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The purpose of this paper is to determine recidivism costs and benefits for 1,030 community-based male offenders enrolled in a domestic abuse program (DAP) compared to an untreated control group (n=1,030) matched on risk factors.

The study time frame was October 1, 2007-June 30, 2010 with reconvictions measured to December 31, 2010. Follow up averaged 19 months. Controls received standard community supervision, but no domestic violence group interventions. Follow up measures included court costs for violent and non-violent reconvictions; re-incarcerations and community-based orders costs measured in days.

Adjusting for time at risk, DAP enrollees had 29 percent fewer reconvictions, 46 percent fewer violent reconvictions, 34 percent fewer custodial days, but 23 percent more days on community orders. Costs: DAP enrollment avoided $2.52 M in custodial costs, but higher community correction costs (+$773 K) and court costs (+$5.8 K), reducing the DAP’s criminal justice system cost savings to $1.754 M ($8.92 M for the DAP group compared to $10.67M for controls). Cost benefits: when the 64 DAP program costs were deducted ($602 K), the net benefit to the New South Wales criminal justice system was $1,141 M, or $1,108 per enrollee, providing a net benefit/cost ratio of 2.89. If the DAP was completed, the net benefit was $1,820 per offender. These results compares favorably to economic evaluations of other community-based interventions.

Group interventions for domestically violent (DV) offenders can provide good investment returns to tax payers and government by reducing demand on scarce criminal justice system resources. The study provides insights into justice costs for DV offenders; a methodological template to determine cost benefits for offender programs and a contribution to cost-effective evidence-based crime reduction interventions.

Using a rigorous methodology, official court, custodial and community correction services costing data, this is the first Australian cost benefit analysis of a domestic violence group intervention, and the first to justify program expenditure by demonstrating substantial savings to the criminal justice system.

This study proposes targeted modernization of the Department of Defense (DoD's) Joint Forces Ammunition Logistics information system by implementing the optimized innovative information technology open architecture design and integrating Radio Frequency Identification Device data technologies and real-time optimization and control mechanisms as the critical technology components of the solution. The innovative information technology, which pursues the focused logistics, will be deployed in 36 months at the estimated cost of $568 million in constant dollars. We estimate that the Systems, Applications, Products (SAP)-based enterprise integration solution that the Army currently pursues will cost another $1.5 billion through the year 2014; however, it is unlikely to deliver the intended technical capabilities.

The European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) calls for far-reaching changes to the way economic activity will occur in EU digital markets. Before its remedies are imposed, it is critical to assess their impacts on individual markets, the digital sector, and the overall European economy. The European Commission (EC) released an Impact Assessment in support of the DMA that purports to evaluate it using cost/benefit analysis.

An economic evaluation of the DMA should consider its full impacts on dynamic competition. The Impact Assessment neither assesses the DMA's impact on dynamic competition in the digital economy nor evaluates the impacts of specific DMA prohibitions and obligations. Instead, it considers benefits in general and largely ignores costs. We study its benefit assessments and find they are based on highly inappropriate methodologies and assumptions. A cost/benefit study using inappropriate methodologies and largely ignoring costs cannot provide a sound policy assessment.

Instead of promoting dynamic competition between platforms, the DMA will likely reinforce existing market structures, ossify market boundaries, and stunt European innovation. The DMA is likely to chill R&D by encouraging free riding on the investments of others, which discourages making those investments. Avoiding harm to innovation is critical because innovation delivers large, positive spillover benefits, driving increases in productivity, employment, wages, and prosperity.

The DMA prioritizes static over dynamic competition, with the potential to harm the European economy. Given this, the Impact Assessment does not demonstrate that the DMA will be beneficial overall, and its implementation must be carefully tailored to alleviate or lessen its potential to harm Europe’s economic performance.

This paper aims to explore effective supply chain principles, through the theory of transaction cost economics, as measures to improve current contingency pharmaceutical item shortfalls in the Air Force Medical Service (AFMS) Contingency Pharmaceutical Programme.

In this research, AFMS contingency pharmaceutical data was collected from various databases, including the Joint Medical Asset Repository, Medical Contingency Requirements Workflow and the Medical Requirements List. Through the methodology of cost-benefit analysis, alternative sourcing and fulfilment practices are evaluated.

The findings of this research indicate that the application of centralized purchasing principles, in an effort to leverage prime vendor contract fill rates for shortage items, can lead to 12%–17% increases in pharmaceutical material availability across the programme.

This research clearly shows that consolidating demand for shortage items across Active Duty War Reserve Material assemblages, though applications of centralized purchasing principles that leverage prime vendor contract fill rates, can lead to substantial increases in material availability at costs that justify the calculated benefits.

While the rationale for interventions in a workplace to enhance employee health are well documented, practitioners have difficulty making an economic case to justify the investment required and to demonstrate positive returns on that investment. This paper aims to present case study data from an ergonomics evaluation of a call centre to demonstrate a simple, four‐step pre‐intervention methodology which provides an accounting‐based justification for funding workplace health‐related projects.

Physical and ergonomic assessments of the workplace and employee interviews establish health risk factors. Two direct (discretionary) costs and five indirect (non‐discretionary) operational costs are evaluated. The capital investment to implement the proposed workplace changes is determined. Total net identified benefits are established and used to create accounting‐based financial metrics.

Application of the methodology to the case study found worker compensation insurance, absenteeism and overtime wages to be neutral. Costs to train new workers, lost call processing time and cost of lost employee productivity were significant, the latter representing two‐thirds of the value of all potential benefits.

The paper creates accounting‐based metrics to mitigate health and safety risk factors, while identifying the potential for productivity gains. Management is provided with a simple decision tool to justify an investment in workplace changes.

This paper summarizes the cost‐benefit analysis (CBA) approach to estimating the dollar value of services offered by public libraries. The rationale behind a CBS approach is discussed and a methodology is proposed for a quicker, cheaper CBA applicable to mid‐size and smaller libraries.

The purpose of this paper is to compare a firm’s net cost and post-apprenticeship benefits of providing apprenticeship training in Austria and Switzerland: two countries with many similarities but some critical institutional differences.

The authors draw on detailed workplace data with information on the costs and benefits of apprenticeship training, as well as on hiring costs for skilled workers from the external labour market. The authors use nearest-neighbour matching models to compare Austrian firms with similar Swiss firms based on observable characteristics.

On average, a Swiss firm generates an annual net benefit of €3,400 from training an apprentice, whereas a firm in Austria incurs net costs of €4,200. The impetus for this difference is largely a higher relative apprentice pay in Austria. However, compared with Swiss firms, Austrian firms generate a higher post-training return by retaining a higher share of apprentices and savings on future hiring costs.

The authors demonstrate that apprenticeship systems can exist under different institutional environments. For countries currently in the process of establishing or expanding apprenticeship systems, the comparative analysis clearly shows that policymakers should consider more than just one country’s particular apprenticeship model.

The authors provide a first comparative analysis between two apprenticeship countries that empirically assesses a firm’s costs and benefits of training during an apprenticeship programme and also provides a monetary value of a particular type of post-training benefits that firms can generate by retaining former apprentices as skilled workers (i.e. savings in future hiring costs for skilled workers).

This paper examines the recent acquisition by Newcastle Polytechnic Library of a computer aided circulation control system. Using the Cost Benefit Analysis methodology (CBA), the costs and benefits of the new system are compared with the previous manual system, particular attention being given to the valuation of students' time. While the CBA approach has many critics, it is basically just an application of traditional economics, i.e. a study of the allocation of resources modified to take account of non‐marketed costs and benefits. As such, it can be a useful guide to policymakers through the identification and evaluation of ‘external’ costs and benefits of alternative projects. External effects which the organisation's accounting methods might otherwise ignore. The study, though subject to errors of omission and misinterpretation (which are inevitable given the complexity of the project and the limited resources available to the analyst), showed that the resource costs of the new installation exceeded the benefits by £33,000 — discounted over a projected life of five years. The major factors influencing this conclusion were: the high cost of ‘in house’ computer programming, and the relatively small saving of user time. A more sophisticated computer with the capacity to hold ‘online’ information on the current state of the book stock could have had a significant impact on the time taken to borrow an item. This would have increased the benefits to users (and possibly encouraged a rise in demand) which may have been sufficient to offset the additional capital costs.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the social impact, i.e. the estimated return to the Australian community, of Australian Federal Police (AFP) drug law enforcement effort in general and the relative success of specific policy initiatives.

Benefit‐cost analysis (BCA) was employed in the assessment of 2,716 drug investigations that took place between 2000 and 2005. Costs associated with the Australian Customs Service, the legal process and prisons were included. Benefits related to the economic estimate of reduced harm in terms of death and injury, crime, reduced productivity, and pain and suffering associated with the use of illicit drugs.

The results suggest that the Australian community receives $5.80 of benefit in terms of potential harm avoided for every dollar invested in drug law enforcement. Specific policy initiatives were found to result in higher than average returns: investigations involving domestic and international partners ($6.00 and $9.20 respectively), an emphasis on serious and complex crime ($9.20), and intelligence‐led policing ($7.90).

The estimation of economic benefits is the most contentious area of the study. The AFP is undertaking a review of its estimation of benefits.

The results suggest that AFP drug law enforcement provides a positive contribution to the wellbeing of the Australian community. Furthermore, the findings indicate that specific drug law enforcement initiatives enhance the relative effectiveness of drug law enforcement in Australia. The study also provides an example to other public sector agencies of the use of BCA to determine the social impact of their policies.

Multinational business deliver value via multiple sites with similar operational capacities. The age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) delivers significant opportunities for the deployment of digital tools for business optimization. Therefore, this study aims to study the Industry 4.0 implementation for multinationals.

The key objective of this research is multi-site systems integration using a reproducible, modular and standardized “Cyber Physical System (CPS) as-a-Service”.

A best practice reference architecture is adopted to guide the design and delivery of a pioneering CPS multi-site deployment. The CPS deployed is a cloud-based platform adopted to enable all manufacturing areas within a multinational energy and petrochemical company. A methodology is developed to quantify the system environmental and sustainability benefits focusing on reduced carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions and energy consumption. These results demonstrate the benefits of standardization, replication and digital enablement for multinational businesses.

The research illustrates the ability to design a single system, reproducible for multiple sites. This research also illustrates the beneficial impact of system reuse due to reduced environmental impact from lower CO₂ emissions and energy consumption. The paper assists organizations in deploying complex systems while addressing multinational systems implementation constraints and standardization.