Use Of Private Funds Research Articles

Incentivising biodiversity net gain with an offset market

Abstract Most programmes that incentivise the supply of public goods such as biodiversity conservation on private land in Europe are financed through the public purse. However, new ideas for how to fund biodiversity conservation are urgently needed, given recent reviews of the poor state of global biodiversity. In this paper, we investigate the use of private funding for biodiversity conservation through an offset market. The environmental objective is to increase some measure of biodiversity in a region (‘net gain’) despite the loss of land for new housing. Farmers create biodiversity credits by changing their land management and then sell these credits to housing developers who are required to more than offset the impacts of new housing development on a specific indicator of biodiversity. Combining an economic model of market operation with an ecological model linking land management to bird populations, we examine the operation, costs, and biodiversity impacts of such a (hypothetical) market as the target level of net gain is increased. A general result is established for the impacts on price and quantity in the offset market as the net gain target is made more ambitious. For a case-study site in Scotland, we find that as the net gain target is increased, the number of offsets traded in equilibrium falls, as does the market-clearing offset price. Changes in the spatial pattern of gains and losses in our biodiversity index also occur as the net gain target is raised.

Social impact bonds: The goose and the golden eggs at risk

AbstractPublic goods and services such as prisons are often underfunded compared with private goods and services. Social impact bonds (SIBs) are a new financial vehicle to increase the use of private funds for public good. SIBs use a paid‐for‐success, performance‐based structure to reallocate risk and reward. In the current case, the SIB changes a critical reinforcing loop from a vicious cycle of decay to a virtuous cycle of improvement that can perpetuate SIB benefits far after the bond has been repaid. A simulation model of recidivism at Her Majesty's Prison (HMP) Peterborough and the related SIB is developed to identify high‐leverage parameters and dominant feedback loops. These are used to explain SIB success or failure for two primary participants (HMP system and SIB investors). Model analysis also reveals a tipping point structure that puts the Peterborough programme at risk. Contributions include a formal SIB model, improved understanding of SIB structure and behaviour, an example of tipping point structures in a social system and recommendations concerning SIB design and management.

Beyond Pure Public and Pure Private Management Models: Partial Privatization in the European Airport Industry

ABSTRACT The use of private funding and management is enjoying an increasing trend in airports. The literature has not paid enough attention to the mixed management models in this industry, although many European airports take the form of mixed public-private companies, where ownership is shared between public and private sectors. We examine the determinants of the degree of private participation in the European airport sector. Drawing on a sample of the 100 largest European airports, we estimate a multivariate equation in order to determine the role of airport characteristics, fiscal variables, and political factors on the extent of private involvement. Our results confirm the alignment between public and private interests in partially privatized airports. Fiscal constraints and market attractiveness promote private participation. Integrated governance models and the share of network carriers prevent the presence of private ownership, while the degree of private participation appears to be pragmatic rather than ideological.

Philanthropy and Progressive Era State Building through Agricultural Extension Work in the Jim Crow South

In the process of promoting an agricultural appropriation bill in the 1914 legislative session, members of Congress engaged in a vigorous debate about the appropriateness of public-private collaboration in the federal government. They had discovered that the Department of Agriculture had been receiving funding directly from the General Education Board (GEB), a philanthropy established with funds from the Rockefeller family, for staff hired to engage in agricultural extension services. Representative William Kenyon of Iowa explained to his fellow Congressmen that employees “were on the pay roll of the Government; and, as I understand, the man who is at the head of the farm demonstration work received $1 per month from the Government and $625 per month from the Rockefeller Fund.” While Senator John Sharp Williams of Mississippi generally supported the use of private funding, he expressed the sentiments of many of his colleagues with his concern that it was “a very bad thing to get the employees of the Federal or of the State or of a city government in the habit of relying upon rich men and corporations for aid and assistance, because it brings around… a certain, perhaps dominating, influence upon the officials themselves that might be and probably would be finally detrimental to the public service or to self-respect and interest of the masses.”

Key Issues of Governance and Finance of Kyrgyz Education

We analyze the governance structure and the financing of Kyrgyz education, with special emphasis on the general secondary education system. General secondary schools are under the authority of oblasts and rayons. Our main findings are as follows: 1.) The oblast and rayon authorities in Kyrgyzstan are in fact delegated offices of the central administration, with highly non-transparent reporting lines, very little budgetary independence, diffused political responsibility and politicized control over financial flows to lower levels of government, 2.) The principle that funds from the central budget for specific functions should be transfered directly (without any intermediaries) to the level of government responsible for those functions is not observed in Kyrgyzstan. In particular, the categorical grants for education are determined and negotiated in a very non-transparent way, 3.) The Kyrgyz education sector is fragmented, and the divided responsibilities for management and for finances make rationalization and reform very difficult to accomplish. Moreover, the situation is compounded by the fact that education decentralization has a formal character, and is not accompanied by real delegation of authority and responsibility, 4.) The general secondary education system in Kyrgyzstan, although managed according to the rules and procedures common to other post Soviet republics, displays a remarkable degree of regional and ethnic differentiation. The financing levels also vary significantly among oblasts, 5.) Parental contributions make up at least 30% of the school budgets in Bishkek. Their collection and use vary greatly among schools, but in all cases are beyond the effective control of either parents or the central and local authorities. Moreover, the emerging system of entrance fees for first grade students is unconstitutional and violates human rights and pedagogical principles. In order to deal with these issues, the Kyrgyz Republic needs to correct the present non-transparent and dysfunctional governance structure of Kyrgyz education, because otherwise any efforts to improve the delivery of educational services or their financing may remain ineffective. The Kyrgyz Republic also needs to define education standards that it will be able to enforce and finance in all schools. Finally, it needs to implement a regulatory system governing parental contributions, which would serve the schools and at the same time allow for transparent and well-monitored use of private funds in public schools.

The growing role of private giving in financing the modern university

AbstractIncreased use of private funds to support public higher education is essential, but private funding undoubtedly shapes the university in ways that challenge academic traditions, creating a new paradigm for financing the modern university.

Optimisation et décentralisation des programmes d'investissements de transport

This article proposes a method to determine the optimal program for a set of projects, taking into account their links (incompatibilities, competition, or complementarity), funding sources (public-private partnership ), and possible budget constraints. We analyze the method in formal terms. By applying the Kuhn-Tucker theorem, we identify the direction of the dual variables associated with the constraints and link them to classical optimization methods. We use simulations to test the robustness of the programming criteria commonly used in practice, the scope for decentralized decision-making, and the use of private funding and public-private partnerships to carry out infrastructure projects.

Seeking Consensus: A Clarification and Defense of Altered Nuclear Transfer

Since 1998, when human embryonic stem cells were first isolated, our nation has been locked in a conflict over federal funding of this new field of scientific research. Both sides in the debate are defending important human goods, and both of these goods--opening avenues for advance in medicine and protecting nascent human life are important to all of us. A purely political solution will leave our country bitterly divided, eroding the social support and sense of noble purpose that is essential for the public funding of biomedical science. While there are currently no federal restrictions on the use of private funds for this research, there is a consensus in the scientific community that without federal support for newly created embryonic stem cell lines, progress in this emerging field of scientific inquiry will be seriously constrained. In May 2005, acknowledging our national impasse over embryonic stem cell research, the President's Council on Bioethics published a white paper that outlines a series of proposals for obtaining pluripotent stem cells (the functional equivalent of embryonic stem cells) without the creation or destruction of human embryos. (1) One of these proposals, nuclear (ANT) has stirred considerable public interest and affirmation, including several legislative proposals that provide funding for its further exploration. There is substantial support among leading scientists, moral philosophers, and religious leaders for the view that ANT may offer a scientifically feasible and morally sound way forward on ES cell research. (2) At the same time, there has been some confusion about ANT, leading to its mischaracterization in certain reports and published commentaries. In a recent cover story on stem cell research in Time magazine, ANT was described as a project that would ensure that the embryo lives only long enough to produce stem cells and then dies. (3) But the whole idea of ANT is to produce pluripotent stem cells without creating an embryo. Time's description has ANT violating the very moral principle it is intended to uphold. Acknowledging the complexity of the scientific and ethical issues at the foundation of this proposal, and in the spirit of constructive dialogue, we seek in this essay first to offer a clear and accurate account of ANT, and then to respond to some of the more significant questions and concerns about it. Altered Nuclear Transfer: Non-Embryonic Sources of Pluripotent Cells The President's Council report draws a critical distinction between pluripotency, the capacity of a cell to give rise to many if not all the different cell types of the human body, and totipotency, the capacity of a zygote or other cell to develop as a complete, integrated, living being. A naturally conceived zygote--the single-celled embryo brought into being by fertilization--is totipotent; embryonic stem cells are merely pluripotent. ANT is a general concept that might take a variety of specific forms. The basic idea is to employ somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), the technique often known simply as cloning, but to alter it in such a way that pluripotent stem cells are produced without the creation and destruction of human embryos. In standard SCNT, the nucleus of a differentiated body cell is transferred into an egg cell that has had its own nucleus removed. (4) The egg cytoplasm then reprograms the transferred nucleus and, if all goes as planned, the newly constituted cell proceeds to divide and develop like a naturally conceived embryo. This is how Dolly the sheep was produced. In ANT, the adult body cell nucleus or the egg cytoplasm (or both) are altered before the nucleus is transferred into the enucleated egg so that the newly constituted cell will, from the outset, lack the integrated unity and developmental potential of an embryo, yet will nevertheless possess the capacity for a certain limited subset of growth sufficient to produce pluripotent stem cells. …

Altered Nuclear Transfer: A Way Forward for Embryonic Stem Cell Research

The present conflict over the moral status of the human embryo reflects deep differences in our basic convictions and is unlikely to be resolved through deliberation or debate. While there are currently no federally legislated constraints on the use of private funds for this research, there is a consensus opinion in the scientific community that without NIH support for newly created embryonic stem cell lines, progress in this important realm of research will be severely constrained. A May, 2005, report by the President's Council on Bioethics, "Alternative Sources of Pluripotent Stem Cells," outlines several proposals for obtaining pluripotent stem cells without the destruction of human embryos. One of these methods, Altered Nuclear Transfer, proposes to use the technology of somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), but with a preemptive genetic or epigenetic alteration that precludes the integrated and coordinated organization essential for natural embryogenesis. Drawing on insights from systems biology, the distinction between totipotency (capacity to form a whole organism) and pluripotency (capacity to form all the cell types) is explored. The implications of this distinction are used to discuss the moral arguments for the inviolability of nascent human life and the moral standing of entities with only partial and unorganized developmental potential. Away forward is proposed that may open positive avenues of advance in both stem cell research and a broader arena of research in developmental biology.

Driving privately financed projects in Australia: what makes them tick?

This paper documents the growing dependence of Australian governments on the use of private funding to provide infrastructure and related services to the public. Using a Habermasian framework proposed by Broadbent and Laughlin in 1999 the paper examines their second research question: “what is the nature of PFI and who is regulating its application?” to frame an analysis of the complex relationships between steering media and steering mechanisms in determining the operation of privately financed projects (PFP) in Australia. A secondary, but related concern is to explore the linkages between the macro‐economic policy debates that gave rise to PFP and their implications for the micro‐organisational control issues. The debate about whether or not PFP are a response by governments to macro economic pressures remains unresolved. Similarly, there is evidence that governments are not as successful as private‐sector consortia at identifying and shifting risk and, therefore, at achieving value‐for‐money. Ultimate PFP outcomes depend on two factors: broad policy parameters established by governments (steering mechanisms) either discreetly, or through other appointed steering media; and execution at the micro or organisational level, that is, on the decisions and actions taken by a variety of actors interfacing with PFP.

Privately funded infrastructure in the UK: Participants' risk in the Skye Bridge project

This paper examines the risk implications of the use of private funding for the Skye Bridge concessionary infrastructure project. The privatisation of infrastructure procurement in the UK arises as a result of the Government's consultation paper ‘New roads by new means — bringing in private finance’ (Department of Transport (DoT), 1989) together with relaxation of the use of private finance, the so-called Ryrie rules. The analysis of the Skye Bridge project looks at the financing arrangements and the resultant risk and reward for the participants to the concession. The general conclusions are: 1. 1 private sector finance could be hard to mobilise to due to the perceived levels of risk and uncertainty; 2. 2 in the case of the Skye Bridge, allowing full inflation adjustment of the toll charge may provide considerable potential windfall gains to the concessionaire; 3. 3 only projects offering the highest return are likely to attract potential interest.

Abortion: The New Standard for U.S. Population Aid

Abortion: The New Standard for U.S. Population Aid

World War II Tax Amortization Revived

SINCE last June and the proof of Korea that we must again prepare to defend ourselves, much of the World War II industrial and financial machinery of government has been resuscitated, but, in many cases, with a new twist. The World War II method of offering a tax amortization inducement, allowing the private investor an accelerated write-off and, thus, telescoping his risk into the initial period of his investment, was revived on Sept. 23, 1950, as part of the Revenue Act of 1950. It was this method of rapid tax writeoff which, coupled with government ownership, obtained the facilities for the prosecution of World War II. Substantial expansion through the use of private funds (equity capital, borrowed capital, or otherwise) cannot be undertaken under high tax rates and long-term recapture of the investment through normal depreciation. To understand what is happening today, it is necessary to compare the present situation with that ...