why voluntary export restraints are voluntary the paper presents an analysis of the effect upon an oligopolistic equilibrium of introducing a voluntary export restraint ver upon an importing firm a ver set at the free trade level of imports is shown to raise the profits of all firms within the industry the result follows as the imposition of a ver upon a free trade nash price competition forces the domestic firm to become an industry price leader the ver raises industry prices by facilitating collusion and lowers consumer welfare pourquoi les restrictions volontaires d 1 exportation sont volontaires ce memoire presente une analyse des effets de l introduction de restrictions volontaires a l exportation rve sur une entreprise qui importe dans un monde en equilibre oligopolistique on montre que l introduction de rve approximant le niveau des importations en regime de libre echange devrait augmenter les profits de toutes les entreprises dans l industrie cela decoule du fait que l imposition de rve sur un univers de concurrence par les prix a la nash en regime de libre echange force l entreprise domestique a devenir le leader en prix l introduction de rve augmente le niveau des prix de l industrie en facilitant la collusion et de ce fait reduit le niveau de bien etre des consomrnateurs

what happened to fortress europe external trade policy liberalization in the european union in an era when many fear the breakdown of the global trading order through the emergence of relatively closed regional trading blocs assessing the effects of european integration on external european union trade is particularly important surprisingly despite a severe recession accompanied by record levels of unemployment a history of increasing protection under similar economic circumstances and alarming predictions about fortress europe external trade policy in the region has liberalized in recent years prominent trade policy explanations emphasizing changing interest group demands or changing ideas of policymakers are inadequate to account for this significant change in trade policy instead much of this liberalization can be best understood as an unforeseen consequence of the single european act completing the single market undermined the effectiveness of national trade measures and made it difficult to enact new trade barriers thus producing a liberal bias in european policy

optimal trade policy under oligopoly a calibrated model of the europe japan rivalry in the eec car market this paper was originally presented at the cefi conference on imperfect competition and international trade aix en provence france june 18 19 1987 we wish to thank avinash dixit who gave the initial impetus to this research we are also grateful to alexis jacquemin and paul krugman for valuable discussion and comments we thank also the french commissariat au plan for financial support and the chambre syndicale des constructeurs automobiles csca for gracious assistance

heterogeneous vertical tax externalities and macroeconomic effects of federal tax changes the role of fiscal advantage abstract how do state tax rates respond to federal tax shocks this paper presents a novel mechanism of heterogeneous vertical tax externalities across state levels of fiscal advantage showing that tax increases can be expansionary even without their reinvestment states rich in natural resources have a fiscal advantage in the inter state competition over production factors which allows them to respond better to increases in federal taxes and consequently attract capital from other parts of the nation we add heterogeneity in fiscal advantage levels to an otherwise standard model of vertical tax externalities and horizontal tax competition the model shows that irrespective of federal redistribution the contractionary effect of a federal tax increase can be overturned in fiscally advantaged states through an increase in their tax base using the case of the u s and narrative based measures of federal tax shocks a la romer and romer 2010 we provide empirical evidence for the various aspects of this mechanism specifically our baseline estimates indicate that controlling for federal transfers a 1 increase in the gdp share of capital related federal taxes at the beginning of a year increases the growth rate of the per capita tax base by approximately 0 7 in high fiscal advantage states at the end of it

state responses to fiscal crises the effects of budgetary institutions and politics this paper explores the dynamics of state taxes and spending during the late 1980s when regional economic downturns and increased expenditure demands led to substantial state budget deficits more restrictive state fiscal institutions such as no deficit carryover rules and tax and expenditure limitations are correlated with more rapid fiscal adjustment to unexpected deficits political factors are also important when a single party controls the state house and the governorship deficit adjustment is much faster than when party control is divided in gubernatorial election years tax increases and spending cuts are both significantly smaller than at other times

cops and crime abstract the violent crime control and law enforcement act of 1994 established the community oriented policing services cops program that provided grants to states and localities to pay up to 75 of the cost for new police hires for 3 years to date the cops program has awarded almost 5 billion in hiring grants paying for 64 000 new police officers we use annual data from 1990 through 2001 from 2074 cities with populations in excess of 10 000 to show that for each officer paid for by grant funds the size of the force expands by 0 70 officers the size of cops grants are correlated with population and crime rates but not the pre cops time trends in crime rates or the size of the police force this allows us to use the size of cops grants as an instrument for the size of the police force in regressions where crime is the outcome of interest these models indicate that police added to the force by cops generated statistically significant reductions in auto thefts burglaries robberies and aggravated assaults

unsticking the flypaper effect in an uncertain world abstract we provide a novel explanation for the flypaper effect based on insurance arguments in our model the flypaper effect arises due to the differential response of precautionary savings to private income or fiscal transfers shocks in an uncertain world with incomplete markets the model generates two testable implications i the flypaper effect is a decreasing function of the correlation between fiscal transfers and private income and ii such relationship is stronger the higher is the volatility of fiscal transfers and or private income an empirical analysis of argentinean provinces for the period 1963 2006 finds strong support for the model s implications

the flypaper effect what happens to a state s spending when it receives an unconditional grant from the federal government the standard theoretical analysis predicts that the increase in spending will be the same as that generated by an equivalent increase in local incomes or roughly 5 10 percent for most states in contrast numerous empirical analyses have found that spending increases by much more with some estimates near 100 percent this result is known as the flypaper effect since the money appears to stick where it hits the authors review this evidence as well as other studies that find similar behavior in firms

microenterprise growth and the flypaper effect evidence from a randomized experiment in ghana standard models of investment predict that credit constrained firms should grow rapidly when given additional capital and that how this capital is provided should not affect decisions to invest in the business or consume the capital we randomly gave cash and in kind grants to male and female owned microenterprises in urban ghana for women running subsistence enterprises we find no gain in profits from either treatment for women with larger businesses we strongly reject equality of the cash and in kind grants only in kind grants cause growth in profits suggesting a flypaper effect whereby capital coming directly into the business sticks there but cash does not the results for men also suggest a lower impact of cash but differences between cash and in kind grants are less robust there is suggestive evidence that the difference in the effects of cash and in kind grants is associated more with lack of self control than with external pressure

a predictive index for the flypaper effect abstract it is well established that lump sum public grants boost local government spending more than an equivalent increase in private income the flypaper effect one shortcoming of the related literature is that it presumes all communities have an identical propensity to consume from an intergovernmental grant this paper is one attempt to allow for a heterogeneous response the working conjecture is that government expenditure on administrative overhead is a gauge of voter control over fiscal decisions high overhead spending implies a lower provision of public services and a stronger role for revenue maximizing forces in the budget setting process as such the flypaper effect should be more marked in high overhead communities an overhead index is applied to a sample of pennsylvania communities in the philadelphia metropolitan area it is difficult to understand these governments spending propensities from various windfall revenues without the help of the overhead index supportive evidence for this approach because overhead data is widely available the technique here can be used to address important policy questions such as predicting variations in state government responses to the recently created lump sum welfare grants

who pays for public employee health costs abstract we analyze the incidence of public employee health benefits because these benefits are negotiated through the political process relevant labor market institutions deviate significantly from the competitive private sector benchmark empirically we find that roughly 15 percent of the cost of recent benefit growth was passed onto school district employees through reductions in wages and salaries strong teachers unions were associated with relatively strong linkages between benefit growth and growth in total compensation our analysis is consistent with the view that the costs of public workers benefits are difficult to monitor contributing to benefit oriented and often under funded compensation schemes

divided government fiscal institutions and budget deficits evidence from the states does partisan control of american state government have systematic effects on state spending and taxing levels does divided control affect the government s ability to make hard decisions do institutional rules like legal deficit carryover restrictions matter using a formal model of fiscal policy to guide empirical analysis of data covering the american states from 1968 to 1987 we conclude that 1 aggregate state budget totals are driven by different factors under democrats and republicans the net result being that democrats target spending and taxes to higher shares of state level personal income 2 divided government is less able to react to revenue shocks that lead to budget deficits particularly where different parties control each chamber of the legislature and 3 unified party governments with restricted ability to carry deficits into the next fiscal year outside the south have sharper reactions to negative revenue shocks than those without restrictions

fiscal news state budget rules and tax exempt bond yields abstract this paper investigates how state fiscal institutions such as balanced budget rules and restrictions on state debt issuance mediate the bond market reaction to state fiscal news we analyze data on the yields of bonds issued by different states as reported in the chubb relative value survey along with data on state budget forecasts for the period 1988 1998 we find that unexpected deficits are correlated with higher state bond yields this effect is smaller for states with tight antideficit rules than for states without these fiscal rules unexpected deficits have a particularly large effect in raising bond yields of states with tax limits these results suggest that bond market participants view fiscal institutions as relevant in assessing the risk characteristics of tax exempt bonds and that the economic significance of these institutions depends on the state s economic and fiscal circumstances

choice simplification a theory of mental budgeting and naive diversification we develop a theory of how an agent makes basic multiproduct consumption decisions in the presence of taste consumption opportunity and price shocks that are costly to attend to we establish that the agent often simplifies her choices by restricting attention to a few important considerations which depend on the decision at hand and affect her consumption patterns in specific ways if the agent s problem is to choose the consumption levels of many goods with different degrees of substitutability then she may create mental budgets for more substitutable products e g entertainment in some situations it is optimal to specify budgets in terms of consumption quantities but when most products have an abundance of substitutes specifying budgets in terms of nominal spending tends to be optimal if the goods are complements in contrast then the agent may consistent with naive diversification choose a fixed unconsidered mix of products and if the agent s problem is to choose one of multiple products to fulfill a given consumption need e g for gasoline or a bed then it is often optimal for her to allocate a fixed sum for the need

state budget deficit dynamics and the california debacle this paper analyzes the recent experience with state budget deficits in the united states with an in depth analysis of the california experience compared to prior recessions states were slower to make adjustments in taxes and spending this time the paper explores a variety of reasons for this difference including changes in the legal political and institutional environments the unusual increase in capital gains revenue during the boom preceding the recession and the inherent difficulties in forecasting revenues particularly those derived from capital income as the case study from california illustrates states made long term commitments from temporary revenue sources and were required to make budgetary decisions in the face of very incomplete information about current and projected tax receipts

budget spillovers and fiscal policy interdependence evidence from the states abstract this paper formalizes and tests the notion that states expenditures depend on the spending of similarly situated states we find that even after allowing for fixed state effects year effects and common random shocks among neighbors a state government s level of per capita expenditure is positively and significantly affected by the expenditure levels of its neighbors ceteris paribus a one dollar increase in a state s neighbors expenditures increases its own expenditure by over 70 cents

does foreign aid promote the expansion of government building on the literature on public finance i seek to advance our understanding of variations in government size by exploring the impact of official development assistance on fiscal policy i hypothesize that foreign aid operates in accordance with the flypaper effect systematically generating incentives and opportunities for the expansion of government spending results from a time series cross sectional regression analysis of growth in government spending over the 1970 99 time period are consistent with the hypothesis for middle and lower income nations aid represents an important determinant of government expansion looking at the tax and revenue side of the equation however reveals a more perverse pattern of response aid promotes not only increased spending but also reduced revenue generation the results have important implications from both a theoretical and policy perspective inter alia they point to the potentially self defeating nature of efforts to promote market oriented programs of state retrenchment via development assistance as well as to the importance of incorporating international transfers into future research on government spending

special interest groups and the allocation of public funds i propose a fully rational model of government contracting that explains differences in local government spending from grants and other income in this model violations of fungibility arise from dynamic interactions between politicians and interest groups with the ability to raise funds for the local government the predictions of the model are tested by exploiting unique features of windfalls received by states under a settlement with the tobacco industry although windfalls are legally unrestricted the median state increased spending on tobacco control programs from zero to 2 30 per capita upon receipt of funds the marginal propensity to spend on such programs is 0 20 from settlement revenue and zero from overall income states which were not involved in the settlement lawsuits spend less these results cannot be explained by existing models in the literature

government decision making and the incidence of federal mandates abstract this paper analyzes the effects of federally mandated program changes on state spending and revenues incorporating and evaluating the predictive value of several common theories of the state decision making process using several sources of exogenous increases in public medical spending i estimate that the entire state portion of the burden of mandated spending is borne by decreases in other public welfare spending while federal mandates may influence the composition of benefits at the state level it is much more difficult for them to change the total level of state transfers comparison of state reactions to different shocks suggests that these reductions are due in part to the substitutability of programs in the voter utility function but also in part to the stickiness of spending within budget categories states with greater racial differences between recipients and voters and states with less generous neighbors reduce other public welfare spending by even more alleviating the burden the medical expansions imposed on their taxpayers mandates may thus serve only to increase inequality across states

trade restrictions as facilitating practices abstract the effect of quantitative restrictions in oligopolistic markets is shown to depend on whether imports are substitutes or complements for domestic products in the former case they have profound effects even when set at free trade levels because they impede the ability of the foreign firm to compete in the domestic market thereby acting to facilitate collusion and raise prices and profits for this reason tariffs and quotas are fundamentally non equivalent with substitute goods when goods are complements a voluntary export restriction ver at the free trade level has no effect and tariffs and quotas are equivalent

fiscal decentralization in rentier regions evidence from russia summary the paper argues that governments in regions that rely heavily on intergovernmental transfers and natural resource rents face serious distortions in their incentive structure as a result such regions tend to have more fiscally centralized governments than the regional characteristics would suggest data on russian regions in the late 1990s early 2000s support this hypothesis advancing intraregional fiscal decentralization in rentier regions could reduce policy distortions and make the subnational environment more supportive of economic development

total factor productivity vs realism revisited the case of the south korean steel industry this paper presents key features of the development of the south korean steel industry through the critical examination of an article by truett and truett despite their claim to exhibit realism by use of a translog cost function their methodology has strong affinities with the methods of measuring total factor productivity growth which have long been known as invalid but continue to be applied not least to the experience of east asian countries it will be argued that the theoretical and empirical flaws involved with these methods invalidate their results and corresponding policy implications above all by showing that the assumptions for their calculation do not hold in terms of the economic conditions of the industry the paper points to a different understanding of realism than that conceived by and for their study copyright 2005 oxford university press

general revenue sharing and public sector unions abstract in this paper i find that in the context of a large intergovernmental general revenue sharing program implemented from 1972 to 1986 cities increased expenditures one for one with federal grants which is suggestive of a large flypaper effect furthermore i find that cities in states with pro union collective bargaining laws spent more than half of the transfers on increased wages while cities in states without such laws spent a greater fraction on increased government services these latter findings suggest that public sector unions play an important role in determining the usage and impact of intergovernmental grants

fiscal and spending behavior of local governments identification of price effects when prices are not observed this paper analyzes local public fiscal andspending behavior in a setting where localgovernments represented by the dominantparty or coalition are treated as utilitymaximizing agents the econometricanalysis which is based on a modifiedversion of eles recognizes total spendingas well as total income as endogenousvariables identification of the priceeffects is achieved by utilizing data onenvironmental cost factors and localtastes the performance of the estimatedmodel is investigated by testing itsability to make out of sample predictionsof local government behavior

costs of taxation and the size of government existing theory on the form of government suggests that a parliamentary system promotes a larger size of government than does a presidential system this paper extends the existing theory by allowing for distortionary taxation a main result is that if taxation is sufficiently distortionary the parliamentary system may promote a smaller size of government than the presidential system the proposed mechanism appears consistent with several empirical patterns in the data that cannot be explained by other theories

the own wage elasticity of labor demand a meta regression analysis firms labor demand responses to wage changes are of key interest in empirical research and policy analysis however despite extensive research estimates of labor demand elasticities remain subject to considerable heterogeneity in this paper we conduct a comprehensive meta regression analysis to re assess the empirical literature on labor demand elasticities building on 942 elasticity estimates from 105 different studies we identify sources of variation in the absolute value of this elasticity heterogeneity due to the theoretical and empirical specification of the labor demand model different datasets used or sectors and countries considered explains more than 80 of the variation in the estimates we further find substantial evidence for the presence of publication selection bias as estimates of the own wage elasticity of labor demand are upwardly inflated

on the estimation of factor substitution in the translog model the conventional approach to computation of the allen partial elasticities of substitution aes in the framewo rk of the translog production function requires to estimate a set of multivariate input demand functions this paper proposes an alternati ve way to compute the aess requiring only to estimate elasticities v ia a truncated single cost share equation value added separability and pairwise factor substitutabilities have both been validated under the nonlinear restriction the achievements of the alternative appro ach are by and large consistent with those of the conventional approa ch and with those in some of the existing studies copyright 1987 by mit press

multi tier targeting of social assistance the role of intergovernmental transfers albania provides a small amount of social assistance to nearly 20 percent of its population through a system that allows some community discretion in determining distribution this study investigates how well this social assistance program is targeted to the poor relative to other safety net programs in low income countries social assistance in albania is fairly well targeted nevertheless the system is hampered by the absence of a clear objective criterion to determine the size of the grants from the central government to communes as well as limited information that could be used to implement this criterion substantial gains in targeting could be achieved if the central government better allocated transfers to local governments even holding local targeting at base levels

asymmetric information and agenda control the bases of monopoly power in public spending abstract a pervasive empirical finding widely known as the flypaper effect is that lump sum intergovernmental grants generate considerably greater public spending by the recipient jurisdiction than would be predicted by equivalent shifts in personal income in that jurisdiction moreover such observations are inconsistent with standard median voter models of the political process we posit a model in which it is in the interest of suppliers of a collectively provided good not to generate full information to voters about outside aid the empirical results are consistent with flypaper and suggest that voters are very poorly informed about outside grants

measuring productivity growth under factor non substitution an application to us steam electric power generation utilities a theoretical framework is developed for decomposing partial factor productivity and measuring technical inefficiency when the underlying technology is characterized by factor non substitution with farrell s 1957 radial index of technical inefficiency being inappropriate in this case russell non radial indices are adapted to measure technical inefficiency in a leontief type model a system of factor demand equations with a regime specific technical inefficiency term is proposed and estimated allowing for dependence across inputs using a copula approach then the paper presents a complete decomposition of partial factor productivity changes using a dataset of us steam power electric generation utilities

a nonhomothetic generalized leontief cost function based on pooled data factor demand studies of komiya ozaki lau and tamura based upon detailed cross section data on individual production units have found that the nonhomothetic factor limitational nht fl demand system a nonhomothetic version of the leontief fixed coefficient model well explains the data these results however have mostly been ignored in the current literature on flexible functional forms and in fact none of the well known nonhomothetic flexible cost function forms includes the nht fl model i introduce a new nonhomothetic form of the generalized leontief gl cost function which includes the nht fl model as a special case empirical application to a pooled data set of the japanese iron steel industry indicates that his form is superior to the translog diewert wales gl and berndt khaled gl forms copyright 1990 by mit press

the flypaper effect and other anomalies abstract i develop a model in which income both in its own right and as a proxy for other socioeconomic characteristics is an input in the production function for local public services the most obvious example is education though there are other applications as well the comparative statics results from this model yield the following results 1 the observed flypaper effect the tendency for local government to spend a higher fraction of unrestricted grants than income of residents may be due at least in part to the fact that own income but not grants is a substitute for purchased inputs in the technology hence the propensity to spend on purchased inputs out of own income is lower than out of grants 2 the income elasticity of demand for public sector output may be higher than the observed income elasticity of demand for purchased inputs 3 equalization of educational opportunity via wealth neutrality as suggested by feldstein requires major changes in education finance once we recognice the distinction between purchased inputs and output

reviving leviathan fiscal federalism and the growth of government this article revisits the influential leviathan hypothesis which pos its that tax competition limits the growth of government spending in decentralized countries i use panel data to examine the effect of fiscal decentralization over time within countries attempting to distinguish between decentralization that is funded by intergovernmental transfers and local taxation first i explore the logic whereby decentralization should restrict government spending if state and local governments have wide ranging authority to set the tax base and rate especially on mobile assets in countries where this is most clearly the case decentralization is associated with smaller government second consistent with theoretical arguments drawn from wel fare economics and positive political economy i show that governments grow faster as they fund a greater portion of public expenditures through intergovernmental transfers

evaluating the efficiency and equity of federal fiscal equalization abstract theoretically federal transfers that make household location decisions efficient should ignore local cost differences subsidize positive externalities and offset differences in federal tax payments and local taxes levied on non residents but not local tax revenues from residents transfers that redistribute resources equitably across regions will likely target areas with individuals of low earnings potential or low real incomes applying these criteria empirically canadian equalization policy appears neither efficient nor equitable but exacerbates pre existing inefficiencies and underfunds minorities locational inefficiencies cost canada 0 41 of income annually and cause over funded provinces to have populations of 30 beyond their efficient long run levels

vertical mergers and market foreclosure ythe model in this paper illustrates three effects of vertical mergers when both stages are oligopolistic and vertically integrated and unintegrated producers coexist first the merging firm increases its final good output second the resulting backward shift in the residual demand curve facing unintegrated final good producers ylowers their demand for the intermediate good third the merged firm withdraws from the intermediate good market the increased concentration pushes the intermediate good price upward which effect dominates depends on market structure under some conditions a vertical merger causes the price of the final good to increase

is there an intrahousehold flypaper effect evidence from a school feeding programme are public transfers targeted toward children neutralised by the household as the theory of altruism implies or is there an intrahousehold flypaper effect whereby such transfers stick to the child this paper studies the impact of a school feeding programme on child caloric intake in the philippines using a quasi experimental methodology the empirical results confirm an intrahousehold flypaper effect indeed they indicate virtually no intrahousehold reallocation of calories in response to the feeding programme in poorer households however children s gains from the programme appear to be taxed more heavily

do federal grants boost school spending evidence from title i abstract one of the federal government s main elementary and secondary education programs is title i which allocates money for compensatory education to school districts based on child poverty i use sharp changes in per pupil grant amounts surrounding the release of decennial census data to identify effects of title i on state and local education revenue and how much the program ultimately increases spending by recipient school districts i find that state and local revenue efforts initially are unaffected by title i changes but that local governments substantially and significantly crowd out changes in title i within in a 3 year period

an economic theory of vertical restraints vertical restraints imposed by manufacturers on the prices locations and sales of retail firms represent a puzzling departure from the simple price mediated exchange of conventional markets in this article we analyze the theoretical basis for these restraints in a setting where retailers inform consumers and are imperfectly competitive and where a manufacturer has some monopoly power we identify three potential externalities affecting retailers decisions these externalities lead to the failure of simple uniform price contracts to coordinate the incentives of retailers with the objective of maximizing combined manufacturer and retailer profits we identify the packages of vertical restraints that are minimally sufficient under various conditions to neutralize the externalities and to achieve the joint profit maximum

bohn s test of fiscal sustainability of the american state governments the dramatic fall in state revenues during the great recession and the resultant large budget deficits accentuated concerns about state fiscal sustainability i employ a model based approach proposed by bohn 1998 to test for sustainability in this approach a positive and significant reaction of the ratio of primary surplus ratio s to lagged debt constitutes a sufficient condition for sustainability based on a panel of 48 contiguous states 1961 2008 and several model specifications i find robust evidence in favor of sustainability further analysis suggests that the adjustment of the components of s to debt is asymmetric with the revenue side bearing a heavier burden than the spending side the response of s is also found to be asymmetric with respect to the level of debt finally the magnitude of the response is larger in states with a higher degree of fiscal stringency in general and own revenue and no deficit carryover provisions in particular

the effects of grants in aid on state and local expenditures abstract this paper develops econometric methods to estimate the effect of the piecewise linear budget constraints created by grant formulas in which the subsidy rate is not constant over expenditures e g closed end grants the methods are applied to the afdc program the results show that because of the kinked nature of the grant formula 1 the present federal formula actually increases cross state inequality in afdc benefits 2 several subsidy rates in the formula actually reduce benefits and 3 the so called flypaper effect disappears

price quality and welfare effects of european vers on japanese autos abstract this paper examines the impact of the vers negotiated by the u k france and germany with japanese car makers market share analysis shows that the vers did not arrest the declines in apparent consumption by local producers further analysis from a sample of japanese and other cars sold on the french and german markets indicates quality upgrading between 1981 and 1983 the data also suggest that the ver was strictly binding in france starting around 1984 but not in germany until 1985 the end of the sample period finally the paper shows that the french german and japanese car producers supplied an increasingly similar product mix on the french market throughout the sample period 1979 1985 but the italian producers shifted towards a lower fiscal horsepower mix

the elusive flypaper effect abstract the flypaper effect is the common empirical result that lump sum intergovernmental grants stimulate more local government spending than increases in private income which are theoretically equivalent in this paper four of the best known explanations of the flypaper effect are tested using data from michigan school districts none of these explanations are confirmed by the data the cause of the flypaper effect is likely to be much more deeply rooted in the nature of local decision making than is currently recognized

the response of small and medium size business customers to time of use tou electricity rates in israel this paper reports on the methodology data and results of the israeli time of use tou electricity pricing experiment in the industrial commercial sector we concentrate on the estimation of the demand functions for electricity under tou and the net welfare gains which result from applying tou rates to small and medium size business customers in israel this experiment which was preceded by a 15 month load research study to allow an optimal sample design was concluded in june 1992 the analysis yielded four major conclusions 1 the estimated gains of small and medium size customers in israel from tou rates are sufficient to justify investment in tou metering technology 2 there have been small but noticeable shifts of electricity from the peak to the mid peak if relevant and to the off peak periods during all seasons of the year and particularly during the winter 3 the structure and number of labour shifts during the day and weather are important factors in determining the response of business customers to the tou rates 4 price elasticities vary substantially over the seasons and across sic groups they do not vary with customer size

using market valuation to assess public school spending abstract we examine whether school expenditures are valued by potential residents and whether the current level of public school provision is inefficient by estimating the effect of state education aid on residential property values we find evidence that overall state aid is valued by potential residents and that school districts do not overspend on education however we find that districts may overspend in areas where residents have fewer schooling options but find no difference in efficiency by the degree of district unionization one interpretation of these results is that increased competition may reduce overspending on public schools in some areas

we voted for this abstract this paper examines two institutional factors that influenced school spending in missouri during the 1970s first the retirement of a bond issue is usually accompanied by an increase in the operating tax rate which requires voter approval the retirement of a bond issue does not reduce but apparently obscures the cost of a tax increase in addition a change in assessment practices in 1975 allowed some districts to increase their effective operating rates without voter approval each of these factors led to substantial tax increases in the affected districts