Ökonomi & Finanzen

Forecasting is integral to all governmental activities, especially budgetary activities. Without good and accurate forecasts, a government will not only find it difficult to carry out its everyday operations but will also find it difficult to cope with the increasingly complex environment in which it has to operate. This book presents, in a simple and easy to understand manner, some of the commonly used methods in budget forecasting, simple as well as advanced. The book is divided into three parts: It begins with an overview of forecasting background, forecasting process, and forecasting methods, followed by a detailed discussion of the actual methods in Parts I, II, and III. Part I discusses a combination of basic time series models such as percentage average, simple moving average, double moving average, exponential moving average, double as well as triple, simple trend line, time-series with cyclical variation, and time-series regression, with single and multiple independent variables. Part II discusses some of the more advanced, but frequently used time series models, such as ARIMA, regular as well as seasonal, Vector Autoregression (VAR), and Vector Error Correction (VEC). Part III provides an overview of three of the more recent advances in time series models, namely ensemble forecasting, state-space forecasting, and neural network. The book concludes with a brief discussion of some practical issues in budget forecasting.

Malicious acts against or within the chemical industrial sector pose a significant threat to both the employees working in the industry, to the communities around them, and to the nation they serve. This new book, the third in a series on critical infrastructure and homeland security, helps chemical manufacturers and processors prevent the devastating effects of such an attack by providing sound security principles and measures that they can implement in their chemical facilities.

This handbook introduces the fundamentals of managing government-contractor relations in a blended workforce. It explains in a straightforward way all aspects of government contracting that acquisition personnel need to know, including the basics of service-based contracting, the government-contractor relationship, acquisition team responsibilities, administration procedures, contract language, common mistakes government managers may make, methods of evaluation, Performance-Based Service Acquisitions, and ethical and legal concerns.

From the beet fields of North Dakota to the National Forest campgrounds of California to Amazon's CamperForce program in Texas, employers have discovered a new, low-cost labor pool, made up largely of transient older Americans. Finding that social security comes up short, often underwater on mortgages, these invisible casualties of the Great Recession have taken to the road by the tens of thousands in late-model RVs, travel trailers, and vans, forming a growing community of nomads: migrant laborers who call themselves "workampers."On frequently traveled routes between seasonal jobs, Jessica Bruder meets people from all walks of life: a former professor, a McDonald's vice president, a minister, a college administrator, and a motorcycle cop, among many others-including her irrepressible protagonist, a onetime cocktail waitress, Home Depot clerk, and general contractor named Linda May.In a secondhand vehicle she christens "Van Halen," Bruder hits the road to get to know her subjects more intimately. Accompanying Linda May and others from campground toilet cleaning to warehouse product scanning to desert reunions, then moving on to the dangerous work of beet harvesting, Bruder tells a compelling, eye-opening tale of the dark underbelly of the American economy-one that foreshadows the precarious future that may await many more of us. At the same time, she celebrates the exceptional resilience and creativity of these quintessential Americans who have given up ordinary rootedness to survive. Like Linda May, who dreams of finding land on which to build her own sustainable "Earthship" home, they have not given up hope.

Major Trends in Danish and Global Welfare at the Dawn of the 21st Century provides an analysis of the dramatic changes that have taken place in the Danish welfare system during the past century.Denmark still has superstar status as the world's most notable welfare society. At the same time, Danes have had to reform and adapt their welfare model, which experienced both a very exorbitant success at the beginning of the period covered and a shocking setback thereafter - a crisis the country has just recently recovered from. Amid these events, the Danes decided to reform the design of their welfare state to suit globalization and a new demographic. This was the first time that conditions far into the future were crucial to the organization of welfare today. A new orientation was created in welfare thinking; one that went from help and support to help to self-help, and to jobs and the procurement of labour with strong incentives via support policies and pensions to remain in the labour market for longer. Through these reforms, Denmark became the most digitized society in the West, but it did not solve its ever-growing integration problems, and likewise inequality grew in the otherwise so equal Danish society.