关于政府成本理论与政府成本研究中的问题

本文所讨论的问题是,在合理界定政府成本概念的基础上建立科学的政府成本理论,并分析当前政府成本领域研究中存在的诸如概念模糊、研究理念相对陈旧、研究范围狭窄、研究方法与研究工具单一等问题。将突破传统地把行政管理建立在单一的政治学范畴,进一步拓宽到包括政治学、社会学、管理学、经济学等在内的研究领域,并取得在政府决策、和谐社会建立、提升政治文明以及在同等资源情况下最大限度地改善公众福利的效果。     

江、浙、沪商务成本结构性比对及差异性分析

本文对江、浙、沪商务成本结构性趋势进行比对,研究差异原因,并探讨对政府和企业的启示。研究表明：一般而言,随着经济发展,要素成本不断上升,交易成本逐步下降,而商务成本总体呈现上升趋势。经过比对,发现要素成本上海最高,江苏最低;交易成本上海最低,粗略认为浙江交易成本略低于江苏。在此基础上,本文分别从政府和企业两个角度,对政府政策与企业选址提出相应对策和建议。     

Make and Buy—An Alternative to Make or Buy? An Investigation of Four Theoretical Explanations in Danish Municipalities

The question of whether public organizations should provide services themselves or buy them from external suppliers has become increasingly relevant due to public-sector modernization. The literature has focused on it as a question of either make or buy. Contrarily, we focus on the reasons for public organizations to simultaneously produce and contract out similar services. The article investigates different theoretical explanations for concurrent make and buy. A survey of Danish municipalities shows that make and buy seems to be a steady choice. However, the results show little support for the theoretical explanations indicating the need for more public-oriented explanations.     

Delivering effective therapeutic interventions for men with severe personality disorder within a high secure prison

Abstract

The Fens Unit is a government-initiated facility for male prisoners reaching criteria for Dangerous and Severe Personality Disorder (DSPD). Prisoners are assessed using a standardised process; those meeting criteria engage in a five-year treatment programme using a cognitive interpersonal model. Personality disorder is seen as a combination of coping strategies, developed in response to experience, which results in dysfunctions of thinking, feeling, behaviour and interpersonal relationships. These dysfunctions are linked to offending. Therefore, in order to reduce risk, multiphasic interventions – individual and group therapies – specifically target each dysfunction area, focusing on the developmental experiences that generated them. Each man's individual risk factors become treatment targets that are addressed in every aspect of the programme. All staff on the unit, clinical and operational, attempt to improve the quality of interpersonal relationships the prisoner has access to in order to create remedial experiences that are necessary to attain the capacity to develop socially adaptive cognitive, emotional and behavioural responses. This paper describes the treatment provided to these prisoners and the outcomes for the first cohort to have completed treatment (n=18). Results indicate that there is a reduction in violent behaviour, a higher than expected attendance at therapy, a decrease in actuarial risk measures and the majority of men are successfully managed in lower security after programme completion.     

The urban household in Russia and the Soviet Union, 1900–2000: Patterns of family formation in a turbulent century

Starting from census data on co-residence and household composition, the authors analyse principles of family organisation and family formation in twentieth-century urban Russia and the Soviet Union. The article uses an adapted version of the classification of households developed by Peter Laslett and Eugene Hammel to study variation in household structure for successive population censuses. Changes in this variation between cross-sections are explained with the help of additional quantitative and qualitative data and are linked to the fundamental demographic, social and economic shifts which took place in Russian society in the course of the twentieth century. The article finds a family system characterised by a tendency towards nuclear family formation, but incorporating a fairly stable element of household extension. Co-residence of three generations was both an answer to a perennial housing problem and offered important advantages in the sphere of childcare and care for the elderly. Variation and fluctuation in household structure are found to be most pronounced during the turbulent first half of the century. After a period of stability during the post-war decades of Soviet rule, post-Soviet transformations provoke new changes.     

Comment on Anthony Downs's “Have Housing Prices Risen Faster in Portland Than Elsewhere?”

Abstract

Forms of urban containment are found in more than a hundred jurisdictions across the United States. The lightning rod for the debate over urban containment is metropolitan Portland, OR, which has had an urban growth boundary for a generation. In the early 1990s, housing prices there soared, providing fodder to interests opposed to public interference in the private development market. Downs contributes to the debate by finding that over the long term, metropolitan Portland's housing prices are more in line with its West Coast and national contemporaries than not.

This comment first reviews some of the literature associating growth controls and growth management with housing price changes. I then examine how Oregon's and metropolitan Portland's particular institutional measures ameliorate potential price effects, offering lessons for containment programs everywhere. I caution that urban containment is here to stay and that the best way for development interests to protect themselves from undesirable outcomes is to advocate Portland‐style urban containment.     

Introduction to session 2: Magnitude of the crisis: The fiscal and human costs

Abstract

Many are looking to California and its state housing law for advice on how to deal with the affordability challenges affecting many metropolitan areas throughout the nation. It is thus critically important to go beyond the laws themselves and examine how state and municipal governance structure affects affordability, supply, and production. Some states give broad freedom to localities to develop policies that can potentially meet a range of goals and objectives. Others directly undermine those efforts by limiting local ability to pursue policy reforms while simultaneously failing to engage on the state level.

The redefinition of federalism on the national level, coupled with continued resistance to growth from some localities, establishes the state as at least an equal partner in dealing with housing supply and affordability issues. Understanding these distinctions is important, and the housing community needs to take them into account as it moves on the state front.     

Where the homeless come from: A study of the prior address distribution of families admitted to public shelters in New York City and Philadelphia

Abstract

This study investigates hypotheses regarding the association of census tract variables with the risk for homelessness. We used prior address information reported by families entering emergency shelters in two large U.S. cities to characterize the nature ofthat distribution.

Three dense clusters of homeless origins were found in Philadelphia and three in New York City, accounting for 67 percent and 61 percent of shelter admissions and revealing that homeless families’ prior addresses are more highly concentrated than the poverty distribution in both cities. The rate of shelter admission is strongly and positively related to the concentration of poor, African‐American, and female‐headed households with young children in a neighborhood. It is also correlated with fewer youth, elderly, and immigrants. Such areas have higher rates of unemployment and labor force nonpartici‐pation, more housing crowding, more abandonment, higher rates of vacancy, and higher rent‐to‐income ratios than other areas.     

Comment on Carl Abbott's “The Portland region: Where city and suburbs talk to each other—and often agree”

Abstract

The Portland, OR, area's urban growth boundary is an idea whose benefits to the region may depend on a willingness to expand the boundary occasionally. The parable contained in this comment suggests that the declared unwillingness to expand the urban growth boundary could have contributed to Portland's recent sudden increase in housing prices. It further suggests that an inflexible attitude toward the boundary could cause long‐run losses in employment in the Portland region, with few if any offsetting environmental benefits. Other regions should be aware of the potential drawbacks of installing such a boundary.     

Moving up versus moving out: Neighborhood effects in housing mobility programs

Abstract

This article suggests ways to better design, conduct, and interpret evaluations of the effects of housing mobility programs on participants, with emphasis on how to isolate neighborhood effects. It reviews earlier critiques of neighborhood effects research and discusses the key assumptions of housing mobility programs—about the benefits of affluent neighbors, the spatial organization of opportunity for the urban poor, and the meanings of “neighborhood” to residents, researchers, and policy makers.

Studying mobility contexts, especially in suburban areas, offers special challenges to researchers. More research is needed that looks at residents’ social ties and uses mixed‐methods approaches. Ethnographic data, in particular, would enhance the validity of the quantitative data that now dominate studies of neighborhood effects. Adding substantially to what we know about the processes or mechanisms—the “how” of neighborhood effects—mixed‐methods approaches would also make research much more useful to policy makers and program managers.