Determinants of salary in nonprofit organizations: A study of executive compensation in symphony orchestras

This thesis presents the development of a demand equation for symphony orchestras and a three equation, simultaneous model examining factors which influence nonprofit executive compensation. Results from the demand equation demonstrate that nonprofit orchestras operate in the inelastic portion of the demand curve. Thus, ticket sales generate negative marginal revenues and attendance is increased at the expense of profit. If total revenue is less than total cost, the orchestra must be subsidized by contributions from private and public sectors. The compensation model indicates that salary is positively correlated with the ability to increase contributions and improve organizational quality. Therefore, administrators seeking to enhance income and marketability would do well to focus their energies on these two critical areas. Additionally, private contributions and quality respond positively to executive pay. Organizations seeking to enhance their reputation by increasing their level of service will bid up the salary of superior managers

Ghost of 0.7%: Origins and Relevance of the International Aid Target

The international goal for rich countries to devote 0.7% of their national income to development assistance has become a cause célèbre for aid activists and has been accepted in many official quarters as the legitimate target for aid budgets. The origins of the target, however, raise serious questions about its relevance. First, the 0.7% target was calculated using a series of assumptions that are no longer true, and justified by a model that is no longer considered credible. When we use essentially the same method used to arrive at 0.7% in the early 1960s and apply today’s conditions, it yields an aid goal of just 0.01% of rich-country GDP for the poorest countries and negative aid flows to the developing world as a whole. We do not claim in any way that this is the 'right' amount of aid, but only that this exercise lays bare the folly of the initial method and the subsequent unreflective commitment to the 0.7% aid goal. Second, we document the fact that, despite frequent misinterpretation of UN documents, no government ever agreed in a UN forum to actually reach 0.7%—though many pledged to move toward it. Third, we argue that aid as a fraction of rich country income does not constitute a meaningful metric for the adequacy of aid flows. It would be far better to estimate aid needs by starting on the recipient side with a meaningful model of how aid affects development. Although aid certainly has positive impacts in many circumstances, our quantitative understanding of this relationship is too poor to accurately conduct such a tally. The 0.7% target began life as a lobbying tool, and stretching it to become a functional target for real aid budgets across all donors is to exalt it beyond reason. That no longer makes any sense, if it ever did.aid, foreign aid, development, mdg, mdgs, millennium development goals, oda, united nations, un, overseas development assistance, africa

800 years on can Magna Carta still disrupt the executive?

In June 1215 King John put his seal to Magna Carta, which over the centuries has become an icon of English (British) liberties. Clause 40 about not selling, denying or delaying justice, and Clause 39, that no free man is to be imprisoned or dispossessed “save by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land” are still in force today. For these reasons Lord Denning described Magna Carta as “the greatest constitutional document of all times—the foundation of the freedom of the individual against the arbitrary authority of the despot”. In other words the executive can never be above the law, but for this principle to be enforced the state must disclose evidence by due process to the public by which it can be held to account. This essay explores the threats to openness of government in the digital age, which runs the risk of undermining this fundamental principle of the British constitution. These range from the intrusiveness of our surveillance society, ill-considered notions of a post-privacy world, misconceived concepts of open data to the immense difficulty of scrutinizing born-digital data released under due process for sensitive content. Such threats are balanced by a much more assertive judiciary under the supreme court, which like its American counterpart strikes down legislation, an unelected second chamber willing to challenge the executive and House of Commons select committees that are increasingly baring their teeth. This article is published as part of a collection entitled ‘IT as a utility’

“Waiting for Godot”- Restructuring on Small Family Farms

This paper examines the extent to which favourable off-farm labour market conditions coupled with growth in land values have contributed to the observed resilience of small scale family farms. We use data from Northern Ireland and employ farm household optimisation models to analyse household decision making processes that contribute to the observed inertia in farm structure. The analysis indicates that farm household behaviour is influenced not just by current farm income, but also expected capital asset returns. Increased wealth, associated with continuing land ownership, gives rise to the proposition that the link between off-farm incomes, increased land values and remaining in farming may be associated with farmers pursuing wealth maximizing objectives, whilst still maintaining a rural way of life. Alongside increased wealth through land ownership the farm household model quantifies the importance of off-farm income removing the pressure from farming income to fund all family consumption needs. This enables households to sustain low-income farming activities in order to pursue other objectives such as wealth management (including tax efficient transfer of wealth) and lifestyle. Consequently, the results indicate that the survival of small-scale family farms may be much less sensitive to agricultural support policies than has been commonly suggested. In an extension that explores the effects of the recent economic turbulence due to the ‘credit crunch’ we find that the households remain resilient even when subjected to a protracted period of reduced off-farm employment.Farm households, resilience, wealth accumulation, off-farm income, Consumer/Household Economics, Productivity Analysis, C61, Q12,

Using Land Values to Predict Future Farm Income

land values, almon lag, farm profitability, Agribusiness, Agricultural Finance, Farm Management, Financial Economics, Production Economics,

The Trouble with the MDGs: Confronting Expectations of Aid and Development Success

Growing concern that the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) will not be achieved by 2015 should not obscure the bigger picture that development progress has been occurring at unprecedented levels over the past thirty or more years. At the same time, the MDGs may perhaps create an unnecessary pessimism toward aid by labeling many development successes as failures. The first MDG of halving the number of people living in poverty will probably be met globally, but for most developing countries to achieve this at the national level, the growth rates required are at the bounds of historical precedent. Additionally, there appears to be only a weak relationship between aid and rapid economic growth. A similar problem holds for many of the other education and health goals. For many countries, the rates of progress required to meet the MDGs by 2015 are extremely high compared to historical experience and there is only a tenuous relationship between expenditure and outcomes. Nevertheless, estimates that an additional $50 billion in aid per year is necessary to meet the MDGs are frequently misinterpreted to suggest that it is also sufficient. Most of the goals are unlikely to be reached, but this will probably not be due primarily to shortfalls in aid. This is in part because development is a long-term and complex process dependent on relieving more than a supply-side constraint on resources. Aid remains vital and contributes to development progress, but even considerable increases in aid are unlikely to buy these particular goals. Goal setting is also useful, but continuing to suggest that the MDGs can be met may undermine future constituencies for aid (in donors) and reform (in recipients). The MDGs might be better viewed not as realistic targets but as reminders of the stark contrast between the world we want and the world we have, and a call to redouble our search for interventions to close the gap.Millennium Development Goals poverty economic growth

Using APT to Assess the Impact of Farm Policy on Agribusiness Stocks

This study investigates the impact of differing U. S. Farm Policy regimes on the stock prices of publicly traded agribusinesses. Following the Roll and Ross approach, we apply a two step Arbitrage Pricing Model (APM). We analyze the effect of agricultural policy on returns to agribusiness by applying a modified APM to agricultural returns to test for the presence of an agribusiness premium or discount. We further augment our analysis by dividing the sample into two time periods around the implementation of the 1996. The differences in agribusiness premium can then be tested using a paired t-test. The empirical evidence lends support to a switch from negative returns to agribusiness stocks pre-FAIR Act to positive returns to agribusiness stocks after its enactment.Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy,

Paolo Mancini on the value of comparative research for studying new media and populist politics

With controversy over election upsets and the spread of fake news, the media’s role in politics is currently under the spotlight in more than one country. International comparative media systems research has developed significantly in the last decade as a tool for studying the relationship between media and politics. In an interview conducted on December 2, 2016, LSE MSc student Michael Moss asks Professor Paolo Mancini of the Università degli Studi di Perugia what ‘new’ media means for the field, whether media systems are implicated in the rise of ‘populist’ politics and about the role of academic research in informing policy

Skull Flexure from Blast Waves: A Mechanism for Brain Injury with Implications for Helmet Design

Traumatic brain injury [TBI] has become a signature injury of current military conflicts, with debilitating, costly, and long-lasting effects. Although mechanisms by which head impacts cause TBI have been well-researched, the mechanisms by which blasts cause TBI are not understood. From numerical hydrodynamic simulations, we have discovered that non-lethal blasts can induce sufficient skull flexure to generate potentially damaging loads in the brain, even without a head impact. The possibility that this mechanism may contribute to TBI has implications for injury diagnosis and armor design.Comment: version in press, Physical Review Letters; 17 pages, 5 figures (includes supplementary material