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The major research studies into success and failure in new product development that have been conducted over the last 40 years are reviewed. These have provided consistent evidence, especially in the management of the development process, of attributes associated with success. It is shown that most of the studies have produced results that are not in a form for easy application by practitioners. A methodology as to how the past lessons may be applied practically is proposed.

A two‐year experimental programme to apply the research findings of a research programme into the practice and organisation of new product development is described. It was conducted within a large manufacturing subsidiary of a major international organisation. The results from the past research work were converted into a usable form and applied through a planned programme of analysis and change. It describes how the work covering all levels of personnel from general manager to the shop floor staff, was initiated directed and controlled.

The results of a three‐year research programme into the current practice and organisation of new product development are described. The results of a major survey of some 150 companies, in which the McKinsey 7S model was used to provide a structured analysis of all aspects of new product development are detailed. Clear trends and changes were defined, and were supported by detailed structured interviews.

The literature on the revenue effort of local governments in the U.S. is deficient in that most studies focus only on identifying the general patterns of revenue effort. This study remedies the deficiency by exploring the determinants and impacts of local government revenue effort. It finds that both high personal income and adverse socioeconomic conditions contribute to high revenue effort. It also finds that jurisdictions with high revenue effort tend to obtain high grant revenues. In addition, contrary to the predictions of previous studies, it finds that the number of business firms located in a jurisdiction tends to rise as revenue effort increases. Finally, the policy implications of these findings are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the association between conformity with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) indicated by Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) 34 presentation and pension underfunding in Illinois.

The authors used a fixed effects regression and employed a sample of Illinois municipalities (n=2,565 municipal-year observations) over the period 2009–2014.

The findings show that GAAP is inversely associated with pension underfunding, but only among the subsample of municipalities that are within the healthy pension funding range, i.e., above 80 percent funded. These municipalities may be in a better position to increase pension funding in response to the disciplining effect of broad GAAP conformity.

The paper focuses solely on one state and one multi-employer plan. Future studies should consider assessing the applicability of the results to other states and plan settings.

The results inform the standard-setting process, particularly as the implementation of the new GASB standards is evaluated and as GASB 34 is reexamined.

Despite concerns associated with state and local pension underfunding, academic studies examining its determinants are few. The sample setting is representative of municipal pension plans in the USA (with a comparable average pension funding ratio of 74.2 percent) and provides variability in GAAP conformity (the state encourages, but does not require, financial statement presentation consistent with GASB 34), as well as homogeneity in actuarial assumptions across observations (all sample municipalities participate in a large multi-employer municipal pension plan). The sample period immediately precedes the implementation of GASB Statements Nos 67 and 68, which increase the scope of pension reporting, providing the opportunity to consider the effects of broad GAAP conformity and a baseline for subsequent consideration of the effects of the new standards.

GASB Statement No. 34 required state and local governments to report information regarding general infrastructure in financial statements, to improve understanding of the organization's investments in capital assets. Some proponents suggested that this information would affect management practices and potentially resource allocation decisions, but initial survey data found limited evidence of effects. We use dynamic panel analysis covering 47 states from 1995 to 2009 to explore whether implementation of GASB 34 affected state highway capital and maintenance spending. We find evidence of increased capital spending, but no statistically significant change in maintenance expenditures. The choice of reporting method was not found to affect spending outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to use data on municipal bond sales in the US primary market for the period 1984–2007 to explore the effect of debt levels on the cost of borrowing for state governments.

This paper employs OLS and two-stage least squares regression model using instrumental variables.

The empirical analysis finds that despite the steady increase of state debt in recent years, there is no evidence that the market penalizes states with high-debt levels relative to other states.

The findings urge states to exercise prudence when making borrowing decisions because high-debt levels have the potential to crowd out spending for essential services and can lead to budget imbalances in the long term.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate whether the additional infrastructure information in US state financial statements improves infrastructure quality.

Based on institutional theory, the authors developed six models and estimated them on a state panel data set.

The authors found that the implementation of the Government Accounting Standard Board (GASB) Statement No. 34 improved state highway infrastructure quality, and the states using the modified approach had a larger effect compared to the states using depreciation accounting. The authors further used a two-step path analysis and found that the implementation of GASB 34 indirectly improved highway quality through increasing state highway maintenance expenditures. From the empirical results, the authors conclude that the exercise of collecting and developing systems to track the additional data has provided the opportunity for officials to use the information to prioritize limited funding and improve their asset management practices.

Future research may extend this research by exploring the detailed micro-mechanisms of how decision makers use infrastructure information in their asset management practices, as well as by increasing the number of years in the panel data set to fully capture changes in behavior.

In addition, governments currently using depreciation should be encouraged to move to the modified approach.

This is the first attempt to empirically examine the effects of GASB 34 on infrastructure condition.