Official Funding Research Articles

Health authority backs worthing retraining scheme.

A successful three-month 'back to nursing' course has now won official funding from its District Health Authority, after existing for 18 months on a Manpower Services Commission grant.

Bargaining with bureaucrats: Debt negotiations in the international monetary fund

The International Monetary Fund lends hard currency to foreign governments for short-term adjustment of balance of payments imbalances. While this is well-known, few understand the process through which the IMF decides what will be the conditions of receipt of those loans in each case. In this paper, it is proposed that such decisions are arrived at through a complex and convoluted process of bargaining and exchange between a variety of actors, rather than through imposition of rules or political power. This counter-intuitive proposition is supported by a description of the decision-making process involved in a typical IMF loan -- the stand-by arrangement. such a process involves several distinct “phases”: 1) initiation by either Fund officials or the member country government, 2) staff preparations for formal negotiations with the government, 3) direct negotiations between Fund “mission” and member country officials, 4) internal IMF discussion of results of negotiations, and 5) disbursement and review of...

An Incentives Program to Increase Contraceptive Prevalence in Rural Thailand

A pilot project in 9 villages of northeast Thailand was designed to determine whether financial incentives can successfully be used to influence contraceptive practice at the individual and community levels. A village loan fund which grew in size as the contraceptive prevalence rate (CPR) increased was made available to villagers for income-generating activities (mostly agricultural undertakings). Villagers who practiced family planning were able to obtain larger loans than those who did not. Further dividends from the profits were paid to individuals on a sliding scale according to the effectiveness of the contraceptive method chosen. Contraceptive prevalence was measured at 3-4 month intervals. Increases in the practice of family planning were compared over a 2 year period between 6 program villages and 3 control villages in which no loan fund was operated. Between June 1983 and June 1985 the CPR in the 6 villages rose from 46% to 75% of all married women aged 15-44. In control villages the CPR went from 51% to 57%. In all 9 villages most of the gains in contraceptive prevalence involved the increased use of reversible methods. As contraceptive prevalence increased the pregnancy rate in the program villages fell from 11% of women of reproductive age to 5%. The rates in the control villages were 7% and 8%. The unmet need for contraception also declined at a considerably faster rate in the program villages than in the control villages. The community-level incentives appear to have exerted a strong indirect influence on contraceptive practice without any significant evidence of peer pressure exerted on villagers to practice family planning simply to increase the amount available in the loan fund. Rather loan fund officials (elected by the villagers) provided contraceptive information and encouraged family planning practice on health grounds. Thus it appears that community-level incentives can achieve goals beyond those of promoting contraceptive use. By fostering community development they can also hasten acceptance of the small family ideal.

Changing Land Use in Bihar, Punjab and Haryana, 1850–1970

Undivided colonial India experienced an accelerated rate of economic change in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Official policies and funds combined with private entrepreneurial energies and investment to intensify India's linkages with the world market in trade, industry, agriculture, and natural resource extraction. Slow, but in the long term steady, population expansion accompanied this trend. After 1947, economic development accelerated under five-year plans in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, and transformed the earlier colonial economy. Population figures have similarly shot up since partition and independence. These two linked trends have accompanied steadily intensifying human intervention in the natural environment of the subcontinent over the same time. One effect, among others, has been dramatic alteration in land use and vegetation cover. Comparing Francis Buchanan's early nineteenth-century descriptions of the countryside in both north and south India with the appearance of these areas today suggests just how sweeping these changes have been. The landscape of today in virtually every Indian district is very different from that seen two hundred or even hundred years ago.

Giving Peru a Voice: Federico Larrañaga and El Canal de Panamá

Although he lacked express authority to do so Federico Larrañaga used official funds to create, and then sustain, a newspaper in Panamá. He was then the Peruvian Consul General and his journal, named El Canal de Panamá in honor of the then-current effort of De Lessups and his company to open a route across the Isthmus, first appeared in early 1881 and continued to be published under his management until April 1883. Originally designed to be a tri-weekly, published in three languages (Spanish, English, and French), it offered, first in a tri-weekly form and then later in weekly and daily versions, a vigorous rivalry to the long-established Panama Star and Herald, at that time basically an English-language daily with a Spanish section.

The funding of development research

Statistical data on the funding of development research (drawn mainly from official publications and funding bodies' reports) are presented for OECD member countries, 1973–1979, and trends in financing in this area are analysed. Policies of and expenditures by government agencies, major private funding bodies and selected international organizations are examined. Development research financing is also viewed from the recipients' standpoint, and the results of a questionnaire survey of selected development research institutes in Europe, North America and Japan are analysed. The importance of public-sector finance for development research and indications of increasing dependence of European institutes on government funding in this area are emphasized.

Decision analysis assessment of a national medical study.

To decide whether or not to undertake an expensive national survey to determine the effectiveness of infection control, we devised a quantitative decision model to analyze the costs and probabilities of successful study outcomes. The result allowed us to determine whether the proposed study method and design would provide sufficient statistical power to ensure meaningful conclusions from the research. The model was robust in assessing the adequacy of method accuracy and, within the range of assumptions specified, it suggested that the project should be undertaken. The results helped to secure official approval and funding for this large-scale research project. A novel approach to evaluating sensitivity analysis is included. As constructed, the model is applicable to other projects in applied research and, with some modification, to projects in basic research as well.

The Floating Pound Sterling of the Nineteen-Thirties: An Econometric Study

In contrast to the clean floating of the 1920s, the 1930s saw the emergence of managed or dirty floating, with official stabilization funds established to intervene in gold and foreign-exchange markets in order to influence exchange rates. The era of managed floating was initiated by Britain with the establishment of the Exchange Equalization Account (EEA) in April 1932.1 The EEA was novel in both organization and intent, its stated goal being the prevention of undue fluctuations in the external value of

The Quality of Mutual Fund Portfolio Supervision

D URING THE 1942-1946 BULL MARKET, a security analyst for a New York brokerage firm who acted in a part-time capacity as an oil industry field expert for a mutual investment fund, submitted a particularly glowing report on one of the oil-producing companies. Departing from usual practice, he strongly urged that its stock be acquired. The mutual fund's investment staff, largely on the strength of the analyst's recommendation, passed up five other issues of similar quality under consideration at the time and purchased a sizable block of the stock. In less than a year it increased in value from $20 to $30 a share. The analyst was elated and at the first opportunity called the results of his astuteness to the attention of the fund's officials. They were far from enthusiastic. They pointed out that, although it was true that the stock had appreciated 50% in value since it had been purchased, 36 of the 42 stocks in the fund portfolio had shown greater appreciation for the same period. Furthermore, the average increase for all 42 issues was 68%.

International Monetary Fund

As early as January 19, 1948, the press reported that the devaluation of the French franc was under consideration by the French Government as a measure to stimulate French exports. Lengthy consultations between the French Director of the Fund (Mendès-France) and other officials of the Fund gave rise to the belief that agreement would be reached whereby the Fund could approve some devaluation of the franc. However, on January 25 the Fund announced that it could not permit the devaluation and that it regretted the decision of the French Government to proceed without the Fund's permission. Following French devaluation the following day, the Fund stated that it would continue to “work with the French Government in seeking a modification of these exchange practices in order to meet French needs within the framework of the international monetary arrangements established by the Fund Agreement.” The Fund subsequently accepted a provisional adjustment in its holdings of the franc from approximately 67,940 million to 122,292 million, representing an 80 per cent increase over January 24, 1948.

Conditions in the Government Scientific Service

The Interdepartmental Scientific Panel, of which Sir Edward Appleton is chairman, is charged with rather wider responsibilities than those suggested by the Barlow Committee on Scientific Staff which recommended its establishment. The terms of reference of the Panel include keeping under review the well-being and efficiency of the Government Scientific Service and making proposals for any changes in the organisation or conditions of service which will promote those ends. Reading between the lines of the third report from the Select Committee on Estimates for the Session 1946–47, it may be surmised that there is still plenty of scope for the Panel, despite the considerable ground it has covered since it first met on March 22, 1946. A Treasury proposal for a common pool of special posts of research workers of exceptional ability above the level of principal scientific officer, and numbering about two per cent of the latter class, led to the appointment of a sub-committee under the chairmanship of Dr. C. P. Snow to consider departmental nominations, and recommendations were made and accepted (Nature, 159, 464; 1947). In regard to general conditions of service, the Panel has drawn a broad distinction between attendances at meetings of learned societies and similar bodies which might be plainly regarded as proper and indeed necessary to the efficient, conduct of official scientific work, and others which are desirable rather than essential to maintaining a background. While for the first of these categories duly authorized attendance should be regarded as official duty, it is recommended that attendances in the second category should be encouraged by permitting a reasonable number of attendances in official time but without payment of expenses from official funds.

Mosquito Control

THE Report for 1930 of the British Mosquito Control Institute, Hayling Island, Hampshire, is a record of two and a half years' work, the previous Report having been presented in June 1928. The Institute, it may be added, was built and equipped in 1925 by Mr. John F. Marshall, who has since occupied the position as director without remuneration. It was incorporated by licence of the Board of Trade in February 1927 and, by a deed executed at the same time, the building and its equipment were leased to trustees for a term of years. No financial aid is received from any official funds, and the income of the Institute is derived solely from the results of its own activities and from subscriptions and donations. Funds are greatly needed in order to enable the work to become more self-supporting, since the present income falls a long way short of covering expenditure. The activities of the Institute have markedly increased since the issue of the last Report, and the interest shown by the outside public in this work is borne out by the fact that more than 1400 visitors (scientific and others) inspected the museum and laboratory during 1930. Advisory work relating to mosquitoes, their identification and control, is carried out by means of inspection and by correspondence. Inspections are generally undertaken by the director's assistant at a pre-arranged charge which includes the submission of a report and the recommendation of remedial measures. Various ’lines of investigation have been carried out during the period under review, including tests of fly-killing preparations and of cresol-containing larvicides, at the request of commercial firms. A study has also been commenced with regard to the breeding of arboreal mosquitoes in cavities (natural and artificial) in sawn-off parts of trees of different species.