of Germany’s UNSC bid into EU’s overall strategizing. The third element is further development of EU’s official strategy, which henceforth has relied on environmental diplomacy and leveraging the EU’s purse on development aid. In doing so, the paper evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of EU’s role within the four multilateral policy areas and suggest their mutual interdependence. The underlying problem is a mix of blockage of thinking and the development of consciousness about the supranational actors’ “duties” rather than an absence of political ambition. Thus, the EU needs to be better organized, and more strategic about its UNSC bid.

Imperial Executive, Cost of Governance and The Challenge of Development in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic

There are raging debates about Nigeria's high cost of governance and its effects on socioeconomic development. Indeed, one of the talking points of the contemporary restructuring discourse is the need to drastically cut the cost of governance to allow more resources to fund the development of critical infrastructure. Understandably, the emphasis is always on the structure of governance of the executive presidential system and the bloated civil service. Indeed, much of the issue, however, is on the Executive, its imperial nature, its idiosyncrasies, and its style of governance. This paper assesses the features of the 'imperial executive' in Nigeria and the extent to which executive profligacy aggravates the cost of governance and hinders socioeconomic development. Using essentially secondary data, the paper found that the higher the recurrent expenditure, the more difficult it is to allocate adequate resources to capital expenditure in Nigeria. This scenario implies that a large chunk of public fund expenditure on the political elite makes it impossible to allocate adequate resources to other critical areas of development such as health, education, infrastructure etc. The paper suggests critical reforms in the structure of the executive presidential system as well as mechanisms to check the excesses and idiosyncrasies of the Executive in Nigeria.

Innovation and Tariff-adjustment Options in Public-private Partnerships

This paper explores the question of whether the inclusion in PPP contracts of options to adjust economic conditions in the face of technological changes may help the adoption of such innovations, while reducing the opportunity cost for governments. In the model proposed a grantor government reserves the right to cut its payments to the concessionaire when the concession’s costs are reduced because of the implementation of technological innovations The paper is of interest given that digital transformation and robotization can generate relevant productivity improvements in areas where a significant part of the public budget is spent, such as healthcare and education services. By adopting a numerical example, this paper illustrates the application of the model to a school concession project.

Research on the Governance of Rural Environmental Pollution in Heilongjiang Province Based on the Environmental Kuznets Curve

At present, the effective management of the rural environment has drawn the attention of the entire global community. Heilongjiang Province majors in agriculture and animal husbandry resources. Compared with urban environmental pollution, the pollution caused by agriculture and animal husbandry has a strong impact on the use of agricultural elements and environmental constraints. At the same time, it has the characteristics of high governance cost, high governance difficulty, and difficulty in being monitored. In this study, the environmental Kuznets curve is used to verify the relationship between rural environmental pollution and economic growth in Heilongjiang Province, and a linear regression model is designed to verify time series data and indicators. The results show that the phenomenon of rural water pollution has become common in Heilongjiang Province, the discharge of rural environmental pollutants has exceeded the safe discharge limit value, and the pollution degree of the rural environment in Heilongjiang Province has exceeded the safety warning value at least, and it is very necessary for its treatment. This study enriches the research methods and content of the performance evaluation of rural environmental governance in my country helps to objectively evaluate the governance issues of the rural environment in Heilongjiang Province, and can be a functional area of grain production that is highly dependent on resources and environmental constraints of the same kind in my country. Rural environmental governance provides a universal reference.

Examining contract modifications in purchasing personal protective equipment: A bargaining approach

This paper presents a bargaining model of contract outcomes as a function of contract uncertainties associated with critical supply purchasing after a crisis. It examines contract modifications and termination. The model yields the following results: (1) contract modification by the government alone (unilateral modification) does not change the optimal contract; (2) contract modification by mutual agreement (bilateral modification) makes the optimal contract dependent on product price, acquisition costs, transaction costs, and uncertainty; (3) mutual contract modifications are affected negatively by government costs of contract modification and are affected positively by supplier's costs of contract modification; (4) the government may find it necessary to terminate a contract if the contract elasticity of government utility is zero, and the contractor may want to terminate the contract when its supply price equals the acquisition price.

Study of purchasing behavior evolution of work-safety-service based on hierarchical mixed supervision.

This paper explores the evolutionary rules of work-safety-service purchasing strategies of enterprises under hierarchical mixed supervision. Considering the influence of the central government's inspection on local governments, an evolutionary game model is built which depicts the mutual interactions of work-safety-service purchasing strategies from enterprises and supervision strategies from local governments. The existence and stability of system equilibrium points are analyzed, and the influence of different parameters' variation on the evolutionary results is demonstrated through numerical simulation. It is found that different ranges of parameters affect the number and stability of equilibrium points and the evolutionary trend. The system converges to two different patterns. In the first pattern, local governments choose to supervise enterprises strictly and enterprises choose to purchase work-safety service, which is a desired pattern. In the second pattern, local governments choose to supervise enterprises loosely and enterprises choose not to purchase work-safety service, which is an undesired pattern. When it has five equilibrium points, it is feasible to make the system converge to the desired pattern through modifying relative parameters, avoiding the undesired pattern. The system is more likely to converge to the desired pattern with the higher initial ratio of local governments opting for strict enterprise supervision; the system is more likely to converge to the desired pattern when the central government exerts a stricter inspection on local governments; the system is more likely to converge to the desired pattern when local governments exert stricter ex ante and ex post safety supervision on enterprises. The system is more likely to converge to the undesired pattern when the ex ante supervision costs of local governments get higher. Subsidies from local governments for the purchase of work-safety service barely affect the evolutionary trend of the system.

ESG performance, investors’ heterogeneous beliefs, and cost of equity capital in China

Previous studies on the relationship between environmental, social and governance (ESG) information disclosure and cost of equity (COE) have found mixed results. They conclude that this relationship may be affected by some attributes of the company inside. In this study, we examine whether investors’heterogeneous beliefs moderates the relationship between ESG performance and COE. Our sample starts with ESG-rating firms included in Huazheng index of the Wind China financial database (WIND) for years 2015–2020. We collect financial information and relevant data from the China Stock Market and Accounting Research database (CSMAR). Using a two-way fixed effect multiple regression model, we report a negative moderate effect of both ESG performance on COE. We also find that COE Is higher when the firm financing constraints increase. Investors’heterogeneous beliefs with a lower (rather than higher) level tends to pay close attention from ESG performance by stakeholders and financing constraints decreases, which then leads to the reduction of investors’ expected risk. We therefore conclude that firms that manage actions on ESG issues have a better choices of release investors disagreements which in turn reduces their equity financing costs.

Detecting diseases in medical prescriptions using data mining methods

Every year, the health of millions of people around the world is compromised by misdiagnosis, which sometimes could even lead to death. In addition, it entails huge financial costs for patients, insurance companies, and governments. Furthermore, many physicians’ professional life is adversely affected by unintended errors in prescribing medication or misdiagnosing a disease. Our aim in this paper is to use data mining methods to find knowledge in a dataset of medical prescriptions that can be effective in improving the diagnostic process. In this study, using 4 single classification algorithms including decision tree, random forest, simple Bayes, and K-nearest neighbors, the disease and its category were predicted. Then, in order to improve the performance of these algorithms, we used an Ensemble Learning methodology to present our proposed model. In the final step, a number of experiments were performed to compare the performance of different data mining techniques. The final model proposed in this study has an accuracy and kappa score of 62.86% and 0.620 for disease prediction and 74.39% and 0.720 for prediction of the disease category, respectively, which has better performance than other studies in this field.In general, the results of this study can be used to help maintain the health of patients, and prevent the wastage of the financial resources of patients, insurance companies, and governments. In addition, it can aid physicians and help their careers by providing timely information on diagnostic errors. Finally, these results can be used as a basis for future research in this field.

Effect of social capital and transaction cost on multifaceted opportunism in manufacturer-supplier relationship

PurposeA successful relationship between manufacturer and supplier is vital for the pursuit of mutual benefits, which can be affected by one of the partners’ opportunistic behavior, causing disequilibrium in the existing relationship. The extant research has mainly focused on opportunism as a single phenomenon rather than the detectable strong form and unnoticeable weak form of opportunistic behavior in an exchange relationship that affects the relational outcomes in various ways. This study aims to contribute toward explaining the effect of economic and social forces on a strong and a weak form of opportunism and, in turn, its impact on relational outcomes in manufacturer-supplier relationships.Design/methodology/approachA sample of 361 manufacturers was drawn randomly using a sampling frame from the western part of India. The authors used covariance-based structural equation modeling to support the proposed model empirically. The authors examined the effect of social capital and transaction cost dimensions on different forms of a supplier’s opportunism.FindingsAll three dimensions of social capital have a different impact on both the forms of a supplier’s opportunism in the relationship. The authors found that social capital moderates the relationship between transaction-specific investments on a weak form of opportunism, while social capital is more valuable in curbing opportunism due to the effect of environmental uncertainty and behavioral uncertainty. The authors found that the supplier’s weak form of opportunism than the strong form has a more amplifying effect on governance costs.Originality/valueThis research contributes in three different ways. First, it inquires about the direct effect of transaction cost dimensions and social capital dimensions on a supplier’s multifaceted opportunism (strong form and weak form) in the manufacturer-supplier relationship. Second, it investigates the moderating effect of social capital on the relationship between transaction cost dimensions and forms of supplier opportunism. Third, the weak form of a supplier’s opportunism affects more significantly than the strong form of opportunism on governance costs.

Impact of National Debt and Cost of Governance on Nigeria's GDP: 1999– 2021

Impact of National Debt and Cost of Governance on Nigeria's GDP: 1999– 2021