Voluntary purchase of public goods

This paper examines the application of Buchanan's ‘independent adjustment’ model of public good provision to individual donations to voluntary or non-profit organizations. An individual's donation function is a simple transformation of the Marshallian demand function; consequently donation functions ‘reveal,’ in principle, preferences for public goods. The existence of a tax-subsidy system sustaining a Pareto optimal level of provision is demonstrated, and the relationship to the existing subsidy scheme in the U.S. is examined. Finally, two implications of the model suggest that it is not appropriate as a representation of actual donor behavior.     

Why policy analysis and ethics are incompatible

Commentators in the field of policy analysis have argued persuasively for the inclusion of ethical evaluations in the analytic process, yet most practitioners in the policy field avoid analyzing moral issues. Standard explanations for this neglect of ethics tend to be inadequate; assertions that normative analysis is unnecessary, impractical, impossible, or undesirable are demonstrably weak. Political factors, on the other hand, provide a clearer understanding of the neglect of ethics. Ethical inquiry is shunned because it frequently threatens the professional and political interests of both analysts and policymakers. The administrator, the legislator, the bureaucracy, and the profession of policy analysis itself all resist the potential challenges of moral evaluation.     

Crack and kids

He was the first director of the U.S. National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect. He is the author of, among other books, Recognizing Child Abuse: A Guide for the Concerned,and Juvenile Justice Advocacy.     

SUPERFUND FINANCING ALTERNATIVES

In 1980 Congress created the Superfund to pay for the selective cleanup of hazardous waste disposal sites. The original Superfund program was financed by earmarked "feedstock" taxes on petroleum and 42 chemicals, and by a "waste-end" tax on hazardous waste received a t disposal facilities. Budgetary authority for the program expired in September 1985. Over a year elapsed before Congress renewed budgetary authority for the program by expanding the feedstock taxes, suspending the waste-end tax, and imposing a new broad-base tax on corporate income. This paper examines the efficiency and equity effects of the current and several alternative Superfund tax policies. Special emphasis is given to the administrative and compliance costs associated with each tax, and the capacity of each to complement EPA regulation of hazardous waste externalities.     

A synoptic history and typology of experimental research in political science

This paper presents a brief chronicle of experimental research in political science. It is based upon an empirical analysis of 217 published experiments from ten major scholarly journals. A number of different subject areas where experimental designs have been employed are identified and dated as to when such designs were initially used. This sample of experiments is then analyzed, and four dimensions are identified and used to characterize these published experiments. The defining criteria for these dimensions include level of analysis, experimental environment, assumptions concerning rationality, and the nature of the experimental stimulus.     

Lifestyle changes and risks of criminal victimization

Routine activity/lifestyle theories have been used to explain temporal changes in crime rates, the social ecology of crime, and individuals' risks of criminal victimization. Using a panel of 33,773 individuals and 19,005 households at two points in time, the current study extends previous research by examining whether changes in lifestyles are associated with changes in individuals' risks of personal and property victimization. Changes in lifestyles which signal greater target visibility or exposure to motivated offenders (greater daytime and nighttime activity outside the home) and reduced guardianship (decreases in the number of household members) are generally associated with increased risks of both types of victimization. Persons who maintained high levels of nighttime activity outside the household were also more likely to remain victims at both time periods. However, active lifestyle changes (increased precautionary actions) did not have their expected impact on reducing victimization risks, and several other changes over time also were inconsistent with expectations. The paper concludes with a discussion of the role of passive and active lifestyle changes on victimization risks and the implications of our findings for developing sociological theories of criminal victimization.An early draft of this paper was presented at the Annual Meetings of the American Society of Criminology, November 11–14, 1987. The data for this study were originally collected by the Bureau of Census for the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration and were made available by the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research. Neither the collectors of the data nor the Consortium bears any responsibility for the analyses or interpretations presented here.     

Encouraging Local Compliance with Federal Civil Rights Laws: Field Experiments with the National Voter Registration Act

Can state officials increase local officials’ compliance with an important federal civil rights law with subtle interventions? The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA) requires voter registration services at certain government agencies, but many counties fail to comply with the act. Working with officials in two states, the authors conducted field experiments to determine whether two methods commonly used by state officials increase compliance with the NVRA. Findings show that although the effects of the methods on output were sizable relative to recent performance, agency performance remained poor overall, with many offices continuing their history of registering no voters. The authors also discovered that gains in performance were largest for the offices that had performed best in the past. These findings suggest that while subtle interventions by state officials can produce increased compliance, stronger tactics may be needed to secure implementation of this federal law by local government agents.