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This paper revisits options for strengthening local governance by increasing own revenues in local government jurisdictions. Using stochastic frontier and recursive structural equation methods, the paper estimates the effects of central government transfers and tax effort on own revenues in the Ghanaian local government system. Results show that contrary to some recent findings that transfers reduce own revenues for local jurisdictions in Ghana, increasing transfers to local jurisdictions increases (rather than reduces) own revenues in Ghana. Further, local government performance in public service provision was found to be critical for increasing own revenues. Making the Ghanaian local government system more sustainable thus requires increasing central government transfers and providing technical support to strengthen the relationship between available public services and own revenues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using novel US Department of Labor administrative records, the authors test theoretical mechanisms to account for variation in immigrant workers' starting salaries following key career transitions. Specifically, they examine differences in the base starting salaries and discretionary starting salary increases above these base starting salaries for 1) same-establishment hires, relative to 2) US-based establishment transfers, 3) international establishment transfers, 4) US-based external hires, and 5) international external hires. In support of the "insider premium" account, findings show that same-establishment hires tend to work in jobs with greater requirements, and thus higher base starting salaries. In partial support of the "outsider premium" account, findings show that US-based external hires receive larger starting salary increases than do same-establishment hires, conditional on the jobs they enter. This said, international external hires receive smaller starting salary increases than do same-establishment hires. Findings reveal distinct mechanisms, acting separately or in tandem, during salary-setting processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To investigate the clinical characteristics of older adults undergoing inpatient rehabilitation after hip fractures and to find factors associated with discharge location.Cross-sectional analysis.Inpatient rehabilitation units in the United States.≥65 years old patients with hip fractures.Inpatient rehabilitation with ≥1 hour of physical and occupational therapy per weekday.Home versus nonhome discharges.79% of 7439 (n = 5,908) patients were discharged to home after a median stay of 14 days, while 13% (n = 990) were discharged to skilled nursing facilities. 6% (n = 423) were transferred to acute care during rehabilitation stay. Functional mobility levels for bed-to-chair transfer and sit-to-stand at admission were significantly lower in patients discharged to facilities than in patients discharged to home. Older age (OR 0.97 per 1 year, CI 0.96–0.98); comorbidities of dementia (OR 0.68, CI 0.56–0.83) and cerebrovascular disease (OR 0.53, CI 0.36–0.78); and the use of opioid analgesics (OR 0.71, CI 0.56–0.91), antipsychotics (OR 0.73, CI 0.58–0.92), and anticonvulsants (OR 0.81, CI 0.67–0.96), and lower initial functional levels in bed-to-chair transfers (OR 0.08, CI 0.05–0.12) for dependent level; OR 0.16, CI 0.10–0.25 for level requiring maximal assistance; OR 0.38, CI 0.24–0.60 for level requiring partial, moderate assistance), were associated with a decreased likelihood of discharge to home after inpatient rehabilitation.Older adults with dementia, cerebrovascular disorders, and lower bed-to-chair transfer mobility levels at admission after hip fractures may benefit from additional targeted rehabilitation to improve the chances of a successful community discharge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to estimate the relative importance of annuities and transfers in Greek retirement benefits and to assess their impact on intergenerational and intragenerational equity. We analyse a large sample of private sector workers retiring in 2008. Adopting a longitudinal approach, we compute the net present value of contributions paid and benefits received by individuals over their life course. We define the difference between the two as the implicit transfer, which can be either positive or negative. Lifetime retirement benefits are calculated both according to the rules in place at the time of retirement, and after the spending cuts introduced in 2010-2013. Our findings suggest that for the vast majority of retirees pension benefits are heavily subsidized, i.e. exceed the actuarially fair level paid for by social contributions. Austerity policies have reduced but not eliminated this subsidy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines where European professional teams recruit new players in order to shed light on the functioning of global value added chains in world football. Most studies either point to the increasing internationalization of football's labor force to argue that European clubs recruit from peripheral but culturally or historically related countries or turn to the experiences of players with domestic transfers to suggest that most teams recruit within their country. This study directly examines the recruitment activities of teams active in the highest two leagues of Europe's top seven countries between the 2003/2004 season and the 2011/2012 season. Results indicate that even though Europe's football labor force looks internationalized at first sight, many international players hold dual nationality and might be more aptly characterized as domestic players who are members of the large immigrant communities who came to Europe after the de-colonization of former colonies or as part of the stream of labor migrants in the 1960s and 1970s. Moreover, for most teams, domestic mobility forms the backbone of their recruitment activities, but some teams, especially in Portugal, buy football talent from teams in the global South and sell their best players to larger European teams. These results urge researchers to reconsider teams as more myopic and geographically bounded actors in global value added chains, incorporate domestic mobility into global value added chains, reconsider what counts as the core and the (semi-)periphery connected through the chains, and be wary of approaches taking countries or even leagues as the basic unit of analysis in global value added chains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: For long-term care (LTC) residents, transfers to emergency departments (EDs) can be associated with poor health outcomes. We aimed to describe characteristics of residents transferred, factors related to decisions during transfer, care received in emergency medical services (EMS), ED settings, outcomes on return to LTC, and times of transfer segments along the transition. Method: We prospectively followed 637 transitions to an ED in British Columbia and Alberta, Canada, over a 12-month period. Data were captured through an electronic Transition Tracking Tool and interviews with health care professionals. Results: Common events triggering transfer were falls (26.8%), sudden change in condition (23.5%), and shortness of breath (19.8%). Discrepancies existed between reason for transfer, EMS reported chief complaint, and ED diagnosis. Many transfers resulted in resident return directly to LTC (42.7%). Discussion: Avoidable transfers may put residents at risk of receiving inappropriate care. Standardized communication strategies to highlight changes in resident condition are warranted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To estimate proportions of married couples aged 30 to 59 years who face simultaneous demands from elderly parents and children in China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, and the effects on couples’ life and marital satisfaction. Method: Using data from the 2006 East Asian Social Survey, proportions of sandwiched couples were estimated using three definitions: co-residence, co-residence or nearby residence, and co-residence or frequent provision of financial/physical assistance. Logistic regression models were used to assess the effects on life and marital satisfaction. Results: Three-generational co-residence is more common in Taiwan and Japan (24.3% and 21.4%), whereas co-residence or provision for both generations is higher in Taiwan and Korea (53.7% and 44.5%). The strain of being sandwiched is associated with lower life and marital satisfaction only among women. Discussion: Intergenerational transfers of care play a major role in elderly support in East Asia but take a toll on the well-being of married women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article adopts the perspective of second-generation fiscal-federalism theory to provide an empirical assessment of Canada’s intergovernmental fiscal arrangements. In the context of the literature on the political economy of intergovernmental grant programs, it examines the influence of political considerations on the evolution of the Canadian fiscal arrangements under the Constitution Act of 1982. Fixed-effect regression results exploiting data from the 1982 to 2012 period show a statistically significant relationship between changes in both federal and provincial electoral variables and changes in a province’s total federal transfer revenues. Changes to social transfers appear to be more reactive to changes in the political environment than do changes in equalization transfers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early in the last century, it was commonplace for elderly women to live with their adult children. Over time, the prevalence of this type of living arrangement declined, as incomes increased. In more recent decades, coresidence between adult children and their retirement-age parents has become more common, as children rely on parental support later into adulthood. We use panel data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to examine the living arrangements of older mothers and their adult children over the life course. We pay particular attention to the relationship between coresidence and indicators of parental and child needs. Our results suggest that for much of the life course, coresidence serves to benefit primarily the adult children rather than their older mother. We also highlight a little known phenomenon, that of children who never leave the parental home and remain coresident well into their later adult years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The transfer of patients for hand and microsurgical emergencies to level I trauma centers is a common practice. Many of these transfers do not actually require a hand specialist and could be taken care of at most regional hospitals. In this study, we will evaluate the appropriateness of patient transfers for hand trauma and determine if there is a correlation between inappropriate transfers and undesirable factors, such as insurance status and off-hour’s presentation. Methods: A retrospective chart review was performed in all patients transferred to a level I trauma center for hand and microsurgical trauma over a 22-month period. Collected data included indication for transfer, mode of transfer, time and day of the week, patient demographics, insurance status, and whether the transferring facilities had surgical coverage available. A synopsis, including treatment details, of each transfer was created, and a survey was sent to a review committee who rated the appropriateness of the transfers. Statistical analysis was performed to determine whether appropriateness of transfers was influenced by nonmedical variables. Results: Over a 22-month period, a total of 95 hand or microsurgical patients were transferred to a single tertiary referral center. Of these, 66 % of the transfers were considered inappropriate by the surveyed physicians. Inappropriate transfers were statistically more likely to be under insured or transferred during nonbusiness hours. Conclusion: A large percentage of patients are being transferred to tertiary care centers for reasons other than medical necessity, generating a large burden on already strained medical resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the changes over a decade in the end-of-life care given to older adults during the last 3 months of life. The data was collected from the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam in 2000 and concluded that older people had a reduced functional ability during the last 3 months of life in 2010 as compared to that in 2000. The study results indicate that older people who received formal or institutional care were less likely to die in hospital compared to those who stayed at home.

In the current article, the author (a) integrates two major theoretical approaches for the explanation of inheritance expectations, namely, the institutional approach of cultural anthropology and the interactionist approach of family research and social gerontology; (b) takes into account the institutional settings of kinship systems and inheritance regimes on the societal level; and (c) relates these institutional settings to the intergenerational relationships between parents and parents-in-law and their offspring. At the societal level, these relations are formulated as two hypotheses: The lineage hypothesis refers to the inheritance regime and its impact on individual inheritance expectations, whereas the welfare hypothesis refers to the relation between levels of affluence and quality of inheritance (instrumental or expressive inheritance). The empirical analysis is based on standardized interviews with women from India, China, Palestine, Turkey, Indonesia, Russia, Germany, and the United States (N = 5,282), which were collected for the Value of Children in Six Cultures research project. Descriptive results show strong cross-cultural differences in matrilineal, patrilineal, and bilineal inheritance expectations. In subsequent multivariate logistic regression analyses, the author tested societal, relational, and individual predictors on inheritance expectations. The results support the lineage and welfare hypotheses but provide no evidence for exchange-based assumptions on the effects of the quality of intergenerational relationships on inheritance expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several policy makers have voiced concern, bordering on alarm, over federal budget deficits and growing federal debt over the past decade and have advocated changes in spending and revenue policies to address their concerns. This study examines the redistributive effect of various federal tax provisions and transfer programs using methods that pick up important dimensions of redistribution often missed in analyses. Overall, the results are as expected-both U.S. taxes and transfers reduce income inequality. The redistributive effect, however, could be larger, if the reranking effect were reduced or eliminated. The reranking effect tends to be relatively more important for transfers than for taxes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the United States, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) effectively requires Level I trauma centers to accept hand trauma transfers for higher level of care if capacity exists. However, patient transfer for non-medical reasons, such as ability to pay, is still perceived as a common practice. We hypothesized that EMTALA would cause selective transfer of hand patients who were underinsured or uninsured, thus, effectively burdening a Level I trauma center. A dedicated transfer center documented the demographics and outcomes of all calls for hand trauma transfers from December 2003 to September 2005. This data registry was reviewed for age, gender, race, insurance status, and length of hospital stay. This data was compared with direct admissions to the emergency room for hand emergencies during that same time period. During the 2-year time period, a total of 151 calls for EMTALA transfer were received for hand emergencies. Our institution accepted 92 of these patients for transfer. Reasons for not accepting transfer included lack of bed availability and unavailability of the on-call surgeon due to other emergency operative cases. Compared with hand emergency patients brought directly to our emergency department during the same time period, transferred patients were younger and had a shorter length of stay. Interestingly, they were very similar in terms of sex, race, and insurance status. These data suggest that the primary motivations for EMTALA hand trauma transfers are truly complexity of patient care and specialist availability. Given the often urgent nature of hand trauma surgery and the limited resources available, expansion and development of hand and microsurgery regional centers will be vital to adequately meet demand without overburdening existing centers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines recent reforms to restructure rural public finance in China and their impact on local-government finance. The focus is on how fiscal income and financial expenditure are managed by local-level governments, particularly at the county and township levels, and how rural public and social services are financed. The article also looks at the development of intergovernmental transfers, ongoing administrative reform, more recent initiatives to extend public finance to cover rural residents as part of the comprehensive rural reform, and a new campaign to build a new socialist rural China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Legislative bargaining theory suggests that fiscal transfers among member states of a federation are determined to a substantial degree by political representation effects. Malapportionment of the states' population in the legislature is claimed to lead to disproportional benefits of overrepresented states. The article analyzes empirically the determinants of funds in Germany's intergovernmental transfer system. The authors expand previous investigations to include the effects of both the bicameral system in Germany and the post-reunification period. Using data for the period from 1970 to 2002, the authors find that malapportionment in the upper house leads to disproportional state shares of per capita transfers. Estimates also indicate that the impact of overrepresentation has somewhat increased over time. Disproportional representation in the lower house does not seem to matter, as the institutional framework of decision making in the lower chamber is not too supportive to constitute a bias towards overrepresented states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neoliberal discourse often produces the impression that the world has undergone a wholesale shift toward laissez-faire and that this shift has produced economic prosperity. This article examines national economic data to discern the degree to which (1) governments have in fact retreated from the market and (2) countries have enjoyed increasing economic prosperity over a period in which they have supposedly been liberalizing. The evidence is mixed on both counts. Although international capital mobility and trade liberalism appears to have grown over the past two decades, there is little evidence of a broad scaling back of government. Over the same period, countries have not experienced any appreciable improvement in growth, cross-national equality, employment, or national debt loads, although there is some evidence of improved price stability near the end of the 1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A common strategy to transfer knowledge from projects is for project teams to capture ‘lessons learned’ and store these on a database for others to access. This strategy is widely adopted but such databases are not widely used. This article explores why cross-project knowledge transfer fails, using data from 13 projects in six organizations. Following Cook and Brown, the analysis focuses on why knowledge captured from one project is typically not used as a ‘tool of knowing’ by others. The results suggest that the knowledge captured is not deemed useful and/or project teams lack awareness that there is knowledge that could be useful to help them improve their processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the relationship between territorial representation and fiscal redistribution in the European Union. Given that small states are vastly overrepresented in both the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers, models of legislative vote-buying predict that overrepresented member states will be systematically favored in the distribution of EU fiscal transfers. Empirical analysis of each manifestation of the EC or EU from 1977 to 1999 reveals a strong linear relationship between votes and transfers per capita during each period. This is true for both agricultural and regional development transfers as well as total net transfers. The paper concludes by reflecting on the importance of the connection between representation and redistribution as the European Union prepares to enlarge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]