Public Budget Choices and Private Willingness to Pay

Efficient allocation of public funds depends upon good information about citizens' values. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how citizens' values can be obtained by eliciting marginal willingness to tradeoff (MWTTO) ratios for public spending categories and linking these ratios to individual, private willingness to pay. The link enables estimation of the willingness to pay for an expansion to any of the budget categories based on the elicited willingness to pay and the marginal willingness to tradeoff ratios. Tradeoff ratios and willingness to pay are estimated for public budget categories in Kentucky based on a representative sample surveyed by mail and the web in 2007. Estimates show that individuals are willing to pay the most for an expansion to educational services, followed by health care.     

A Profile of Discontinuity between Citizen Demand and Willingness to Pay Taxes: Comprehensive Planning for Park and Recreation Investment

Growing alienation between citizens and government represents an important challenge to democracy. Resistance to taxation is one of the manifestations of this alienation. The issue is further complicated by citizen demands that exceed their willingness to pay taxes, referred to here as tax-demand discontinuity. This article uses a survey of over 700 citizens designed to provide an information foundation for comprehensive park and recreation planning to test for and profile tax-demand discontinuity. Using combined scores on summated measures of willingness to pay taxes and demand for public investment, citizens are typologically classified into nine groups that are then consolidated under three classifications of tax-demand discontinuity. Citizen-assignments include traditionalists, or those with continuity or balance between willingness to pay taxes and demand; philanthropists, those who are willing to pay taxes in excess of demand; and free-riders, citizens with demands that exceed willingness to pay taxes. Differences in assessments of local government performance are examined in relationship to tax-demand discontinuity classifications indicating that productivity alone will not resolve issues of tax-demand discontinuity. The results indicate differences in citizen subpopulations in tax-demand discontinuity.     

The Changing Role of Government in Community Services: Issues of Access and Equity to Administrative Review

Governments are increasingly moving to privatise, or contract out many community services and functions previously the responsibility of the public sector. Consumers of community services stand to benefit from this trend toward contracting out. However, it is also apparent that there is a need to ensure that improved avenues of review, redress and safeguards accompany these changes in delivery and decision making.     

从同工同酬看派遣工劳动平等问题

虽然《劳动合同法》对劳务派遣中同工同酬问题作出了明确规定,但鉴于派遣工的法律地位不明确,加上劳务派遣机构和用工单位具有营利性,实践中派遣工与正式工仍将存在同工不同酬现象。对此,反对与容忍的观点都有其道理。为平衡各方利益,在相关制度设计中,应对派遣工的报酬和不同岗位的派遣工实施区别对待。     

The Lottery and Education: Robbing Peter to Pay Paul?

Despite the promises of some states to use lottery revenues to fund education, they may be guilty of robbing Peter to pay Paul. This study examines the question of revenue fungibility in the case of state lotteries. Using time-series analysis, the research suggests that education is not a big winner in state lotteries. Two different patterns of fungibility emerge from the analysis that are suggestive of underlying budgetary politics.     

Managing Markets for Public Service: The Role of Mixed Public–Private Delivery of City Services

The privatization experience of U.S. municipalities shows declining use of complete contracts and a dramatic rise in mixed public–private delivery (joint contracting) of city services. The analysis here shows that city managers have recognized the need to move beyond a simple dichotomy between market delivery and public planning to an approach that balances concerns with efficiency, market management, and citizen satisfaction. The New Public Management stresses the importance of competition and efficiency, transaction costs economics emphasizes the challenges of contract management, and New Public Service assigns primary concern to citizen engagement. Nonetheless, city managers see the need to balance all three. The analysis shows the evolution of a middle position where city managers integrate markets with public delivery and give greater attention to citizen satisfaction in the service delivery process.     

Competition and Choice in New York City . Social Services

Privatization is intended to improve public services by introducing competition and choice. Does privatization of social services result in competition? To answer this we studied New York City's experience with contracts for three services: shelters for homeless adults, home care, and employment training. A total of 132 contract awards to nonprofit agencies were examined. The evidence suggests the procurement procedures were competitive and followed good practices. There was significant competition in terms of the number of announcements issued, the number of requests for proposals distributed, and the number of proposals ultimately submitted‐an average of 2.48 proposals per award. Contracting for homeless shelters has produced a voucher‐like system with desirable features. Vouchers are also used for some employment training and could be used for home care. Such systems can introduce even more competition and choice for clients of social services. Problems of contracting with nonprofit agencies are reviewed.     

生存的关照:历史唯物主义的解释原则

物质本体论的解释原则不能对社会发展做出合理的解释。既然社会历史是人的实践活动的总体 ,那么对社会历史就不能离开价值论的解释。这种价值论是以人为尺度的关于人的生存论、发展论、解放论。而对历史的生存论解释则是终极性解释。     

对平等和公正的历史考察

在和谐社会的目标追求中,平等和公正是优先考虑的问题,平等是公正的基础和前提.在等级社会,没有平等,也就没有真正的公正.在近代社会,由于法律制度以及工业社会意识形态的确立,出现了形式平等,而实质平等则没有实现的可能.在社会主义制度下,不仅要确立形式平等,更主要的是要实现实质平等.平等与公正是有着广泛社会价值的,在人的创造性能力的实现中,平等和公正能够发挥基础性的作用.而且,我们当前所面对的地区性和世界性的问题,也需要通过平等和公正的途径去加以解决.     

Rewarding the Top: Citizens' Opposition to Higher Pay for Politicians

The rewards of politicians are a key part of the implicit contract between politicians and citizens, and the effect of these rewards on democratic legitimacy and political recruitment is a central concern in public debate and democratic theory. Using a survey experiment, we show how citizens respond to hypothetical changes in politicians’ pay. The results indicate that citizens express lower levels of trust in the politicians when these politicians award themselves higher pecuniary rewards. However, our results also show that a devious strategy in which the rewards for politicians are less transparent ensures lower opposition from citizens than open and transparent strategies. Based on this, we outline a reinvigoration of the research agenda on “rewards at the top.”     

“亲诚惠容”周边外交理念的内在联系及其实践

"亲诚惠容"周边外交理念中,"亲""诚""惠""容"各有内涵,又融为一个有机整体,四者构成了党处理中国与周边国家间关系的亲缘基底、道德基础、利益基石和人文基因。"亲诚惠容"周边外交理念,是对马克思主义国际政治理论的新发展。党的十八大以来,中国共产党努力践行"亲诚惠容"的周边外交理念,在实践中秉持亲仁善邻、守望相助的准则,重视诚信守规、诚意相待的承诺,坚持互惠互利、合作共赢的原则,弘扬兼容并蓄、开放包容的精神,周边外交环境得到巨大改善。     

Representative Bureaucracy and the Willingness to Coproduce: An Experimental Study

Relying on the theory of representative bureaucracy—specifically, the notion of symbolic representation—this article examines whether varying the number of female public officials overseeing a local recycling program influences citizens’ (especially women's) willingness to cooperate with the government by recycling, thus coproducing important policy outcomes. Using a survey experiment in which the first names of public officials are manipulated, the authors find a clear pattern of increasing willingness on the part of women to coproduce when female names are more represented in the agency responsible for recycling, particularly with respect to the more difficult task of composting food waste. Overall, men in the experiment were less willing to coproduce across all measures and less responsive to the gender balance of names. These findings have important implications for the theory of representative bureaucracy and for efforts to promote the coproduction of public services.     

人力资本理论研究需要关注的新领域——人力资本投资风险

人力资本投资有不确定性并可能给相关主体带来损失。由于风险的存在，在某种程度上已经抑制了我国人力资本投资的扩展。这在人力资本作用日益重要的时代，可能会不利于经济的发展。本在对原有人力资本理论反思的基础上对人力资本投资风险问题涉及的主要方面进行讨论。     

Erosion and Variety in Pay for High Public Office

Two elements have characterized the rewards for public officials in the past two decades. One is the erosion of pay and perquisites in many democratic countries. The other is a continuing variety of rewards, especially when compared to those in the private sector. Using data from a variety of OECD countries and the European Union, this article investigates alternative explanations for these two elements. The data is adjusted for purchasing power of the different currencies and then related to the relative wealth of the countries. We find that ideas, interests and institutions all have some explanatory power, but that none is sufficient by itself to explain either variety or erosion in pay across the range of countries. The policy implications of these findings, in terms of both “how” and “how much” public officials should be paid, are also examined.     

Adolescent Health: Are We Willing to Pay the Price for Inaction?

Several years ago, a legislator spoke clearly of the wishful unawareness we often confront in public health. After a session of frank exchange in his committee about teen pregnancy in Arkansas, he said, "Dr. Elders, until you became the health department director, we didn't have this problem." The facts paint a startling scenario for such people. We have not provided an environment in which our children can flourish. Instead, we have allowed the number of children who are economically, educationally, and medically disadvantaged to grow. Called "at-risk," their existence is an affront to democratic ideals, especially the belief that all have an equal chance for prosperity. It is time for true reform, but before that can happen, we must face the state of our children's health. After this, we must set to work at effective strategies.