The focus of this article is to quantitatively evaluate and compare three of the most popular defined benefit plan types based on various variable assumptions. The decision of when to retire and take ...a pension, or being given the option to change plans, often happens only once. This makes the evaluation and comparison critical. This paper provides a numerical analysis with a broad perspective so that employees with varying career situations and retirement plans can better evaluate their financial standing. Data sources include standard economic assumptions used in valuing pension plans, as well as a survey of employer sponsored pension plans. Recent pension plans provide more flexibility by paying out pensions as a single lump sum, however, these plans generally provide lower benefits.
How can small cities make an impact in a globalizing world dominated by ‘world cities’ and urban development strategies aimed at increasing agglomeration? This book addresses the challenges of ...smaller cities trying to put themselves on the map, attract resources and initiate development. Placemaking has become an important tool for driving urban development that is sensitive to the needs of communities. This volume examines the development of creative placemaking practices that can help to link small cities to external networks, stimulate collaboration and help them make the most of the opportunities presented by the knowledge economy. The authors argue that the adoption of more strategic, holistic placemaking strategies that engage all stakeholders can be a successful alternative to copying bigger places. Drawing on a range of examples from around the world, they analyse small city development strategies and identify key success factors. This book focuses on the case of ‘s-Hertogenbosch, a small Dutch city that used cultural programming to link itself to global networks and stimulate economic, cultural, social and creative development. It advocates the use of cultural programming strategies as a more flexible alternative to traditional top-down planning approaches and as a means of avoiding copying the big city. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.
A feed-in tariff (FiT) framework has been implemented in Thailand since 2007 to encourage and stimulate the development of renewable energy. As a result, the capacity of solar photovoltaics (PVs) has ...increased significantly and has reached 1902MW. Nevertheless, the installation of PVs on rooftops in the residential sector accounts for only a minute percentage (0.003%) of the total capacity of installed PVs. In this paper, a feasibility analysis of grid-connected solar PV rooftops for households under the present feed-in tariff framework was performed. The results demonstrate that the current feed-in tariff is not sufficient to promote investment in PV rooftops in the residential sector under the current market situation. Moreover, in order to support the current framework, additional supportive measures including (1) an appropriate feed-in-tariff rate, (2) personal income tax exemptions, (3) carbon trading, and (4) low interest rate loans, were proposed, and their effects were evaluated. The low interest rate loan appears to be the best measure for promoting and stimulating investment in residential-scale PV rooftops without additional subsidy. The leverage effect of debt, with different debt portions, loan terms and interest rates, was investigated to suggest a suitable policy.
•Thailand's feed in tariff framework is not sufficient to promote residential PV rooftops.•The effects of proposed additional financially supportive measures are evaluated.•The low interest rate loan is suggested for promoting residential PV rooftops.•Appropriate loan conditions and fund raising mechanism are proposed.
Full text
Available for:
GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZRSKP
Context: In 2008, researchers at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) described the Triple Aim as simultaneously "improving the individual experience of care; improving the health of ...populations; and reducing the per capita costs of care for populations." IHI and its close colleagues had determined that both individual and societal changes were needed. Methods: In 2007, IHI began recruiting organizations from around the world to participate in a collaborative to implement what became known as the Triple Aim. The 141 participating organizations included health care systems, hospitals, health care insurance companies, and others closely tied to health care. In addition, key groups outside the health care system were represented, such as public health agencies, social services groups, and community coalitions. This collaborative provided a structure for observational research. By noting the contrasts between the contexts and structures of those sites in the collaborative that progressed and those that did not, we were able to develop an ex post theory of what is needed for an organization or community to successfully pursue the Triple Aim. Findings: Drawing on our 7 years of experience, we describe the 3 major principles that guided the organizations and communities working on the Triple Aim: creating the right foundation for population management, managing services at scale for the population, and establishing a learning system to drive and sustain the work over time. Conclusions: The concept of the Triple Aim is now widely used, because of IHI's work with many organizations and also because of the adoption of the Triple Aim as part of the national strategy for US health care, developed during the implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010. Even those organizations working on the Triple Aim before IHI coined the term found our concept to be useful because it helped them think about all 3 dimensions at once and organize their work around them.
Full text
Available for:
BFBNIB, DOBA, FZAB, GIS, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, NLZOH, NMLJ, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Using 10-K Text to Gauge Financial Constraints Bodnaruk, Andriy; Loughran, Tim; McDonald, Bill
Journal of financial and quantitative analysis,
08/2015, Volume:
50, Issue:
4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Measuring the extent to which a firm is financially constrained is critical in assessing capital structure. Extant measures of financial constraints focus on macro firm characteristics such as age ...and size, variables highly correlated with other firm attributes. We parse 10-K disclosures filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) using a unique lexicon based on constraining words. We find that the frequency of constraining words exhibits very low correlation with traditional measures of financial constraints and predicts subsequent liquidity events, such as dividend omissions or increases, equity recycling, and underfunded pensions, better than widely used financial constraint indexes.
Full text
Available for:
BFBNIB, CEKLJ, INZLJ, IZUM, KILJ, NMLJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK, ZRSKP
Searching for the Good Plan Berke, Philip; Godschalk, David
Journal of planning literature,
02/2009, Volume:
23, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Despite the centrality of comprehensive plans to the profession of city and regional planning, there is a gap in knowledge about the quality of plans as they are not routinely evaluated against best ...practice standards. We discuss plan quality evaluation, an emerging methodology for assessing the quality of plans. We review the evolution of the concept, the dimensions covered, and the principles and criteria used. We then provide a comparative meta-analytic analysis of the findings from published plan quality evaluations, ranging from research studies in the United States to national planning policy applications in Holland and New Zealand, and offer recommendations about future directions in improving content analysis of plan documents and research design in plan quality evaluation.
Full text
Available for:
NUK, OILJ, SAZU, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
This book explores examples of the circular economy in action. Unlike other books that provide narrow perceptions of wide-ranging and highly interconnected paradigms, such as supply chains, ...recycling, businesses models and waste management, this book provides a comprehensive overview of the circular economy from various perspectives. Its unique insights into the approaches, methods and tools that enable people to make the transformation to a circular economy show how recent research, trends and attitudes have moved beyond the "call to arms" approach to a level of maturity that requires sound scientific thinking.
PDF
