James N. Dertouzos

In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, conflicting arguments have been made about fair value accounting (FVA) versus historical cost accounting (HCA) and the role that each played in the crisis. This report examines the relationship between both types of accounting practices and systemic risk in the financial sector, providing recommendations on how FVA and HCA can both be improved.

The Catastrophe Obligation Guarantee Act, introduced in Congress in 2009, would authorize the federal government to provide committed loan guarantees to qualified state catastrophe-insurance programs. Proponents argue that lower-cost catastrophe insurance could reduce federal disaster-assistance expenditures. This report estimates the law's potential effects in California.

Traditional performance metrics, such as number of contracts signed per month per Army recruiter, do not adequately measure recruiter effort, skill, and productivity. The authors develop a "preferred performance metric" that takes into account the difficulty of recruiting different types of youth in various markets and propose short-term changes to the system that would more accurately assess recruiter effort and skill.This book evaluates traditional performance metrics for Army recruiters and develops a "preferred" metric that takes into account the difficulty of recruiting different types of youth in various markets.

U.S. Army Recruiting Command is faced with the challenge of ensuring that the flow of qualified volunteers is adequate to meet future active-duty accession requirements. This report documents research methods, findings, and policy conclusions from a project analyzing human resource management options for improving recruiting production. It details research designed to develop new insights to help guide future recruiter management policies.

The Defense Department has been spending over USD100 million annually on recruiting advertising. Previous econometric studies of military advertising 1s effects have relied on data from time periods Unlike today 1s and have used models possibly inappropriate for supporting today's decisionmakers. This report details improved methods developed to assess military advertising 1s effectiveness and illustrates them using early 1980s and mid-1990s data.