Service Efforts and Accomplishments Reporting: Has Its Time Really Come?

In April 1994 GASB released Concepts Statement No. 2, Service Efforts and Accomplishments Reporting , bringing required SEA external financial reporting a very large step closer to reality. Before long, public financial officials may be required to annually report measures of performance. We are now about halfway through the experimentation phase established in Statement 2. This article summarizes the status of GASB's SEA experimentation process. It then suggests important behavioral, auditing, and other issues which GASB ought to address before proceeding with any formal pronouncements regarding SEA reporting requirements.     

The tax-spend debate: Time series evidence from state budgets

This paper examines the temporal relationship between revenues and expenditures for the forty-eight contiguous states over an annual period 1942 to 1992. Using an error-correction model, we find that the tax-spend hypothesis is supported for twenty-four states. The spend-tax hypothesis is valid for eight states while the fiscal synchronization hypothesis is supported for eleven states. The remaining five states failed the diagnostic tests for error-correction modeling.     

On the Nature of Tolerance: Dichotomous or Continuous?*

The purpose of this article is to reconsider the claim made recently by Mondak and Sanders that political tolerance ought to be thought to be a dichotomous rather than continuous variable. Using data from both Russia and the United States, I demonstrate that those Mondak and Sanders regard as uniquely tolerant are most likely no more than people who were given insufficient opportunity to express their intolerance. Even if such a phenomenon of “absolute tolerance” exists (all ideas expressed in all ways are to be tolerated), it is sufficiently rare that few practical implications are indicated for those doing empirical work on political tolerance and intolerance. * I appreciate the valuable comments of Jeffcry Mondak on an earlier version of this paper.     

Research Note: Libertarian-authoritarian Value Change in Britain, 1974–2001

This research note explores the mechanisms behind age differences and changes over time in one of the two major value dimensions in British politics, libertarian-authoritarianism. I show that the British electorate has become substantially more libertarian over the last 30 years, but that older people have remained more authoritarian than younger people over this period. Conventionally, due to the problem of the under-identification of models containing age, period and cohort variables, it is difficult to assess whether this indicates generational differences, and generational change, or not. This paper overcomes some of these problems however, by measuring social ageing factors, such as marriage, and using panel data to rigorously assess how individuals change due to these social ageing factors. I find little evidence of psychologists' claims that social ageing leads to increases in authoritarianism, and conclude that both age differences and changes over time are generational in nature.     

A Framework for Assessing Incentives in Results-Based Management

Many governmental results-based management systems have not produced the expected positive effects. This article analyzes the reasons for this common disappointment by looking at three components of results-based management—results-specific information, capacities, and incentives—and concludes that incentives are often the least developed. It then synthesizes a simple framework for evaluating the efficacy of results-oriented incentives. To be successful, results-specific incentives must be tailored to fit four program characteristics: timeliness, political environment, clarity of the cause-and-effect chain, and tightness of focus. This framework suggests that some systems put too exclusive an emphasis on budgetary incentives and could be strengthened by emphasizing personnel-system rewards, especially those that look beyond business models.     

Federal Budgeting After September 11th: A Whole New Ballgame,or Is It Déjà Vu All Over Again?

Federal budgeting has undergone some profound changes since the tragic events of September 11th, 2001. Large surpluses that existed prior to September 11th and were forecast to continue have been replaced by equally large and intractable deficits. The consensus around a macro‐level norm for federal budgeting has completely broken down. In other ways, the federal budget process has not changed at all. Despite the emphasis on defense and homeland security, domestic discretionary spending is still continuing unabated, as it has since the late 1980s. Further, the federal government continues to have chronic difficulty adopting its budget in a timely fashion.     

The China–asean Free Trade Agreement And Taiwan

While China's move toward a FTA with ASEAN reflects Beijing's most recent foreign economic policy adjustment and represents a new stage in the nation's open-door policy, it inevitably produces significant impact on cross-Taiwan Straits relations. This recent development in China's foreign economic relations brings not only substantial psychological and real effects and pressure on Taiwan for its possible isolation and marginalization from the ongoing process of regional integration in East Asia, but also growing pressure exerted by the island's business community that fears being pushed into a disadvantageous position in competition with ASEAN companies in the ever expanding and lucrative market of the mainland. For strategic, diplomatic, and economic considerations in the face of this new challenge, Taiwan is pursuing counter-measures by searching for its own FTAs with other countries within and beyond the region.