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)     

Selenium determination in mother and child's hair by electrothermal atomic absorption spectrometry

A method for the selenium determination in a mother and her child's hair using palladium as a chemical modifier was optimized. The sample was digested with nitric acid and hydrogen peroxide and diluted to 5 ml. To achieve complete mineralization the samples were ashed at 1200 degrees C in the presence of palladium as a chemical modifier. The optimum atomization temperature was 1900 degrees C. The precision and accuracy of the method were studied using the reference material CRM 397. Results of calibration using aqueous standards and the standard addition method were compared. The method was applied to the selenium determination in 30 samples of the mother's and child's hair. The levels found were 0.54 +/- 0.34 microgram/g for mother's hair and 0.77 +/- 0.25 microgram/g for child's hair.     

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.