The role of compensation in siting hazardous facilities

Empirical evidence indicates that compensation can prove effective in gaining public acceptance for siting facilities on the benign end of the spectrum (e.g., landfills, prisons), but is subject to serious limitations when it comes to facilities that the public regards as particularly risky or of questionable legitimacy such as nuclear waste repositories. These facilities require creative mitigation measures such as independent inspections of the facility and local shutdown power. Even then they may be viewed as too risky to be acceptable with or without compensation. This article proposes a two-stage siting process which recognizes the importance of regulations and safety standards (Stage 1) while employing a voluntary process with compensation to address concerns with equity and efficiency (Stage 2).     

Firm size and regulatory compliance costs: The case of workers' compensation insurance

This paper examines the relative costs of workers' compensation insurance across firm-size groups, with particular focus on administrative scale economies (“compliance effects”) and biases in rate-setting (“enforcement effects”). Analyzing data on premiums and losses from the insurance industry, the authors find that the costs of insurance per dollar of loss are relatively high for very small firms. These higher costs reflect certain fixed administrative costs insurance companies must bear, but for extremely small firms these higher costs tend to be mitigated by an “enforcement” bias in state rate-setting outcomes. Due to imperfect experience-rating of insurance premiums, middle-sized firms—which have the highest losses—pay less per dollar of loss than either the smallest or largest firms. Indeed, it appears that large firms purchasing commercial workers' compensation insurance subsidize other size groups.     

Risk compensation and the effectiveness of safety belt use laws: a case study of New Jersey

This paper investigates the effectiveness of New Jersey's mandatory belt use law (MUL) by testing specifically for: (1) a safety effect, and (2) a risk-compensation effect that could offset (in part) any safety impact. The main findings are that injury severity declined significantly in the 22 months following implementation of the MUL; but that accident frequency increased significantly. The increase in accidents may be explained only partially by increased driving mileage. These findings suggest that the real safety effect of the law may have been diluted by risk-compensating behavior.This paper is based on a study conducted for the New Jersey Office of Highway Traffic Safety by the Rutgers University Bureau of Economic Research. We are grateful to William Ascher and two referees for useful comments.     

Talking trash about landfills: Using quantitative scoring schemes in landfill siting processes

Policymakers and the public often turn to scientific experts for help in making decisions about complex policy problems. Such decisions, however, may involve trade‐offs among desired goals and so require considerable technical and political judgment. Typically there is no objectively "best" answer, although some answers may be better than others. We use a case study of a landfill siting process in Orange County, North Carolina, to analyze how quantitative scoring schemes may best be used to facilitate site selection processes. Quantitative scoring schemes, used and interpreted properly, can help policymakers and the public focus their attention on central rather than peripheral issues, and thereby conduct a more informed political debate. For the quantitative scoring scheme to fulfill this role, however, the community must be explicit about how the scoring scheme will be used within the larger decisionmaking framework. Clarifying the power and limitations of quantitative scoring schemes shows promise for facilitating decisionmaking regarding other locally unpopular land use siting processes, as well as any public policy decision involving multiple objectives. © 2000 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Workers' compensation: a background for Social Security professionals

This article provides a brief history and background of workers' compensation programs for occupationally injured and ill workers in the United States. It presents the basic principle involved in workers' compensation and briefly discusses the disability benefits to which workers are generally entitled. It also discusses why there are settlements in this disability program and the availability of information about the amounts paid in workers' compensation cases for obtaining an offset for Social Security Disability Insurance benefits paid to the worker. Finally, the article explains the rationale behind the public policy on coordination of Disability Insurance and workers' compensation in the new paradigm of disability and return to work.     

Electronic Service Delivery: Achieving Accuracy and Consistency in Complex Transactions

This article discusses the use of rule-base technology in the administration of legislation. It first looks at determinative processes, the management of assessments of entitlement and obligations that form much of the operational work for many government agencies. It examines existing problems that agencies experience when attempting to secure accurate and consistent primary decision-making when administering complex legislation. It also examines the way in which traditional techniques for administering legislation constrain the service delivery methods open to an agency. It suggests that rule-base systems are a peculiarly appropriate technology for improving these determinative processes. It then argues that the use of rule-base systems offers two main benefits to agencies. They can improve the quality of primary decision-making and they can provide a means for dramatically widening the range of service delivery options open to an agency. Finally, the article argues that, until agencies have applications that are capable of automating complex transactions, such as the determination of entitlements, they will not be able to achieve large-scale benefits from electronic service delivery.     

Designing a tax incentive scheme: The case of a wage tip

Governments are constantly attempting to use their tax systems for purposes other than the collection of revenue. Each such use entails difficult decisions of both design and administration. Consideration of a tax-based policy that might reduce wage inflation—a so-called TIP—serves to reveal the wide range of difficult choices that need to be made. In addition to problems of measuring the behavior of the tax payer who is to be benefited or penalized, the analyst must settle on such questions as whether the program should be permanent or temporary, whether it should emphasize rewards or punishments, and whether it should be administered by existing government agencies or by special agencies. None of these problems is insuperable. But lurking behind all of them is the question whether, is the end, the chosen policy will actually contribute to reducing wage inflation.     

Diversity as a policy goal: The case of television

Diversity in communications is most appropriately understood as a free flow of ideas. In order to implement diversity, a comprehensive model of the communication process must be used for policy research, so that the various participants in the process can be properly restrained from abridging the free flow of ideas. The setting of priorities for implementing diversity has been illustrated using available studies of broadcast and cable television.     

低碳经济发展中的政府责任及其实现路径

低碳经济的发展仅靠单一市场规则是无法实现的,市场失灵的出现要求政府必须承担一定责任。发展低碳经济,首先要解决的是低碳经济市场领域的外部性问题,政府可以通过一系列制度安排来规避低碳经济领域的外部性问题。政府还需通过规制和引导等多种路径,推动消费方式改变、政策法规完善,促进低碳经济发展,努力建设资源节约型、环境友好型、气候适应型社会和低碳导向型社会。     

Foreign assistance and development in a small-island economy: The case of Fiji

In many works on comparative public administration and development management the arguments put forward are often presented within the framework of comparing developed and less-developed countries. However, within the latter category there are fairly substantial differences, usually categorized within the context of system of government, or degrees of per capita income. Rarely is the question of scale addressed head on. One dimension of this, for instance, is the nature and operation of public administration where the proliferation of traditional ministries, and the impartiality of the administration, become very problematic in terms of the extremely limited resources and the very personal nature of public life— especially in the microstates. In this paper the question of scale is addressed in the context of the relationship between one island state, Fiji, and its bilateral and multilateral partners. This is considered not just in terms of aid and loans, but in terms of such issues as the ‘critical mass’ of skilled professional people, and the problems of functioning in a system where the rules for such things as overheads seem to have been evolved in the context of the Third-World giants. It is shown that the scale variable is a very powerful one in both the effectiveness and efficiency of governments working in tandem with major external sources of capital assistance.     

Administrative reform in a changing political environment: The case of Hong Kong

Since 1989, the Hong Kong government has implemented a programme of public sector reform that is based on the principles of ‘new public management’. The reforms initially focused mainly on financial management reform, including delegating responsibilities for resource allocation; re-defining the roles of the central resource branches; setting up trading funds in departments that provide services directly to the public; and instilling a new corporate culture of service throughout the government. Some progress has been made in implementing the reforms. In 1993, the government realized that further civil service reform was necessary to support the reforms. The government proposed to delegate more authority to department heads on personnel matters; give managers more freedom to manage personnel; and simplify personnel regulations and procedures. These ‘new public management’-type reforms are usually associated with stable, relatively unchanging environments. In Hong Kong, however, the reforms have been proposed and carried out in an environment of considerable political turbulence which has both facilitated and hindered their implementation. Because of the declining legitimacy of the colonial government, British authorities may not have the political capacity to implement the reforms. Opposition from both department heads and civil service unions to aspects of the reforms has already emerged.     

Representational roles and representative/constituency agreement: The democratic national party convention of 1976

Representational Role Theory is applied to presidential nominating conventions. Delegates to the 1976 Democratic convention are compared to the voters who selected their slates in 10 key presidential preference primaries. Because of party rule restrictions on delegates' behavior, representational roles are not pertinent to what is typically the most important decision of the convention, the first ballet vote for the party's presidential nominee. However, role orientations appear to be useful in understanding two other sets of decisions: (1) the creation of the party platform and (2) voting for the party's presidential nominee in the event that the nomination requires more than one ballot. Other than the first ballot, the Delegate role is not very popular among convention delegates.     

Travails of Truth: Achieving Justice for Victims of Impunity in Nigeria

Following its transition to democracy from an authoritarianmilitary rule marked by gross violations of human rights, Nigeriaestablished the Human Rights Violations Investigations Commission(HRVIC) in 1999. This paper critically examines the contributionsof the HRVIC, popularly known as the ‘Oputa Panel,’to the field of transitional justice and the rule of law. Itsets out the process of establishing the Commission, its mandateand how this mandate was interpreted during the course of theCommission's work. The challenges faced by the Oputa Panel,particularly those that relate to its legal status and relationshipwith the judiciary, are analyzed in an attempt to draw usefulguidelines from these challenges for other truth commissions.Recourse by powerful individuals to the judicial process ina bid to shield themselves from the HRVIC merits particularreview as it raises questions regarding the transformation ofthe judiciary and the rule of law in the wake of an authoritarianregime.