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The current classifications for public school costs are provided by the National Center for Educational Statistics. To improve comparability between school districts, we provided an alternative classification with fewer numbers of expenditure categories, distinctions between school-based and non-school based administration costs, and school levels. The new classification was then applied to five comparable urban school districts. We found (1) that teacher salaries per student are affected by school level disaggregation; (2) that separating administrative costs into school-based and nonschool- based provides for an observable cost relationship; and (3) that curriculum and instructional support per student differ by school level disaggregation. The alternative classification may assist auditors and investigators whose role is to assess the costs performance of urban school districts by providing comparable school level and cost type.

This paper examines the relationship between the procedural tax administration system and the characteristics of the decision-maker in the decision to comply with the tax code. Specifically, we examine the motor fuel tax system. The motor fuel tax system requires an organization to collect and remit taxes at both the federal and state levels. Using a path model, we find that the procedural complexity of the tax system contributes to an increase in tax non-compliance.

This paper looks at a common type of price adjustment, price indexing, which provides contractors with compensation for increases in price volatile commodities. We address the effect of Firm Fixed Price (FFP) versus indexed price systems for a price volatile commodity. The impact of these two types of bid systems is analyzed through a combined qualitative and quantitative analysis. Results indicate that an indexed price system does not provide a reduction in costs compared to a Firm Fixed Price system. This study is important to state financial managers as they address the efficient use of resources invested in state infrastructure.

To assist in achieving cost effective health care allocations in a collective choice setting, the purpose of this paper is to illustrate the use of a tool not common in the public budgeting literature but is common in the health economics literature.

Through a meta-analysis of the health care spending literature that computed the value of quality-adjusted life years, the authors provide an alternative approach for budgeters and policymakers.

The authors provide an alternative approach for budgeters and policymakers for weighing the benefits of alternative health care spending allocations.

The authors introduce an alternative approach for weighing the benefits of alternative health care spending allocations. As a tool for budgeting professionals, cost per QALY allows for the opportunity to raise cost-effectiveness of public health expenditures as a tool for governments to allocate resources based on outcomes, rather than inputs.

This paper extends the merger pricing model associated with Larson‐Gonedes to the general question: how well does the premium developed from the pricing model forecast the securities market reaction of the actual merger? Based on a sample of 91 common stock mergers, shareholders in participating firms incur wealth losses about half the time but the magnitude of the gains outweighs the losses such that statistically significant gains are reported for both buyers and sellers. Removal of market wide price movements further increases the gains to shareholders. However, the premium consistently overstates the gain obtained by acquired firms and bears no systematic relationship to the gains registered by shareholders of acquiring firms. Financial analyses of mergers have focused almost exclusively on mergers as “events” with resultant measurements in abnormal returns surrounding the merger announcement/consummation to shareholders, and occasionally bondholders, in both buying and selling firms. Recent reviews of these studies by Halpern (1983), Jensen and Ruback (1983), and especially Roll (1986) stress the tentativeness of the findings and the ambiguity of their interpretation. The common feature of all this analysis has been on the ex post valuation of the merger event by the securities market from an informational content perspective. Alternatively, these studies have evaluated indirectly whether the price premium paid in an acquisition exceeds, equals, or is less than the market's valuation of the net present value of the merger, and how the spoils/losses are distributed between acquirers and acquirees. But never is the bid premium itself determined and then compared to the market's reaction upon public announcement. As Roll argues, the merger process involves three steps: “First, the bidding firm identifies a potential target firm; second, a ‘valuation’ of the equity of the target is undertaken…; third, the ‘value’ is compared to current market price… If value exceeds price, a bid is made…” Roil (1986, p. 198). This paper links the price premium offered in mergers to the market's reaction to the news of the merger, or alternatively, it compares Roll's steps two and three. The merger pricing model used is the exchange ratio determination model developed by Larson and Gonedes (1969) and applied to mergers by Conn and Nielsen (1977). The pricing model, commonly cited in finance texts (eg. Copeland and Weston (1988, pp. 757–763), has the advantage of being deterministic and thus provides a direct measure of the bid premium subject to a pareto optimal wealth constraint for shareholders in both buying and selling firms. The principal question this paper asks is: Does the price premium provide a consistent, unbiased forecast of the market's reaction? This is an important question from both the bidding firms' and target firms' perspectives for several reasons. First, the terms of the negotiated merger may signal important information to the securities market regarding the degree of agency costs in the merging firms. For example, an excessively high negotiated price for the target may indicate either the bidder has inept management or management insulated from shareholder interests. Thus, the terms of a merger may reflect not only the participants' expectations regarding the merger itself, but also be influenced by existing — although previously unknown — agency costs. The signalling information contained in merger announcement may obviously mask the expectational information, creating ambiguity in interpretation of market reaction. Second, distribution of the market reaction for buyers and sellers is important not only to participating firms' shareholders, but also to the effectiveness of the market for corporate control. A perfectly competitive merger market assures that merger premiums equal the expected value of the increased market values of merging firms. Thus, divergences between premiums and subsequent market reactions may have important implications for assessing the degree of competitiveness in the merger market, and hence, the effectiveness of mergers as a disciplinary force in the market for corporate control. Finally, the adequacy of ex ante merger pricing models remains an unexplored issue. Using an improved methodology, the Larson and Gonedes (LG) model is expanded to adjust for market wide movements in PE ratios; thus, merger specific influences on wealth positions are more clearly focused upon in contrast to the earlier work by Conn and Nielsen (1977). The earlier finding by Conn and Nielsen that approximately one half of mergers sampled in the 1960s failed to meet the pareto wealth constraint for participating firms is therefore re‐examined with an improved methodology and more recent sample of mergers occurring through 1979. The paper is organised as follows. Section I reviews and critiques the Larson‐Gonedes merger pricing model. Section II describes the empirical methodology and sample. Section III presents the empirical results and Section IV concludes with a summary.

The tenuous financial viability of many of Georgia’s rural hospitals has driven increased scrutiny of the hospital authorities (HAs) that own and govern them. HAs are a type of “special district” established in state law to allow for specialization of function, while evading statutes that can limit local government borrowing and multi-year contracts. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

This paper uses a case example to introduce transparency and accountability in one local Georgia hospital and expands to include a descriptive analysis of transparency measures in 29 rural Georgia HAs.

Findings indicate that, like many other special districts in Georgia and the USA, Georgia’s rural HAs often act more like private entities than the public organizations they are. The lack of transparency demonstrated in this sector limits access to public information and reduces opportunities for citizen engagement, a necessary component of representative institutions.

This case study is limited to Georgia HAs; however, the data support the lack of accountability and transparency found in many special district governments.

The lack of transparency in all of the organizations reviewed in this study demonstrates blurred lines between between public matters and private interests and raises questions of transparency, a key value in democracies.

The evaluation of website usability is the precondition and a critical step for website design and optimization. The purpose of this paper is to investigate and provide empirical evidence of the interrelationships between human physiological metrics and website usability. This study examines how eye-movement metrics and heart rate variability (HRV) evaluate website usability, and then affect users’ online surfing behavior.

A physiological measurement experiment is designed to collect participants’ physiological metrics. This paper proposes an objective measurement model for website usability, and partial least squares is used to analyze the measurement and structural models, based on data collected from 200 participants who had experienced online surfing at least four times.

The analysis supports partially or fully 28 of the 31 hypotheses formulated. The study reveals that human physiological metrics (i.e. fixation duration, fixation count, blink count, HRV) have a strong explanatory ability for website usability.

Data for this study were collected only from mainland China. Therefore, participants may have been influenced by Chinese cultures. The generalizability of this study may be enhanced by collecting data from more diverse samples and validating the model on different cultures.

This study contributes significantly to the industry by providing empirical evidence of the interrelationship between human physiological metrics and website usability. The findings also provide managers with valuable insight into better understanding of the nature of these interrelationships.