School accountability systems that establish the adoption of incentives for teachers and school managers usually impact positively students' performance. However, in many circumstances, school accountability systems may face institutional restrictions to establish rewards and sanctions to...

A budget-constrained buyer wants to purchase items from a shortlisted set. Items are differentiated by observable quality and sellers have private reserve prices for their items. The buyer's problem is to select a subset of maximal quality. Money does not enter the buyer's objective function,...

Die Datenmenge im Internetverkehr wächst ständig. Insbesondere Anwendungen mit hohen Bitraten können dabei Staus verursachen. In diesem Fall werden bislang alle Pakete gleich behandelt. Dies führt aber bei verschiedenen Inhalten zu gravierenden Qualitätseinbußen. Wie können diese...

Quality in the human services has long term effects. Reduced quality of service now increases the service recipients’ future service needs and other social costs. This paper shows that such effects should be considered when a government designs contracts with a for-profit service provider. If...

This paper addresses a lack of evidence on the impact of performance pay in the public sector by evaluating a pilot scheme of incentives in a major government agency. The incentive scheme was based on teams and covered quantity and quality targets, measured with varying degrees of precision. We...

This paper provides new evidences about the determinants of institutional quality. Given the shortcomings of governance indicators, we first discuss the criteria employed to judge institutional quality. Then, we identify the factors that, according to these criteria, shape the quality of...

Using a variance decomposition approach, we examine the importance of accounting information - in particular the cash flow and accruals components of earnings - in explaining the variation in UK company stock returns. We extend prior research by analysing whether auditor quality moderates the...

This study examines the effects of a joint audit on auditor's report consensus and accuracy. We investigate whether a joint audit, particularly the report issued, improves an audit's quality. We measure the audit's quality using the degree of auditor consensus in the auditor's report. We also...

The article examines where older adults seek help in caring for a parent with dementia and the factors associated with their identification of community health and support services as sources of assistance. The authors conducted telephone interviews, using random digit dialing, of 1,152 adults...

Raising the quality of education has been one of the main objectives of the current government in Britain. By devoting more resources to the education sector, it is expected that pupils will achieve higher educational attainment by the time their years of compulsory schooling ends. This study...