Congestible public goods and local indeterminacy: A two-sector endogenous growth model

This paper shows that the congestible public goods can generate local indeterminacy in a two-sector, constant-return human capital enhanced growth model. While the productive public good exerts positive sector-specific externalities, the congestion effect generates negative aggregate externalities. The sector-specific externalities alone arising from productive public goods cannot establish local indeterminacy without the combination of negative externality in a model with social constant return technology. Congestible public good generates local indeterminacy if the degree of productive public good externality and the degree of congestion effect are large enough. The condition for indeterminacy is independent of the factor intensity rankings. The conditions are quantitatively assessed and the required parameter values for the degrees of public good externality and congestion are consistent with the estimated values in existing literature.     

The impact of the economic crisis on the (in)efficiency of public Higher Education institutions in Southern Europe: The case of Spanish universities

The evaluation of university efficiency in Europe began timidly when the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) was created. However, this issue is currently becoming increasingly important in Southern European countries, where the limitation of public funding following the economic crisis in 2008 has put greater pressure on their public universities to achieve excellence and improve competitiveness. In this context, the goals of this paper are: first, to measure the relative technical (in)efficiency of Spanish public Higher Education Institutions in the period 2002–03 to 2012–13, comparing the situation before and during the last economic crisis; and, second, to analyze the determinants of university (in)efficiency and, especially, the direct impact of the crisis. After applying the two-stage double bootstrap DEA methodology, the results show that Spanish public universities have become more efficient during the crisis than before it. In fact, the regression analysis confirms that the “crisis” variable has had a statistically significant positive impact on university efficiency. We also find that age has favorably influenced how these institutions utilize their resources to produce teaching and research outputs, but technical specialization has had a negative effect. Moreover, the regional location of public universities has been also a crucial determinant of their efficiency level. Our findings are therefore relevant for political and academic decision-makers in order to know if public universities have been adequately managed in the crisis period and to identify factors that could improve their efficiency, and hence to help them to enhance their international competitiveness in the future.     

Protection in numbers? Self-protection as a local public good

In many contexts with endogenous physical risks – e.g., households, neighbourhood traffic calming, production quality control – risk reduction is a local public good. Risk-reduction incentives then depend on the protected population’s size. Focusing on a household’s physical risks modelled as an i.i.d. Bernoulli trials sequence with endogenous “success” probability, I give sufficient conditions for safety to increase with the number protected via both monotone comparative statics methodology and a “first-order” approach. I utilise a recursive decomposition of a covariance involving a monotonic function of a binomial variable and first-degree stochastic dominance (FSD). Because “protection” problems are generally non-concave, I give a detailed treatment of the second-order condition, again via FSD.     

The allocation of public funds in a hierarchical educational system

This paper studies the dynamic effects of allocating public funds between basic and advanced education. Holding the size of total public education funds fixed, I identify the effects of their composition on aggregate efficiency and (in)equality. First, since basic education is a prerequisite for attending advanced education, there exists a lower bound on funding it: allocation policies below this lower bound are strictly Pareto dominated. Whether a corresponding lower bound on funding advanced education exists or not depends on the development stage of the economy and the size of total public funds. Secondly, while an allocation policy favoring basic education generates the usual redistribution from top to bottom, one favoring advanced education may result in reverse redistribution from bottom to top. Last, through the inter-generational link, short-run allocation policies may have long-run effects. A simple rule-of-thumb is that for an economy in its early development stage, focusing on basic education for sufficiently long duration is the only way out of polarization and low aggregate efficiency, contrary to the actual policies pursued by many of the less developed economies.     

Models of static and dynamic technical efficiency of municipal libraries in the Czech Republic

This article deals with the modelling of the static and dynamic technical efficiency under conditions of municipal libraries of municipalities with 1000–5000 inhabitants. The aim of this article is to determine the level of the technical efficiency and the factors that influence the results of modelling of the static and dynamic technical efficiency of 34 selected municipal libraries for the years of 2011 and 2015. The first model tests the technical efficiency of conventional services of public libraries. The second model tests the technical efficiency of municipal libraries’ operation. The third model tests the technical efficiency of the key revenues and expenditures. The results in the static models estimate the average technical efficiency of municipal libraries in the interval (0.691–0.759) for the input-oriented models, and in the interval (1.413–2.005) for the output-oriented models. In the dynamic models, the majority of municipal libraries in 2015 showed lower technical efficiency and productivity in comparison with the year of 2011. The factors influencing the level of efficiency and its course include the inputs and the outputs, and their combinations within individual models.     

DEA of financial statements data: The U.S. computer industry

DEA (data envelopment analysis) is a technique for determining the efficiencyfrontier (the envelope) to the inputs and outputs of a collection of individual corporations or other productive units. DEA is here employed to estimate the intertemporal productive efficiency of U.S. computer manufactures, using financial data brought from earnings statements and balance sheets. The results indicate that a few corporations, including Apple Computer Inc., Compaq Computer Corp., and Seagate Technology were able to stay at the productivity efficiency frontier throughout the time period investigated. But not all successful corporations did; sometimes subefficiency (=disequilibrium) actually goes together with very rapid growth. A new Malmquist type productivity index is calculated for each corporation, measuring shifts of the estimated intertemporal efficiency frontier.     

Strategy in the Public Sector: Management in the Wilderness

ABSTRACT The central question addressed in this paper is ‘Why have organizational strategies emerged in the public sector?’ Two broad answers are suggested. First, ‘strategies’ profile the organization through identifying aims, outputs and outcomes. Public services must, now, provide such transparency in order to secure on‐going funding from government bodies. Once ‘strategies’ are being produced, they also offer an organizational vision that potential additional funding agencies can buy into (with both commitment and money). And public services are short of resources. Second, ‘strategies’ signal greater devolved responsibility in the public sector for both acquiring resources and achieving results. They enable the inclusion of managerial priorities and values in setting the direction of public services. And politicians desire more control over the professionals that dominate public services whilst, simultaneously, wanting to make them more responsible for outcomes. This article explores the growth of strategic planning in a particular area of the public sector – the national parks. Strategies as ‘dormant documents’ and strategies as ‘funding pitches’ are discussed. It is suggested that, in the public sector, strategies should be the object of strategy.     

Is It Only Good? The Dark Side of Leadership for Creativity and Innovation

It is assumed that leaders are essential in shaping and facilitating successful innovation and creativity in organizations. Both through direct leadership behaviors (e.g., by vision formulation) and through more indirect leadership behaviors (e.g., by role modeling). While these leadership behaviors seem both positive and productive, they may also hold risks of unintended, adverse results. In the current article, two ways are proposed in which this may occur: through contradictory leadership behaviors and a too‐much‐of‐a‐good‐thing effect. Future research in and awareness of the potential dark sides to leadership for creativity and innovation are warranted.     

An empirical analysis of the effect of volunteer labor on public library employment

This study is an empirical investigation of the effect of library volunteers on public library demand for paid workers. Unlike previous studies, it estimates the impacts on different types of paid labor. The main purpose is to test whether volunteer labor replaced or complemented paid employees. A translog cost function is used to derive cost shares and elasticities of substitution for Pennsylvania public libraries. Cross‐elasticity estimates of substitution and input demand suggest a strong complementary relation between volunteers and professional workers. Most of the other Allen cross elasticities were not statistically significant. None of the estimates indicate that paid labor was being replaced by volunteers. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Public-private partnerships and scale efficiency in Brazilian ports: Evidence from two-stage DEA analysis

This paper assesses the impacts of public-private partnerships on major Brazilian public ports. It is proposed that these kinds of arrangements with private terminal operators could help achieving higher levels of scale efficiency by enhancing coordination processes, providing more adequate information technologies, and higher connectivity with other transportation modes. Methodology relies on factor extraction of inputs/outputs as a first step to compute DEA efficiency estimates, followed by truncated bootstrapped regression analysis to test different contextual variables. Results indicate a strong positive impact of public-private partnerships on port scale efficiency, corroborating their impacts in relation to the most productive scale size.     

论中小公共图书馆的数字信息资源建设

现代信息技术的飞速发展,使人类社会已从信息时代走向数字时代和网络时代,作为文献信息集散中心的图书馆则发生着巨变。文章主要探讨了在这个特定的时代下,信息服务建设对公共图书馆的重要性以及如何更好的建设信息服务平台。     

公共文化服务体系建设与图书馆事业发展

公共文化服务体系建设是文化建设的重要组成部分,也是我国经济社会发展的一项重要任务,图书馆事业建设在公共文化服务体系建设中也占据着重要的地位,发挥着重要的作用。借公共文化服务体系建设的东风,图书馆事业也迎来了新世纪以来难得的发展机遇,取得了令人振奋的成就。公共文化服务体系建设,对于图书馆来说既是机遇也是挑战,它是时代的机遇,要求图书馆抓住机遇实现跨越式发展。     

An expectancy-equity model of productive system performance

Although numerous behavioral variables (e.g., personality traits, incentives, nature of supervision) have documented relationships with quantity and quality of output, i.e., performance, in production systems, existing production and operations management models are dominated by technological variables. The article addresses three questions: 1. Which technological and behavioral variables influence productive system performance? 2. How do behavioral and technological variables interact? 3. Which variables are most important under different circumstances in determining performance?An expectancy-equity model, patterned on research by Lawler [22], presents proposed relationships among variables in production systems, which are classified along a continuum from high to low process predictability. Predominant determinants of performance in various types of systems (e.g., continuous process, job shop, R&D project) are considered in light of the model. Implications for designers and analysts of productive systems and for future research are discussed.     

The optimality of public–private partnerships under financial and fiscal constraints

The government may delegate two sequential tasks (e.g., building and operating an infrastructure) to the same or different agents (i.e., partnership vs. sequential contracts). Agents are risk-neutral but face financial constraints, whereas the government's contractual capacity may be limited by the renegotiation-proofness and fiscal constraints. By relying on history-dependent incentives, the partnership contract corrects moral hazard more effectively than sequential contracts. Thus, it is socially preferred unless bundling different tasks deteriorates the agent's financial conditions. Our results shed new light on the role of firms' financial and government's fiscal conditions in driving the cost–benefit analysis of public–private partnerships.     

中小型公共图书馆网络信息服务的发展策略解析

中小型公共图书馆发展网络信息服务有利于提高图书馆公共文化服务在中小城市的辐射能力,有利于发展地区特色文化,从而让公众享受普遍均等的服务,丰富公众的休闲文化生活。目前服务理念认知尚浅、服务质量欠佳、专业人才匮乏和公众享用信息服务的意识不够等因素制约着中小型公共图书馆网络信息服务的发展。可以从创新网络信息服务理念、拓展立体服务空间、提供特色信息服务、培养新型服务人才以及开展公众信息素养教育等几个方面加以深化和改善,以期提升中小型公共图书馆的网络信息服务能力。     

Technical efficiency and the competitive behavior of hospitals

This paper examines whether the competitive behavior of hospitals influences the extent to which their productive efficiency deviates from best-practice standards. An index of technical inefficiency is constructed by means of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) for 189 acute-care hospitals in the State of Florida in 1989. A regression model is then specified that estimates the impact of competitive dynamics in local hospital markets over the period 1982–1988 on these 1989 DEA efficiency scores, controlling for a set uf internal and external constraints on managerial decision making. Among other things, the empirical analysis shows that these ratings are systematically accounted for by both the nature and vigor of hospital competition, with price leaders in highly competitive markets in particular shown to be more efficient. The public policy implications of these findings are discussed.     

Clubs in an urban setting

In this paper the properties of a congestable concentrated local public good (CCoLPG) are described, taking into account both locational aspects and congestion. This discussion, therefore, completes the analysis of congestable local public goods (LPG) which was started in our earlier paper (Congestable local public goods in an urban setting, J. Urban Econ., 290–310 (1982). It is here shown that the optimal provision of CCoLPG leads to the creation of clubs, where the government has to determine the location and provide the optimal quantity of LPG in each club and also levy congestion tolls on users according to their level of utilization of the club. Congestion tolls cover the αest part of the costs, where α is the level of congestability of the CCoLPG. The rest of the costs are covered by taxing land rents. Clubs will form, possibly more than one per city, even if the LPG is pure (i.e., α = 0) and they will contain a single household if the LPG is private (i.e., α = 1). The difference between these results and those of classical club theorists stem from the fact that here we also take into account the limited supply of land of given accessibility (i.e., locational aspects), which like congestion lead to the creation of clubs. When these two factors are considered together, it explains why congestion tolls alone are not sufficient to finance clubs' operations, or why pure LPGs also have to be provided locally, etc.     

On the dynamic selection of mechanisms for provision of public projects

How do individuals' spatial decisions affect the institutions for public goods provision over time? This paper describes a dynamic model in which the provision mechanism for a public project is itself the object of locational choice of individuals. Individuals in an ongoing society must choose between a location with a Majority Rule mechanism and one with a Voluntary Contribution mechanism. Each mechanism determines a funding decision for a local public project which is repeated over time. Generations of individuals asynchronously supercede their ‘parents’, creating an entry/exit process that allows individuals with possibly different beliefs to enter society. A self-confirming equilibrium (SCE) belief process describes an evolution of beliefs in this society consistent with a self-confirming equilibrium (Fudenberg and Levine, 1993) of the repeated location/provision game. It is shown that the process with belief mutation as new individuals enter society results in a globally absorbing state in which the Majority Rule mechanism is the unique survivor of the two.     

Australian public sector reform

This article presents an investigation into the Australian public education sector and focuses on the management of research and doctoral education in an increasingly corporatized climate. It is argued that diversity in knowledge creation and production is central to the successful Knowledge Economy. Diversity in doctoral education encompasses: diversity of student; diversity of research approach and type; and diversity of discipline and institution. Government has a key role in maintaining diversity against the background of an increasing tendency in public sector policy towards corporatization and outcomes-based funding. Four key areas of concern are identified: funding allocation for research and doctoral places; resource allocation and competition; selectivity and concentration; and relevance. It is argued that, taken together, these four policy directions could significantly impact the nature of Australian doctoral research and, in many instances, diminish diversity.     

Distinguishing external from internal scale effects: The case of public infrastructure

The recent applied production theory literature focusing on the economic performance of firms has increasingly recognized the importance of scale effects on costs and therefore efficiency. These scale effects may include short run returns due to fixity of privately demanded inputs (i.e., capital, long run internal returns to scale, and external factors affecting costs. Since these different types of scale effects can be thought of as shifts in and movements along cost curves, the different cost effects of such factors can be identified in a framework which explicitly takes them into account in the definition ofscale.In this article we formalize such a framework, and then use it to measure short run, long run (internal) and external scale effects from fixity of private capital, nonconstant returns to scale and public infrastructure. We then use these measures to identify the impacts of these different scale factors on productivity growth. The focus on public infrastructure as an important external scale factor is motivated by the current theoretical and policy interest in this issue; we show how a structural production theory model provides a rich basis for the analysis of the cost effects of infrastructure investment.