ABSTRACT The issue of institutional capacity has received increased attention in the research on policy integration, bringing about proliferation conceptions aimed at capturing linkage between cross-sectoral aspects designs and specific attributes that governmental institutions processes should possess order to effectively formulate implement integrated policies. This article contributes reduci...

despite several calls to support evidence-informed policy-making, variations in uptake of evidence into policy persist. this editorial brings together and builds on previous knowledge translation (kt) frameworks and theories to present a simple, yet, holistic approach for promoting evidence-informed policies. the proposed conceptual framework is characterized by its impact-oriented approach and...

Commodity merchants use real option models to manage their operations. A central element of such a model is its underlying operating policy. We focus on network contracts for the transport capacity of natural gas pipelines, specific energy conversion assets. Practitioners commonly manage these contracts as portfolios of spread options. Although computationally fast, we show that this approach i...

This paper develops a general theory of sequential irreversible investments in capital where a firm has the option to expand its current capacity or just wait for better time. Facing economic uncertainty, the firm has an operating function of the current capacity and an exogenous stochastic factor modelled by semimartingale. This general model encompasses all previously studied models, includin...

The objective of the study was to analyze the status and explore the challenges to decentralization policy implementation in Nepal. Thirty seven key informants rich in experience and knowledge, seven focus group discussions, observation of six health facilities and analysis of about 25 key policy documents provided the data for this study. The study identified the challenges to the implementati...

Weconsider themaximization problem of monotone submodular functions under an uncertain knapsack constraint. Specifically, the problem is discussed in the situation that the knapsack capacity is not given explicitly and can be accessed only through an oracle that answers whether or not the current solution is feasible when an item is added to the solution. Assuming that cancellation of the last ...

background in 2004, the health system in iran initiated an organizational reform aiming to increase the autonomy of teaching hospitals and make them more decentralized. the policy led to the formation of a board of trustees in each hospital and significant modifications in hospitals’ financing. since the reform aimed to improve its predecessor policy (implementation of hospital autonomy began i...

This study draws on the concept of Europeanisation, understood as the domestic impact of EU policies, to investigate the influence of EU cohesion on the sub-national policy actors in Poland. The implementation of the Structural Funds (SF) in Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) is credited for diffusion of norms and practices improving the capacity of the administrative actors involve...