When Efficiency Is Unbelievable: Normative Lessons from 30 Years of City–County Consolidations

We use a new model of city-county consolidation to analyze 12 local government consolidation attempts during the last three decades. Using a rigorously designed comparative case study, we identify the critical variables that explain why some consolidations succeed and others fail. Arguments for consolidation typically fail when they focus on the increased equity to be gained from the redistribution of revenues from the suburbs to central cities. Traditional arguments that are based on increased efficiency are also unsuccessful. Instead, the essential element of a successful consolidation is a group of civic elites who define the economic development vision for the community, determine that the existing political structure is incapable of supporting and implementing that vision, and convince the voters that city–county consolidation is the key to economic development that will benefit the whole community, not just the elites.     

The Airport and Airway Trust Fund: A Continuing Controversy

Despite calls for increased outlays from the Airport and Airway Trust Fund to help finance improvements in the nation's air transportation system, the fund's surplus continued to grow during the Reagan years. It becomes readily apparent, when the issues surrounding the trust fund and its surplus are analyzed, that placing the blame solely on deficit considerations is too simplistic. Instead, partisan politics, the congressional budget process, delays in technology development, and budget pressures are responsible for the growing surplus.     

Tax compliance: An investigation using individual taxpayer compliance measurement program (TCMP) data

In this paper, we analyze the tax compliance behavior of U.S. taxpayers by using a 1979 data set that combines information from a random sample of individual tax returns, each of which has been thoroughly audited, IRS administrative records, and sociodemographic data from the Census. We find evidence that both audits and tax code provisions affect compliance. However, the effects are significant for only low-and high-income groups. Interestingly, work on the underground economy also suggests that it is these two groups that are least compliant. Our results for audits suggest that the ripple or general deterrent effect of audits may be substantially larger than the direct revenue yield of audits for high-income taxpayers. Our results for allowable subtractions from income imply that the 1986 Tax Reform Act changes that lowered allowable subtractions may have procompliance effects.     

Human Rights in Kosovo

The emotions surrounding the question of Kosovo’s future owe their intensity to the long history of human rights abuses in the province. The years 1945–1966 and 1987–1999, in particular, saw harsh repression of local Albanians and a systematic favoring of local Serbs. Since June 1999, the province has been under international supervision, and, in this period, Serbs complain that they have been the victims of repeated acts of violence at the hands of Albanians. This article provides an overview of human rights abuses since 1945 and closes with a brief assessment of the international plan presented by UN mediator Martti Ahtisaari in February 2007.

Advancing E-Government: Financing Challenges and Opportunities

As e-government evolves into the transactions stage, governments must grapple with how to finance the development of e-transactions. The authors argue that the externalities effects of electronic transactions suggest they are appropriately financed by some combination of public investment and user charges. We propose a self-financing model adhering to two basic requirements. A flexible pricing framework is the core of the self-financing model, as it embodies both the firm's and the government's perspectives. We assess basic assumptions of the pricing framework using contingent valuation methodology and a statewide survey of more than 400 firms. The empirical estimates we develop of the willingness to pay for e-transactions with state government and the theoretical discussion about the self-financing model form the basis for prescribing policy recommendations.     

The curious case of Ali Cenani Bey: the story of a génocidaire during and after the 1915 Armenian genocide

While there exists an extensive body of literature addressing the Armenian genocide, certain gaps persist. The processes and events of the genocide have been unearthed and examined, but genocide is not a phenomenon set in motion by a force of nature. On the contrary, the systematic destruction of Ottoman Armenians was designed and executed by a cadre of individuals, most of whom are little known today. Kurt’s aim here is to recover the story of one such actor from a particular town, Aintab, modern-day Gaziantep—situated on the boundaries of Cilicia (today the southern part of Anatolia) and Syria, near both the Mediterranean Sea and the Gulf of Alexandretta—thereby revealing the perpetrators and their active involvement in the destruction of Armenians at the local/provincial level. Kurt’s article seeks to shed light on such a perpetrator by analysing the objective features of his background and career. Highlighting the human dimension of the genocide allows for an examination of the actors—their motives and their acts—that ultimately bore responsibility for the catastrophic loss of life. Kurt focuses on the life story of Ali Cenani (1872–1934): his background and involvement in the 1915 Armenian deportation and genocide as well as his career in post-genocide Turkey.