Public attitudes toward Social Security

In the early years of the Social Security program, public support for old-age pensions was high but knowledge and understanding about benefits and taxes were low. Understanding has greatly increased, even though the program has expanded, and support for Social Security has remained high. Data from the surveys and polls examined in this article indicate that support for Social Security was strong even during the late 1970's and early 1980's, when a fiscal crisis generated a crisis of confidence in the public's perception of the system's ability to pay benefits in the future. The proportion of the American public declaring confidence in the program declined sharply from a large majority with confidence (63 percent) in 1975 to a minority with confidence (39 percent) in 1978. Following the restoration of program financing through the provisions in the 1983 amendments, the trend has reversed. By 1988, nearly one-half of the public expressed confidence in the future of the Social Security program. For the most part, other aspects of public opinion regarding Social Security have shown great stability over the years. The program is popular and has been well-supported. Support for the Government to spend more for Social Security has been consistently high, as has support for benefits to increase with inflation and for benefits to increase even if it means higher taxes. Many individuals rely on income from Social Security or expect to rely on it when they retire. It is clear that the public wants the program to continue. If participation were optional, about three-fourths of the population would stay in the program.     

Social Heterogeneity and Optimal Mix Between Public and Private Provision of Public Goods

With a framework of incomplete contract, this paper shows that for provision of public goods such as medicare and education, pure privatization may not promote competition. On the contrary, the co-existence of public and private provision may enhance de facto competition. Two competitive effects are identified. When consumers are heterogeneous, the co-existence of public and private ownership gives consumers freedom to choose from different ownership, improving allocation efficiency (Tiebout effect). While consumers are homogeneous, the co-existence can promote yardstick competition, squeezing out information rents from both ownerships, improving production efficiency (benchmarking effect). In either case, the co-existence dominates unique ownership. The paper ends up with some implications for China.s medicare and education reforms. Yongqin Wang is an assistant professor at China Center for Economic Studies, Fudan University and Haibo Xu is a M.A. student in economics at the same center. We thank Te Bao, Zhao Chen, Sujian Guo, Ming Lu, Yew-Kwang Ng and Teague Savitch, and anonymous reviewers for valuable comments.     

营造与现代化进程相适应的深圳社会治安环境

世界通行的现代化指标由10个方面40多项标准组成指标体系,其中,社会治安状况好坏是一项重要指标。因为在长期实践中人们发现,假如没有良好的社会治安,经常生活在不安和恐惧状态中,一个国家经济发展水平再高也毫无意义。发达国家的现代化大都经历了只重经济发展而忽视社会治安的弯路。我们要牢记发达国家的前车之鉴,把建设与现代化进程相适应的社会治安环境作为一件大事来抓。在此方面,作为全国改革开放和现代化建设“试验场”的深圳更应走在前面。一、现代化建设中的深圳社会治安环境深圳的现代化建设尚处于初级阶段。这是一个人力资源不断…     

试论民间防范组织在社会治安防控中的作用

民间组织是构建社会治安防控体系的主体之一。在构建"打、防、控"一体化的综合社会治安防控体系的过程中,除了发挥公安机关的主导地位外,还要充分依靠治安保卫委员会、治安联防队、单位内部保卫组织、保安服务公司等各种非政府(民间)组织,充分发挥其在构建治安防控体系中的基础性作用,以强化社会治安综合治理,实现社会的和谐稳定。     

The Investment Approach to Public Service Provision

The investment approach to public service provision is now receiving considerable attention worldwide. By promoting data‐intensive assessments of baseline conditions and how government action can improve on them, the approach holds the potential to transform policy development, service implementation, and program evaluation. Recently, variations on the investment approach have been applied in Australia to explore the effectiveness of specific programs in employment training, criminal justice, and infrastructure development. This article reviews the investment approach, presents a Public Investment Checklist to guide such work, and discusses three examples. It concludes by considering the implications of investment thinking for the work of policy designers and public managers.     

社会治安综合治理要抓基层打基础

最近中央召开的全国社会治安工作会议 ,从实践“三个代表”的要求 ,维护改革、发展和稳定大局的高度 ,强调搞好社会治安的重要性和紧迫性 ,提出两年内坚决实现社会治安明显进步的目标。当前认真贯彻全国社会治安工作会议精神 ,关键是要抓好落实。深圳市龙岗区按照中央的要求和市委的部署 ,针对本区社会治安中的突出问题 ,开展一场声势浩大的“严打”整治斗争 ,同时坚持“打防结合、预防为主、标本兼治、重在治本”的方针 ,全面落实社会治安综合治理的各项措施 ,狠抓基层 ,打牢基础 ,建立起坚固完善的群防群治网络 ,从根本上预防和减少犯罪的…     

Political Equilibrium and the Provision of Public Goods

This paper treats interest groups – peoplein their role as consumers of a public goodand people in their role as taxpayers – asthe unit of account for representativevoting. Each group is allowed to make aneffort to support its preferred candidateand, at the margin, the effort-benefitratio is the political price the group iswilling to pay to secure an additionaldollar of benefits.

Under reasonable assumptions, a uniqueequilibrium is assured and itscharacteristics are quite intuitive. Inparticular, the marginal political benefit(from consumers) of the last unit of outputmust equal the marginal political cost(from taxpayers). Alternatively, the rateat which the politician can transformtaxpayer income into consumer surplus mustequal the ratio of their political prices. The result will be optimal only on the rareoccasion when the effort-benefit ratios ofthe two groups are equal.

Since political goals are themselves ``public goods'' for thetwo interest groups,they face all the normal free riderproblems. Moreover, even small differencesin the effort-benefit ratios of the twogroups lead to large welfare losses.

How bad can things get? Each group has anincentive to try to overcome free-riderproblems and divert resources from privatesector activities to politics. And anyincrease in political effort is alwaysrewarded. However, (1) the marginal returnis always higher for the group with thesmaller effort-benefit ratio; (2) thedifferential return between the two groupsgrows the further we stray from optimality;and (3) both groups face diminishingreturns. These incentives may act asnatural checks on political outcomes –placing some limit on the amount of wasteand inefficiency democracy is likely toproduce.

The influence of a producer (of the publicgood) group that collects a rent increasesthe likelihood that public goods will beoverproduced. In fact, it is conceivableto have a good with no value to consumersproduced, solely because of the influenceof producers. Comparative static analysisreveal that the political system willrespond to changes in market conditions ina way similar to economic markets. Themagnitude of these shifts differs fromeconomic markets, however. For goods thatare being overproduced, the politicalmarketplace overresponds to changes indemand and underresponds to changes incosts. The converse is true for goods thatare being underproduced.

     

公共物品私人提供的博弈分析

公共物品的自愿提供是公共经济学研究的一个基础问题,已有研究者从博弈论与实证等角度对该问题进行了研究,但较少有学者考虑效用函数对公共物品提供问题的影响.基于对效用函数的回顾,建立了考虑社会效益这一因素的效用函数.在此基础上对公共物品私人提供进行了博弈分析,得出结论:引入社会效益这一非物质性因素使得可以通过行为主体的自愿提供使公共物品的提供量达到帕累托最优;随着行为主体的数目的增多,要实现通过自愿供给的方式提供公共物品则要求降低物质性因素对行为主体效用所产生的贡献水平;当参与提供公共物品的行为主体为很多时,要实现合作,通过自愿的方式来提供公共物品则要求社会效益这一因素成为行为主体进行决策的一个重要的因素.     

Binary Games as Models of Public Goods Provision*

Problems of public goods provision are categorized according to attributes of the good to be provided, and properties of the group of potential beneficiaries. It is argued that not all such problems are Prisoner's Dilemmas. Other games of interest include Chicken, the Volunteer's Dilemma, a variant of the Assurance Came and several others. Which particular model is relevant in a given context depends critically on the specific characteristics of the situation under consideration.     

Public School Music: Notes on the Public Provision of a Quasi-Private Good

This paper uses a version of theBergstrom/Goodman median voter model toexamine whether there are aspects ofpublicness to public school music. It alsoexamines whether the provision of publicschool music is an example of the abilityof small groups to seek benefits forthemselves at the expense of larger groups. School music programs provide a uniquesetting in which it is possible to separatethe demand for school music programs by theconsumers of school music (the privatebeneficiaries) from the demand for schoolmusic programs by those who do not directlyconsume the product. If those who are notdirect consumers of music programs appearto value school music programs as a publicgood, their valuation cannot be confusedwith a jointly consumed private good, orconsumption of a private good with scaleeconomies, because they are not themselvesconsuming it as a private good. Using datafrom the 1987 Schools and Staffing Survey,the results from a logarithmic, normative,demand model show that (parents of)nonmusic students appear to value musicprograms as a public good. Once it isprovided for music students, additionalproportions of nonmusic students do notdemand additional music classes. In thatmodel, music students appear to value musicclasses as a private good. In thepositive, additive, demand model, moremusic students mean that more music classeswill be provided. Further, since music isvalued as a non-subtractable public goodwhose costs can easily be spread,increasing numbers of non-music studentsalso result in (slightly) more musicclasses. The method can be used to estimate thepublicness of publicly provided goodswhenever it is possible to separate thedirect beneficiaries of the good from thosewho could only value its externalities. The model seems particularly applicable tostudying the extent to which defense isvalued as a quasi-private good by theconcentrated defense industry; and whetherit is also valued as a public good bycitizen/voters with no connection to thedefense industry. It may also be usefulfor investigating still unsettled questionsregarding the publicness of publiclyprovided education.     

Housing Upkeep and Public Good Provision in Residential Neighborhoods

Neighborhood condition is a public good in part provided by neighborhood residents’ private property maintenance. Considering neighborhood condition as an impure public good provides a theoretical basis for understanding how the level of neighborhood quality may affect residents’ home maintenance decisions. Empirical results in a low-income neighborhood, where formulating public policy to improve neighborhoods is of significant concern, indicate a positive substitution effect. When neighborhoods improve, residents respond by increasing exterior home upkeep. This result is robust to both changes in the neighborhood condition generated by other neighbors’ increase in maintenance and exogenous public investment in the neighborhood.     

铁道公安学是公安学的一个分支学科

有人认为,铁道公安学是保卫学中的一部分或具体学科,这种观点明显错误。实际上,铁道公安学具有自己独特的研究对象和研究内容,是公安学的一个分支学科。本文就学科性质、学科划分、研究对象以及铁道公安学与公安学的关系进行了论证。     

农村公共品供给效率实证研究

运用公共服务满意度理论对农村公共品供给效率进行评价研究。研究认为,效率既是主体行为结果的投入产生的比较效果,又是一个对于主体行为而言的相对概念。农村公共品供给效果,既包括物质性效果,也包括精神效果,即公共品受众的感觉效果。在农村公共品供给效率评价中,从农民主体而言,只有农民认为有用的公共品,才是有效率的。相反,即使政府反复认定有用并强制去供给的公共品,当农民认为没有用时,农民依然感觉它是无效率的。利用126个乡(镇)农户对农村公共品供给效率"满意度"评价(CSI)抽样调查数据,运用CSI-Probit回归模型对农户的农村公共品供给效率"满意度"及其影响因素进行了实证分析,得出:当CSI值处于同一类型的市(州)时,其影响因素表现出明显的共性特征。总体而言,CSI的主要影响来自农民受教育年限、医疗可及性、农民收入水平、农户有效灌溉面积率、农户距乡镇政府的距离、农林技术站服务次数以及被调查者年龄等因素。     

External Actors and the Provision of Public Health Services in Somalia

Concentrating on the health sector, this article argues that the provision of collective goods through external actors depends on the level of state capacity and the complexity of the service that external actors intend to provide. It shows that external actors can contribute most effectively to collective good provision when the service is simple, and that simple services can even be provided under conditions of failed statehood. Effectively delivering complex services requires greater levels of state capacity. The article also indicates that legitimacy is a key factor to explain variance in health service delivery. To demonstrate this, the article assesses health projects in Somalia. It shows that simple services—malaria prevention and tuberculosis control—are provided effectively in all three Somali regions, including the war‐torn South‐Central region. In contrast, the HIV/AIDS project only achieved substantial results in Somaliland, the only region with a comparatively higher level of state capacity, and failed in the South‐Central region and Puntland.