Review of public budgeting and financial management

User charge is an alternative option to privatizing public service provision. But its use as a policy instrument, compared with that of asset sales or contracting out, for instance, is less researched and documented. This paper tries to fill the gap. By contrasting the experiences of employing user charge for two public services in Hong Kong with diametrically opposing results, this paper offers preliminary conclusions on several lessons, which governments, in their drive toward improved efficiency, can learn in commercializing their trading activities. Implications to public policy making are also suggested. These include: the user-pays principle has to be applied equitably, the public service market has to remain depoliticized, the management has to be transformed to behave more entrepreneurially, and the users have to be educated.     

On the superiority of damage averaging in the case of strict liability

The literature argues that if injurers cannot anticipate the precise level of harm, courts might use expected harm as a magnitude of compensation instead of actual harm without distorting care incentives. This paper shows that the use of expected harm is in fact preferable if victims choose the value of the object placed at risk. If the court were to insist on compensating actual harm, this would result in victims choosing inefficient object values. In contrast, restricting compensation to expected harm yields the first-best outcome.     

Characterization and differentiation of aluminum powders used in improvised explosive devices – Part 1: Proof of concept of the utility of particle micromorphometry

Aluminum (Al) powders are commonly used in improvised explosive devices as metallic fuels, a component of explosive mixtures. These powders can be obtained readily from industrial‐scale and consumer products, and produced using unsophisticated “kitchen chemistry” techniques. This research demonstrates the potential of automated particle micromorphometry for comparisons between known source and questioned Al powders recovered from IEDs, as well as for insight into the method of Al powder manufacture. Al powder samples were obtained from legitimate manufacturers, and 56 samples were produced “in‐house” from Al‐containing spray paints and ball‐milled Al foils. Transmitted light microscope images of Al powder particles were acquired using an automated stage with automated z‐focus; 17 size and shape parameters were measured for all particles. Approximately 37,000–2,500,000 particles/sample were analyzed using an open‐source statistical package with customized code. Dimensionality reduction was required for processing the large datasets: eight of the 17 measured variables were selected based on inspection of the correlation matrix. Data from four subsamples from each of the 56 samples produced using “in‐house” methods were analyzed using ANOVA to assess the within‐ and between‐sample variation. High within‐sample variation was noted; however, ANOVA and post‐hoc Tukey's honestly significant difference (HSD) tests demonstrated that the between‐sample variation was substantially larger than the within‐sample variation. Each sample could be differentiated from all other samples in the test set. Future experiments will focus on ways to reduce the within‐sample variation, and additional statistical and microanalytical methods to classify sources and confidently constrain the method of Al powder manufacture.     

The Privatization of Expendable Launch Vehicles: Reconciliation of Conflicting Policy Objectives

This paper documents the decision process pursued by the President and key federal agencies addressing the issue of privatization of routine commercial space satellite launches via expendable launch vehicles. It is a case study of incremental decision making in the extreme, characterized by the formulation of conflicting policy goals in response to contingencies which ultimately paralyzed the policy process, even as government was confronted with issues of considerable gravity and urgency. The decision process unfolded in a highly dynamic environment, including the development of a internationally competitive space launch market and the Challenger accident. A key issue is the role of the chief executive in managing the policy implementation process, once conflicting goals have been formulated. The case illustrates how strategic miscalculation by the agencies involved, and a laissez-faire management style by the chief executive, exacerbate the ordinarily expected difficulties.