Soft budgets and hard rents: a note on Kornai and Gomulka

This note shows how Kornai's concept of the soft budget constraint can be decomposed into separate elements of technical inefficiency and relative price distortion. The distinction between r-budget softness and m-budget softness introduced by Gomulka is shown to correspond to the equivalent and compensating variation measures of efficiency loss. It is also argued that budget softness should be viewed as the outcome of a rent-seeking process in which a firm's action in the control sphere incurs an opportunity cost in the real sphere. Adopting such a perspective leads to a re-definition of the resource loss associated with budget softness and results in much higher estimates of the social costs of soft budgets than those proposed in the existing literature.     

Making Tradeoffs in Federal Block Grant Programs: Understanding the Interplay Between SSBG and TANF

Welfare reform gave states the option of transferring up to10 percent of their annual federal Temporary Assistance forNeedy Families (TANF) award to the Social Services Block Grant(SSBG). Drawing on administrative data, we consider the impactof TANF transfers on SSBG. We find evidence suggesting thatmore innovative states, states that experienced larger TANFcaseload declines, and states that transferred a higher percentageof TANF funds to the Child Care Development Fund (CCDF) havetransferred higher portions of their TANF allocations to SSBG,all else equal. Preliminary analysis of changes in SSBG expenditurepatterns from FY 1995 to FY 2000 indicates that states are transferringsignificant sums to SSBG, but that TANF transfers do not appearto have a consistent effect on SSBG spending priorities acrossstates.     

Sex Differences in Age Patterns of Delinquent/Criminal Careers: Results from Poisson Latent Class Analyses of the Philadelphia Cohort Study

Applications of latent class analyses to the study of criminal careers have yielded results with implications for criminological theory. Distinct latent classes of individuals within various samples have been identified based upon the similarity of individuals with respect to their rate of offending across the teen and adult years, net of the effects of other regressors. In previous research on samples of males taken from the cities of London and Philadelphia, four and five such categories have been identified respectively, ranging from a group of nonoffenders to a group of chronic offenders. However, the question of whether similar findings hold for females has not been adequately addressed, in part due to the scarcity of longitudinal samples with sizable female populations. Data from the Second Philadelphia Cohort are used to address this and related questions. First, are there latent classes of female offenders? Second, if such categories do exist, how do they compare? Third, how do classes of male and female offenders compare on key measures of criminal careers? Analyses of the samples yield differing numbers of classes for males and females. Gender invariances as well as differences in patterns of offending are also found and are discussed.     

Injuries due to deliberate violence in areas of Denmark. II. Victims of homicide in the Copenhagen area

As part of a transcultural investigation of injuries due to deliberate violence in Denmark and South America, homicides in the Copenhagen area were studied for a 1-year period. Forty-five cases corresponding to a rate of approximately 2/10(5) per year were recorded. The rate seems to be increasing and the pattern changing with a higher frequency of stabbing and with an increasing frequency of high blood-alcohol concentrations in the victims. The highest number were killed at home. In the majority of cases the aggressor and the victim knew each other. A reduction in alcohol consumption is indicated as a possible preventive measure.     

Cross Border Collateral: Legal Risk and the Conflict of Laws st]R. ^Potok,gen. ed., Butterworths LexisNexis,London 2002, xlv (tables of legislation,treaties and cases) + 623 pp., index 35 pp., UK£I30. ISBN 0-406-92941-6.

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