Some reflections on the next twenty-five years of public choice

I gratefully acknowledge the comments of Jan Potters and Joep Sonnemans on an earlier version of this paper.     

Nomenklatura,state monopoly,and private enterprise

Using a behavioral model of political decisionmaking, it is argued that an increasing population size and/or an increasing efficiency of production in a private enterprise economy relative to a centrally planned economy may create the conditions for a self-interested nomenklatura in a Soviet-type economy to consider a transition to a market economy. This transition may be thwarted, however, by the threat for prospective private enterpreneurs of exploitation after the change of regime. Some form of political pluralism guaranteeing sufficient political influence to private entrepreneurs appears to be required for a successful transition. The analysis shows that such a combined political and economic reform can be in the interest of the nomenklatura, thereby providing an endogenous behavioral explanation for a change of regime.     

Contents of Volume 19 (2000)

Volume Contents

Contents of Volume 19 (2000)     

The determinants of the choice between public and private production of a publicly funded service

The public choice literature contains little formal analysis of the bureaucratic choice of production modes — public or private — of publicly funded services. An important question to be addressed is why some governmental bodies choose to provide a publicly funded service with publicly owned and operated production units whereas other governmental bodies contract with private firms to provide the same publicly funded service. This paper is the first formal attempt to remedy this gap in the literature. We develop a theoretical explanation of the government decision maker's choice between public and private production modes based on utility maximizing behavior. We then examine empirically this choice employing logit analysis. The empirical results, which include several tests for robustness, confirm our theoretical explanation. The results are significant and suggest that non-monetary constraints are an important factor affecting this choice of production modes and that monetary constraints are less influential.     

Animal experiments on the detection of an exposure to "chemical mace" (author's transl)]

To answer the question whether a negative result of gas chromatographic blood analysis for components of chemical mace proves that no or at most only slight tear gas exposure can have occurred, animal experiments were carried out. In the blood of 10 guinea pigs, which were exposed to the contents of chemical mace for 1--6 h, the solvants 1,1,2-trichloro-1,2,2-trifluorethane (freon 113) and 1,1,1-trichloroethane could easily be detected--even 23 h after the end of exposure or after a storage of the blood samples for 18 weeks--whereas the lacrimator chloracetophenone (CN) could not be found at all. In vitro experiments showed that CN relatively quickly reacts with components of blood. Therefore, blood samples should be analyzed for CN after withdrawal as soon as possible. In case of inhalation of the contents of chemical mace, i.e., after the comparatively mildest form of CN application, most probably no traces of the lacrimator at all can pass into the blood due to the quick reaction of CN with proteins of the respiratory surface of the lung.     

Development and evaluation of a standard method for the quantitative determination of elements in float glass samples by LA-ICP-MS

Forensic analysis of glass samples was performed in different laboratories within the NITE-CRIME (Natural Isotopes and Trace Elements in Criminalistics and Environmental Forensics) European Network, using a variety of Laser Ablation Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) systems. The main objective of the interlaboratory tests was to cross-validate the different combinations of laser ablation systems with different ICP-MS instruments. A first study using widely available samples, such as the NIST SRM 610 and NIST SRM 612 reference glasses, led to deviations in the determined concentrations for trace elements amongst the laboratories up to 60%. Extensive discussion among the laboratories and the production of new glass reference standards (FGS 1 and FGS 2) established an improved analytical protocol, which was tested on a well-characterized float glass sample (FG 10-1 from the BKA Wiesbaden collection). Subsequently, interlaboratory tests produced improved results for nearly all elements with a deviation of < 10%, demonstrating that LA-ICP-MS can deliver absolute quantitative measurements on major, minor and trace elements in float glass samples for forensic and other purposes.