Initial Budget Research Articles

Механизмы софинансирования проектов развития территории в материалах правоприменительной практики

The article talks about the use of various mechanisms for co-financing projects for the development of the territory of the municipality. The article analyzes the judicial practice that develops on the use of self-taxation of citizens, initiative budgeting and initiative projects.

Факторы, влияющие на развитие региональных практик инициативного бюджетирования

The article examines regional practices of initiative budgeting. The main factors influencing the development of these practices have been identified. Their classification has been formed, including groups of economic, institutional, sociocultural and behavioral factors. Using the example of several regions of Central Russia, the impact of these factors on the implementation and transformation of proactive budgeting practices is analyzed. It has been established that the impact of economic and institutional factors has been studied in more detail and is taken into account when making decisions in the field of participatory budgeting. The influence of behavioral and sociocultural factors has been less studied, but their further study and application in proactive budgeting practices has great potential, as it allows expanding the involvement of residents in the budget process, creating conditions for taking initiative and participating in the preparation of initiative projects and the distribution of budget funds.

Финансовое обеспечение проектов инициативного бюджетирования

In the Russian Federation, various practice of initiative budgeting have been implemented for a long time. Financing of such projects is carried out both at the expense of regional and local budgets, and at the expense of citizens and organizations. The article examines the features of each type of financing, their relationship with each other, problems arising in practice, and also draws attention to the economic effect of citizen participation in proactive budgeting projects and improving the financial culture of the population as a whole.

Principles of building a School Participatory Budgeting in the Samara region: initiative, openness, consistency

The article is devoted to the problem of launching innovations in the region, the principles on which the work is based, as well as the conditions under which this process becomes effective. The paper presents a theoretical analysis of research on the phenomenon of innovation and experimental research work on the introduction of School initiative budgeting in the Samara region from the initiative of a student of one educational organization to a built-up system at the regional level. The innovative project was implemented in 2022-2023. The article analyzes and systematizes the results obtained, identifies effective tools and prospects for implementing the practice of School initiative budgeting in the region.

Online Allocation with Replenishable Budgets: Worst Case and Beyond

This paper studies online resource allocation with replenishable budgets, where budgets can be replenished on top of the initial budget and an agent sequentially chooses online allocation decisions without violating the available budget constraint at each round. We propose a novel online algorithm, called OACP (Opportunistic Allocation with Conservative Pricing), that conservatively adjusts dual variables while opportunistically utilizing available resources. OACP achieves a bounded asymptotic competitive ratio in adversarial settings as the number of decision rounds T gets large. Importantly, the asymptotic competitive ratio of OACP is optimal in the absence of additional assumptions on budget replenishment. To further improve the competitive ratio, we make a mild assumption that there is budget replenishment every T* ≥ 1 decision rounds and propose OACP+ to dynamically adjust the total budget assignment for online allocation. Next, we move beyond the worst-case and propose LA-OACP (Learning-Augmented OACP/OACP+), a novel learning-augmented algorithm for online allocation with replenishable budgets. We prove that LA-OACP can improve the average utility compared to OACP/OACP+ when the ML predictor is properly trained, while still offering worst-case utility guarantees when the ML predictions are arbitrarily wrong. Finally, we run simulation studies of sustainable AI inference powered by renewables, validating our analysis and demonstrating the empirical benefits of LA-OACP.

Unregulated Cap-and-Trade Model for Sustainable Supply Chain Management

Cap-and-trade models have been largely studied in the literature when it comes to reducing emissions in a supply chain. In this paper, further pursuing the goal of analyzing the effectiveness of cap-and-trade strategies in reducing emissions in supply chains, we propose a mathematical model for sustainable supply chain management. This optimization program aims at reducing emissions and supply chain costs in an unregulated scenario w.r.t. the cap definition, i.e., trading CO2 is allowed but no formal limit on the CO2 emissions is imposed. Also, we considered an initial budget for technological investments by the facilities in the considered supply chain, allowing plants to reduce their unit production emissions at a different unit production cost. For this model, differently from what exists in the literature, we derive some theoretical conditions guaranteeing that, if obeyed, the emissions over time have a non-increasing trend meaning that decreasing caps over time can be attained with a self-regulated scenario. Computational results show the effectiveness of our approach.

Electoral Campaigns as Dynamic Contests

Abstract We develop a model of electoral campaigns in which two office-motivated candidates allocate their budgets over time to affect their odds of winning. We measure the candidates’ evolving odds of winning using a state variable that tends to decay over time, and we refer to it as the candidates’ “relative popularity.” In our baseline model, the equilibrium ratio of spending by each candidate equals the ratio of their initial budgets; spending is independent of past realizations of relative popularity; and there is a positive relationship between the strength of decay in the popularity process and the rate at which candidates increase their spending over time as election day approaches. We use this relationship to recover estimates of the perceived decay rate in popularity leads in U.S. subnational elections.

Third-party retailer’s lot-sizing policy under credit loan considering uncertain demand and asymmetric initial budget information

Third-party retailer’s lot-sizing policy under credit loan considering uncertain demand and asymmetric initial budget information

Новые возможности участия граждан в инициативном финансировании бюджетов общеобразовательных школ

The subject of the study is the state of financing of Russian schools. The purpose of the work is to identify opportunities for individuals and legal entities to participate in the financing of secondary schools. To ensure the competitiveness of Russian higher education, it is necessary to create a solid foundation for secondary education so that school graduates have the highest basic education, so that families do not have to bear the huge costs of additional private education in grades 10 and 11 (tutors and additional courses in preparation for the Unified State Exam) to successfully pass the final exams. To improve the quality of secondary education, it is necessary to massively and point wise finance targeted school projects. The article considers the problem of finding sources of financing for initiative budgets of secondary schools. The main drawback of the existing experience in financing initiative budgets in the Russian Federation has been identified, in which the final selection of projects for implementation and the final decision on the amount of allocated funding does not take place at the school board level (as it should be in accordance with the fundamental principles of initiative (participatory) budgeting, but at a higher level – as a rule, by a commission of officials the subject of the Russian Federation in which the school is located. The experience of Germany in terms of the organization of targeted transfer to secondary schools of financial resources received in the form of taxes from specific individuals and legal entities based on the taxpayer's choice is considered. It is proposed to provide school initiative budgets with their own sources of financing, independent of the decisions of executive authorities, based on two ways for parents of secondary school students to transfer part of the amount of parental income tax to the income part of the initiative budgets of schools where their children study, thanks, firstly, to modification of the existing tax deduction for education, bringing its size up to seven times the amount of parents' expenses for transferring money to the initiative budget of the school; Secondly, the permission for parents whose income is more than 5 million rubles per year to direct, at their choice, part of their income tax (levied at an increased rate of 15%) in a targeted manner to the initiative budget of the school where their children study. The economic effect of both methods is calculated using the example of one school.

НОРМАТИВНАЯ РЕГЛАМЕНТАЦИЯ НИЗОВОЙ ГРАЖДАНСКОЙ АКТИВНОСТИ В СУБЪЕКТАХ РОССИЙСКОЙ ФЕДЕРАЦИИ

Grassroots civic engagement is a practice initiated voluntarily by citizens to solve locally significant social problems. The most common forms of civic engagement today are volunteerism, non-profit organization activities, initiative budgeting, territorial public self-government, and charity. The study of these practices from the regulatory point of view is important, especially for creating opportunities for effective communication mechanisms between government and society in order to make socio-political decisions and reduce the severity of local problems. The study aims to identify the features of regulation of the main forms of grassroots civic activity in the constituent territories of Russia. The authors use content analysis of 1144 normative acts of 85 Russian constituencies regulating grassroots civic activity based on the Consultant Plus database with subsequent processing in the IBM SPSS Statistics program. In consequence, modern approaches to understanding grassroots civic activity are summarized, the regulatory framework for regulating grassroots civic activity in the Russian regions is analyzed, and relevant examples of regulation at the regional level are highlighted. The results show that the most legal acts are adopted regarding the forms of grassroots civic activity aimed at solving local development issues and socially significant problems. The main initiator of normative acts is the executive authorities of the regions.

Factors influencing the initiative budgeting development in Russian regions

Factors influencing the initiative budgeting development in Russian regions

Factors influencing the initiative budgeting development in Russia's regions

Factors influencing the initiative budgeting development in Russia's regions

Cultural transfer of school participatory budgeting and the Soviet tradition of education

Introduction. The article provides a literature review on the problem of cultural conformity of school participatory budgeting practice in traditional ideas about education in Russia. The purpose of the article is to evaluate the conformity of the ideas of school participatory budgeting with traditional approaches to education formed in the twentieth century (works by S. T. Shatsky, A. S. Makarenko, I. P. Ivanov). Materials and Methods. The research methodology relies on the ‘cultural transfer’ concept which is defined as a study of foreign cultural form (the object of the transfer) and its resonance with traditional cultural norms (address of the transfer). A comparative analysis of significant works by Soviet education scholars and research articles of international and Russian authors devoted to school participatory (initiative) budgeting was used as a procedure for conducting this study. The comparison parameters represent a modification of the components of the school educational system. Results. The conformity of school participatory budgeting with the Soviet tradition of education is revealed through the following main results: 1) the similarity in ideas about the educational ideal is characterized (socially active, proactive citizen-owner, focused on improving the environment, capable of expressing and defending their interests); 2) common features in the positioning of the child-adult community as an economic and self-governing organization have been established; 3) the analogy between ‘social creativity’ and ‘experiments with democracy’ is proposed and justified; 4) partnership in child-adult relationships is presented as a common feature of the compared phenomena; 5) in both cases, the determining role of social technology of interaction between participants in the relationship was revealed. Conclusions. The article draws the following conclusion: school participatory budgeting does not contradict the ideas of authoritative twentieth-century pedagogues about education; moreover, it allows to enrich the Soviet experience with modern solutions that take into account the peculiarities of the market economy.

Экологические проекты инициативного бюджетирования

Ecological projects of initiative budgeting are considered in the article as a form of involving citizens in the ecological agenda. The classification of ecological projects initiated by citizens was compiled by the authors. These are projects of organizing the collection of solid waste and garbage, projects in the field of fire safety, projects to provide settlements with clean drinking water. Based on the database of the All-Russian contest of the best projects of initiative budgeting, numerical indicators on the implementation of ecological projects (number, cost, beneficiaries) were selected. The foreign experience of involving citizens in the environmental agenda – green participatory budgeting – was presented. The unique experience of involving schoolchildren and youth in climate and environmental issues in some foreign countries was described. A review of Russian initiative projects in the field of ecology was carried out. It is concluded that there is the emergence of a trend to involve citizens in the ecological agenda. Initiative budgeting projects serve as indicators of the actual requests and needs of citizens. It is also noted that it is reasonable to use the database of the All-Russian competition of initiative budgeting projects as a unique information resource about the practices of civic engagement.

Airport Pavement Maintenance Decision-Making System with Condition Cases Optimization

The successive growth of the aviation industry has progressively heightened the importance of airport pavement management systems. Existing research has primarily focused on the technological advancements of optimization models, with limited applicability in practice. In this study, we introduce condition cases optimization (CCO) to address these limitations while incorporating multi-facility and multi-year network optimization models. We developed condition index, serviceability level, integrated assessment indices and performance models for decision-making criteria. As a result, a practical decision-making strategy was proposed which can flexibly reflect budget constraints. Sensitivity analysis highlighted the impact of initial budget, maintenance methods, costs, and thresholds on decision outcomes. Using a case study, we validated the effectiveness and practicality of the CCO method as an efficient decision-making tool.

Fighting pickpocketing using a choice-based resource allocation model

Inspired by European actions to fight organized crimes, we develop a choice-based resource allocation model that can help policy makers to reduce the number of pickpocket attempts. In this model, the policy maker needs to allocate a limited budget over local and central protective resources as well as over potential pickpocket locations, while keeping in mind the thieves’ random preferences towards potential pickpocket locations. We prove that the optimal budget allocation is proportional in (i) the thieves’ sensitivity towards protective resources and (ii) the initial attractiveness of the potential pickpocket locations. On top of this, we also study two alternatives of our choice-based resource allocation model: one where pickpocket probabilities are enforced to be equal over the pickpocket locations, and one where the decision-making process of the thief becomes deterministic, with known preferences, as observed by the policy maker. For both alternatives, we also derive the optimal budget allocation and compare it with the initial budget allocation using numerical experiments. Finally, we illustrate how these optimal budget allocations perform against various others budget allocations, proposed by policy makers from the field.

Price increase negotiations to address drug shortages in South Korea's national health insurance.

South Korea has adopted a unique approach to address drug shortages by increasing reimbursement prices within its National Health Insurance Service. This study aims to analyze the characteristics, increase rates, affecting factors, and budget impacts of products that have increased price through the negotiation system. Between 2007 and 2022, there were price increase negotiations over 244 items. Of these, price increase negotiations were successful for 217 items, resulting in an agreement rate of 89%. The average rate of price increase for the agreed-upon products was 37.8%, and the overall budget increase for drugs with price increases (n = 217) was approximately 24.5%. Budget impact of each variable of the negotiated agreements showed that the number of negotiated agreement items was smaller after 2015 than before 2015, but each total budget impact (initial budget, increased budget, and final budget) and the average budget impact were higher. Although domestic companies accounted for a larger overall budget, the average budget per item was larger for multinational companies. The correlation analysis of the ratio of price increase and budget impact variables showed that the ratio of price increase was positively and significantly correlated with the increased budget, while it was negatively but not significantly correlated with the initial and final budgets. The South Korean model of increasing reimbursement prices in public insurance for drugs at risk of shortages serves as an exemplary case for not only securing patient access but also considering budget management.

A Systematic Survey of Moon-forming Giant Impacts. I. Nonrotating Bodies

In the leading theory of lunar formation, known as the giant impact hypothesis, a collision between two planet-size objects resulted in a young Earth surrounded by a circumplanetary debris disk from which the Moon later accreted. The range of giant impacts that could conceivably explain the Earth–Moon system is limited by the set of known physical and geochemical constraints. However, while several distinct Moon-forming impact scenarios have been proposed—from small, high-velocity impactors to low-velocity mergers between equal-mass objects—none of these scenarios have been successful at explaining the full set of known constraints, especially without invoking controversial post-impact processes. In order to bridge the gap between previous studies and provide a consistent survey of the Moon-forming impact parameter space, we present a systematic study of simulations of potential Moon-forming impacts. In the first paper of this series, we focus on pairwise impacts between nonrotating bodies. Notably, we show that such collisions require a minimum initial angular momentum budget of approximately 2 J EM in order to generate a sufficiently massive protolunar disk. We also show that low-velocity impacts (v ∞ ≲ 0.5 v esc) with high impactor-to-target mass ratios (γ → 1) are preferred to explain the Earth–Moon isotopic similarities. In a follow-up paper, we consider impacts between rotating bodies at various mutual orientations.

Confronting High Costs And Clinical Uncertainty: Innovative Payment Models For Gene Therapies.

Gene therapies offer potentially life-changing benefits for patients, but their unprecedented high prices exacerbate challenges for reimbursement. Payers must confront high budgetary impacts, as a large up-front payment for each patient makes it difficult to predict and absorb costs. Payers also face considerable clinical uncertainty, as evidence for efficacy and durability is limited at approval. Alternative payment models may address these reimbursement problems and ensure equitable patient access. We developed a taxonomy of possible payment mechanisms for gene therapies, including installments, risk pools, reinsurance, price-volume agreements, expenditure caps, subscriptions, outcomes-based payments and rebates, warranties, population outcomes-based agreements, and coverage with evidence development. We illustrate how these payment models take three main approaches: amortization, which mitigates initial budget impact by spreading payments over time; risk spreading, which makes budgets more predictable by pooling costs with other payers or capping costs based on expected volume; and performance-based payment, which addresses clinical uncertainty by tying prices to patient- or population-level outcomes. We discuss each payment model, its advantages and challenges, and considerations for US payers.

Optimal investment problem under behavioral setting: A Lagrange duality perspective

In this paper, we consider the optimal investment problem with both probability distortion/weighting and general non-concave utility functions with possibly finite number of inflection points, and apply a Lagrange duality based relaxation approach for solving this problem. Existing literature has shown the equivalent relationships (strong duality) between the relaxed problem and the original one by either assuming the presence of probability weighting or the non-concavity of utility functions, but not both. In this paper, combining both factors, we prove that the absence of concavity in the utilities may result in strictly positive gaps, thus the strong duality may not hold unconditionally. The necessary and sufficient conditions on eliminating such gaps have been provided under this circumstance. We have applied the solution method to obtain closed-form solutions for the optimal terminal wealth and corresponding investment strategies in a special cumulative prospect theory (CPT) example with an appropriately selected inverse S-shaped probability distortion function. Based on the solutions, the joint effects of non-concave utilities combined with the probability weighting on the trading behaviors can be explicitly characterized. We show that, under this particular example, the co-existence of both factors may water down the loss aversion effect induced by only S-shaped utility or probability distortion when the agents are more cash-strapped in the initial budgets. In addition, we find that the optimal strategies derived from distorted beliefs shall converge to a constant that can be expressed by the standard Merton ratio multiplied by an inflation factor which we name as “distorted” Merton ratio. More importantly, the inflation factor is solely dependent on the probability distortion rather than the features of the utility function.