Retention and retirement: The case of the U.S. military

The military retirement system provides an immediate, lifetime, inflation-protected annuity to personnel who complete 20 or more years of service. The cost of this system has risen substantially in the past 15 years, and the system's actuarial costs now comprise almost one-third of total military manpower costs. Because of its importance in the total military compensation system, the military retirement system exerts a significant influence on the age structure of the force and on personnel turnover patterns. This article evaluates the relative efficiency of the current retirement system by comparing it with two recently proposed alternatives, one by a presidential commission and one by the Department of Defense. It estimates the impact of these proposed alternatives on the military personnel force structure and on manpower costs. It is concluded that these alternatives would provide a force as capable as today's force at significantly lower cost.Order of authorship determined alphabetically. This paper presents results of analysis conducted while Enns and Nelson were associated with the Department of Defense and Warner was on the staff at the Center for Naval Analyses. The views presented herein are those of the authors.     

Healthtown, U.S.A

The landscape of health care is about to change. Under the Clinton proposal every American will choose one of three basic kinds of health plan--HMO, fee-for-service or a combination. The big questions are how much you will pay and how you will choose your doctors. Lost already? Here's a tour of Healthtown, U.S.A.     

Economic performance and U.S. Senate elections: A comment

This paper investigates the issue of economic performance and U.S. Senate elections analyzed by Bennett and Wiseman (1991) in a work published in this journal. Our study analyzes the electoral margins and election outcomes of U.S. Senate elections using state-level data involving only incumbents up for reelection in the 1976–1990 period (212 elections). The ordinary least squares and logit estimation results suggest that the effects of economic performance variables on incumbent senatorial elections are in general overshadowed by other factors known to be important in determining electoral margins and outcomes. In addition, the empirical results of the entire model are in general consistent with prior findings noted in the public choice and political science literature concerning the analysis of U.S. Senate elections. Therefore, we suggest that the findings raised in our study provide enough theoretical and empirical evidence to raise sufficient doubt regarding the robustness of the results suggested by Bennett and Wiseman (1991), and thus call upon other researchers to study further the relationship between economic performance and voting behavior in U.S. Senate elections.     

How elections matter: A study of U.S. senators

Policy representation implies not only congruence between constituent and representative preferences, but also the ability of representatives to perceive and adjust to changing constituent preferences. This paper examines the extent of such representation among U.S. senators. It shows that a senator's voting behavior strongly affects his chances of election, but that senators demonstrate only a limited ability to adapt to changing constituent preferences.     

Measuring Financial Condition: A Study of U.S. States

This study tests a measure of financial condition using government‐wide information as required under the new financial reporting model set forth in GASB Statement No. 34. The measure consists of four financial condition dimensions in cash, budget, long‐run and service‐level solvencies, and 11 financial condition indicators. Results show that the measure is relatively reliable and valid and that government‐wide information reported under the requirements of GASB Statement No. 34 provides a useful reporting framework to evaluate financial condition of a government. Additionally, financial condition among states varies greatly and there is much room for improvement.     

A typology of U.S. suburban places

Abstract

Suburbs are becoming increasingly diverse as they continue to comprise larger portions of the metropolitan population and employment. Former perceptions of suburban uniformity are being eroded by the variance in form and function that now characterizes them. This article analyzes data collected on 3,567 non‐central‐city, incorporated, metropolitan places in the United States along the dimensions of population, place, economy, and government. Specifically, a hierarchical clustering procedure, combined with discriminant analysis, identifies 10 distinct types of suburbs in the data.

Level, composition, and combinations of wealth, employment, and race drive the distinctions among suburban clusters, many of which do not fit our traditional characterizations of suburbia. In fact, only about half of all the suburbs considered are strongly characterized by these traditional traits, and these suburbs contain less than one out of every three residents considered in the analysis.     

U.S. interest groups prefer emission trading: A new perspective

Public Choice - If there is to be environmental regulation, what kind of regulation would the main interest groups then prefer? This political distortion must be taken into account when designing...     

Capacity to Sustain Sustainability: A Study of U.S. Cities

Why do some governments implement more sustainability practices than others? Based on a national survey of U.S. cities, this article finds moderate levels of sustainability efforts and capacity in U.S. cities; about one‐third of the sustainability practices identified in this article have been implemented. The authors conclude that, first, capacity building is a useful conceptual focus for understanding sustainability implementation in U.S. cities. Capacity building involves developing technical and financial support and increasing managerial execution. Second, sustainability is strongly associated with managerial capacity, which includes establishing sustainability goals, incorporating goals in operations, and developing a supportive infrastructure. Third, getting stakeholders involved furthers the capacity for sustaining sustainability efforts. Citizen involvement is strongly associated with securing financial support for sustainability.     

Deep-draft dredging of U.S. coal ports: A cost-benefit analysis

This article discusses whether U.S. society should invest in large-scale coal port development and examines specifically financing the deep-draft dredging of coal ports on the East and/or Gulf Coasts (Baltimore, Hampton Roads, Mobile, and New Orleans) so that fully loaded, large coal-carrying colliers can export coal to Western Europe. By assuming a society-wide perspective, no costs and benefits are attributed to various parties. Although the multifaceted nature of the coal port issue is acknowledged, the core of this study is a large number of different simulations. Each simulation optimizes the United States-Western Europe coal trade for a given demand, ocean transportation cost structure, and cost of capital. This relatively simple model focuses on the key tradeoff: the cost of dredging versus lower ocean transportation costs. The study supports those recommending caution in coal port development. The most striking conclusion is the robustness of two solutions - no dredging or dredge only Hampton Roads - depending on the assumptions. Our conclusions also generally do not support simultaneously dredging all deep-draft options, the concurrent dredging of more than one port, or dredging either of the Gulf ports before the two East Coast ports.     

U.S. Customs Service User Fees: A Variety of Charges and Counter-Charges

User charges, which have become an important revenue enhancement device during the 1980s, have also raised a variety of counter-charges. This study examines three new mandatory Customs Service fees—for processing passengers, conveyances, and merchandise entering the United States and for special services at small airports—along with their differences and changes over time (in rate structure, exemptions, dedicated accounts, and disposition of funds). Despite support for the charges, opposition to some has arisen because of their cost to the private sector, violation of certain assumptions behind user fees, competing international obligations and policies, rival institutional interests and powers of Congress and the presidency, and changing fiscal conditions.     

A Spatial Model of U.S. Senate Elections

The importance of primaryelections is considered within the contextof U.S. Senate elections where senatorsserve overlapping terms and voters areassumed to balance their two senatorsagainst each other. Voters behavestrategically in the primaries butconvergence to the median position is notachieved except as a knife-edge result.More generally, constraints in the partyspace prevent the party of the sittingsenator from obtaining the median'spreference allowing the opposition party tonominate a candidate further away from themedian while still capturing the medianvoter. Empirical evidence supports thenotion that senate divergence is a functionof the state primary system.     

Sino-U.S. Decoupling: The Roles of U.S. Congress

Journal of Chinese Political Science - The Sino-U.S. relations tumbled during the Trump Administration. The talk of decoupling permeated the decision-making circle in Washington D.C. Many factors...     

Economic performance and U.S. Senate elections: Reply

Major criticisms made by Chressanthis and Shaffer (C-S) are addressed: the authors' failure to include noneconomic variables in the regression model, the inclusion of open elections in the sample, and the use of variables other than the state unemployment rate as economic performance measures. Errors in C-S's interpretations are noted. Additional regression results are reported using modifications of the authors' original model. These suggest that the change (notrelative change as in C-S) in state unemployment rate is superior, and that the authors' model yields a stronger effect of state economic performance on election outcomes than does the C-S model.John Beck contributed helpful comments.