The Tyranny of Budget Forecasts
The evolving federal budget process has placed increasing demands on, and given unique powers to, the economic forecasters at OMB, Treasury, CBO, and the Joint Tax Committee of Congress. On the whole, the forecasters have been highly professional in their work, but differences in estimating techniques and, especially, constraints imposed on their analysis by elected officials have limited their credibility. Both the Administration and Congress "game" the system and even ignore the budget rules when convenient. Thus, a sophisticated budget process can help, but cannot assure, sound fiscal policy in the absence of political will to make hard decisions.
Comparing Government Forecasts of the United States’ Gross Federal Debt
This paper compares annual one-step-ahead forecasts from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) of the United States‟ gross federal debt from 1984 to 2010. While comparisons of these agencies‟ forecasts have been done before, they have not focused on the debt. The paper finds that both agencies do a good job forecasting the debt except during recessions. Each agency‟s forecast lacks something that the other accounts for and an average of both out performs either individually. However, the Analysis of the President‟s Budget (APB), which includes information from both agencies, performs best.
Costing of services of Vietnamese hospitals: identifying costs in one central, two provincial and two district hospitals using a standard methodology.
BACKGROUND
The People's Republic of Vietnam is currently in a period of transition from a purely socialistic country towards a so-called socialist market economy. Since the introduction of the Doi Moi policy in 1987, health care services have been liberalized, medical practitioners have received the right to open private hospitals and private pharmacies are booming. However, the majority of inhabitants strongly depends on governmental hospital services. These services are currently going through a financial crisis. This demands the quest for efficiency and the wise allocation of public funds.


RESEARCH QUESTION
The efficient allocation of funds depends on the quotient between costs and health outcomes, but the costs of health services in Vietnamese hospitals are unknown. Therefore the study analysed five hospitals in Vietnam and determined the average costs as well as the main cost drivers.


METHODOLOGY
The full costs of five hospitals were analysed, including depreciation and the value of donations. The costs were allocated to cost centres and cost units by a stepping-stone method.


MAJOR FINDINGS
As expected, the average costs per inpatient day at a central hospital are about 300% of the costs of provincial hospitals and about 600% of the costs of district hospitals. However, the costs of some laboratory procedures and operations done at district hospitals are higher than those of provincial or even central hospitals. The main reason for the high costs of some procedures at district hospitals was the low quantity of these procedures at that level. This is a strong indicator that some procedures, in particular major operations, should not be performed in Vietnamese district hospitals.