Despite it being confusing, inherently inequitable, and subject to excessive federal government control, Australia provides good healthcare.

The U.S. federal government implements environmental, biofuels and crop insurance programs that influence land use. They are not well integrated in that cost savings from crop insurance subsidies are not acknowledged when screening land for retirement or when calculating the cost of land retirement programs. We identify and evaluate an optimal benefit index for enrollment in a land retirement p...

What factors explain the success of the UK Cabinet Office's Behavioural Insights Team? To answer this question, this article applies insights from organizational theory, particularly accounts of change agents. Change agents are able-with senior sponsorship-to foster innovation by determination and skill: they win allies and circumvent more traditional bureaucratic procedures. Although Behaviour...

In this paper we present an approach to organize e-government schemas in Switzerland. On the political side, Switzerland is a challenging environment for any federation-wide harmonization and cooperation, because many authorities are organized independently. On the technical side, we describe an approach which aims at increasing the federation-wide cooperation through providing interested parti...

The scope of this paper is to discuss the use of Internet Technology in the process of procurement currently employed by the Brazilian Federal Government. The focus of this analysis is on the Internet-Based Reverse Auction system employed by the Federal Administration to purchase goods and services from the standpoint of efficiency, efficacy and accountability. An explanatory single case study ...

Especially since the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, governments worldwide have invested considerable resources in the writing of terrorism emergency response plans. Particularly in the United States, the federal government has created new homeland security organisations and urged state and local governments to draw up plans. This emphasis on the written plan tends to draw attention awa...

This paper examines the effects of ownership types on firms’ R&D intensity and innovation performance, using a sample of 357,857 Chinese firms from 2005 to 2007. This study finds considerable divergence among Chinese domestic enterprises in terms of R&D intensity and innovation performance. We find that firms owned by the central government are the key drivers for firms’ R&D activities, while l...

fiscal equalization is the process through which a central government makes funds available to lower level governments with the objective of reducing the degree of inequality in the revenues that such governments can raise using their own revenue instruments.’ While the proximate objective is concerned with revenues, the ultimate objective may be to reduce inequalities in public expenditure.2 E...

About NACo – The Voice of America's Counties The National Association of Counties (NACo) is the only national organization that represents county governments in the United States. Founded in 1935, NACo provides essential services to the nation's 3,066 counties. NACo advances issues with a unified voice before the federal government, improves the public's understanding of county government, assi...