Incentives and the Sorting of Altruistic Agents into Street‐Level Bureaucracies*

Many street‐level bureaucrats have the dual task of helping some clients, while sanctioning others. We develop a model of a street‐level bureaucracy, and we study the implications of its personnel policy on the self‐selection and allocation decisions of agents who differ in altruism towards clients. When bureaucrats are paid flat wages, they do not sanction, and the most altruistic types sort into bureaucracy. Pay‐for‐performance induces some bureaucrats to sanction, but it necessitates an increase in compensation, which can result in sorting from the top and bottom of the altruism distribution. We also explain why street‐level bureaucrats often experience an overload of clients.     

Henry George and the Institution of Private Property in Land: A Property Rights Approach

Abstract . Conflicting statements concerning whether the implementation of Henry George's single tax proposal would destroy the institution of private property in land have appeared in the literatures of economics and other disciplines. A number of writers have implied that the taxation of Ricardian rent is equivalent to land nationalization. In the main, followers of George have denied that the single tax would abolish private property in land. Their claim is based on the fact that land titles would remain in private hands under the single tax. Since the whole question of private property is beset with ideological difficulties, a property rights approach is applied to this issue in an attempt to resolve the controversy. The conclusions are that the actual implementation of George's system would not destroy private property in land and that it is incorrect to equate the single tax with land nationalization.     

The Sufficiency of Single Tax Revenue:

A bstract . Statements claiming that the single tax would raise insufficient revenue to support modern governments have been damaging to Henry George's proposal to tax the rent of land. It is argued that these claims are a misleading way of assessing George's proposal. Firstly, it is shown that estimates of rent usually understate the revenue that would have been raised under the single tax. Secondly, the idea of a counterfactual proposition is used to show that government expenditure would have been lower subsequently had George's proposal been adopted. The conclusion is that there are generally errors of omission in estimating the sufficiency of single tax revenue.     

Transport Infrastructure and Industrial Location: The Case of Thailand

This paper addresses the impact of transport infrastructure projects of manufacturing employment in Thai regions. After a theoretical review we consider the impact of various transport modes: road, rail and ports. We find that roads and ports have a positive impact on industrial location, although the size of the impact is modest. Labor appears to be a more important location factor in Thailand. For the analysis of the data, geographical information systems (GIS) appear to be a quite useful tool.