Bureaucratic choice and nonoptimal provision of public goods: Theory and evidence

Local governments' allocation decisions are modeled in the context of a slack maximizing bureaucrat who produces public goods according to a production function that includes both provision and the constituents' socio-economic characteristics. To gain a better understanding of the determinants of slack, comparative statics and an empirical study of Illinois municipalities are conducted. The indirect output distance function provides efficiency scores upon which we regress several variables, representing socio-economic characteristics, costs and competition measures. We find that slack or inefficient behavior is associated with richer communities, lower education levels and a lack of competition for residents among municipalities.     

Voice of America and Iran, 1949–1953: US liberal developmentalism,propaganda and the Cold War

The administration of President Harry S. Truman used Voice of America radio to promote Iranian ‘liberal developmentalism’. Radio propaganda joined economic assistance, military aid, and other information programs to promote Western‐style capitalism and to repel Communist appeals in Iran. But President Dwight D. Eisenhower abandoned Truman's gradualist Iran policy in favor of covert action, a seemingly more expedient solution to perceived Iranian political instability. The US‐British engineered coup in 1953 to overthrow the nationalistic Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq revealed the shallowness of US commitments to liberal reform in Iran and highlighted Americans' willingness to undermine Iranian sovereignty in order to preserve US security interests in the Middle East.