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As we are all well aware, health care expenditures in the United States are out of control and growing at epic proportions. Since private industry shoulders a significant burden of paying these rising health care costs, the huge and ever increasing sum paid by these corporations continues to impact the US economy translating into higher prices of services and manufactured goods and reduced job opportunities when companies outsource jobs or locate manufacturing facilities to avoid paying health care benefits for workers. As a result, health care expenditures have become a centerpiece of an enormous public policy debate as Congress is currently working on several versions of a bill to completely revise health care from the ground up. This research project was accomplished to examine the effectiveness of one approach to control rising health care costs and contain corporate financial responsibility--the establishment of wellness and health risk screening programs to improve the health of employees. Total health care cost per insured individual was gathered through an online survey directly from health care benefit administrators. The survey also asked information about wellness and health risk screening programs and the related responses were used to determine if there were a relationship between health care costs and health prevention programs. While statistical analysis was hampered in the current study because of the small sample size, some valid conclusions were reached. The study was successful in identifying a benchmark of Average Total Health Care Cost per Individual from $5,100 to $5,800 for 2005 through 2007. This is especially interesting in light of the fact that an average of $7,026 was spent on health care per person in 2006 in the United States. The study was also able to contribute an estimate of the increase realized in these expenditures of 6 percent in 2007 over 2006, and 4 percent in 2006 over 2005, which were in fact similar to the national average. The final contribution of the study is to suggest an explanation for the costs which appear to be holding their own in terms of the national average. While this cannot be statistically verified, it does seem that the active participation of these companies in wellness programs could be a factor. Wellness programs were very popular in this sample of companies as 82 percent of the respondents answered "YES" when asked if the company funds their own employee wellness program. This is an impressive number of companies that have recognized wellness programs as a potential means to reduce employee health care costs. In regards to specific programs, at least 50 percent of respondents answered that they have smoking cessation, employee fitness, counseling, health risk screening, and bio-metric screening programs. The existence of health screening variables show an impressive 73 percent of respondents do practice some sort of health care screening, 50 percent offer biometric screening while 18 percent have onsite clinics and 23 percent run annual employee fairs.

Defined benefit pension plans are a bedrock of the U.S. economy providing guaranteed payment streams at pre-established amounts. Results suggest public plans, sponsored by State and Local governments, and private plans, sponsored by public corporations, are unfunded. State plans were found to have the largest pension and unfunded pension liabilities. Examination of relationships between unfunded pension liabilities and fiscal or financial stability of sponsoring organizations suggests unfunded State pension plans are more likely to be sponsored by financially struggling sponsors measured by general obligation bond ratings. Local governments and Corporations with unfunded pension plans are less likely to be struggling financially. Fiscal distress of Local governments was measured by survival analysis. Corporation financial distress was quantified by a model designed to predict bankruptcy. Financially stable organizations failing to fund pension plans, in this case local governments and corporations, suggests a lack of social responsibility.

Delivery of a quality introductory accounting course is essential for schools of business. The first step in revitalization and improvement of the course is to identify factors suggested to be empirically related to succeessful completion. Accounting major status is of particular interest. While it has long been anecdotally observed and logically expected that accounting majors would earn higher grades in introductory accounting, it is rarely addressed in empirical studies. To investigate the impact of accounting major status on performance in introductory accounting, a sample of 398 students exposed to the same professor, text, teaching and examination format over five-years was gathered. Results suggest accounting major status was in fact a significant positive predictor of grades earned in the class controlling for three additional variables (i.e., grade point average, mathematics background and previous experience in the course). These results could be used to support the creation of an honors section(s) of accounting which could include a more rigorous curriculum taught with real life cases. Previous research supported the concept of an honors program from students, faculty and potential employers. In addition, the results suggest requiring a minimum grade point average and the completion of mathematics requirement before taking introductory accounting.

Local governments are a vital component in the national effort to promote sensible methods for community development, growth and social justice. The benefits and challenges of sustainable development have become apparent as more local governments initiate programs to address economic, environmental and social equity issues. This research investigates county and municipal government efforts toward sustainable development using survey information for local governments in the southern United States. Survey responses were analyzed to examine whether local governments “practice what they preach” in terms of actually implementing the sustainable policies proclaimed to be important to their operations. Overall, results suggest local governments do place these policies into action for environmental and social justice issues. In addition, the analysis explores the impact of population size, geographic area and form of government on sustainable development. Measuring the implementation of sustainable policies in terms of dollars, however, proves difficult because there is no consistency among municipalities with regard to reporting the amount of dollars (federal or local) spent in support of sustainability efforts.

The purpose of this study is to explore the commitment of local governments to environmental programs when fiscal distress is predicted. We hypothesize that commitment to environmental programs diminishes when the local government is experiencing fiscal distress. The regression model results indicate that local governments with high levels of debt were less likely to I mplement environmental programs and that a larger population and higher revenue are factors directly related to the commitment of local government to environmental programs. Communities that are more populous and less fiscally stressed are more likely to benefit from a local government that implements and sustains environmental programs. These results have implications for the stakeholders of local communities and broader implications for the global effort toward environmental protection and sustainable communities.