ARINDAM DAS-GUPTA, Independent

This is the draft of a chapter prepared for a forthcoming volume in memory of the late Amaresh Bagchi. The chapter focuses on important gaps in the coverage of typical undergraduate public economics courses if they are to remain relevant given the rapidly changing scope of the public sector the past 50 years. The chapter takes as its starting point topics not covered or inadequately covered in leading undergraduate public finance and public economics textbooks. Of the various topics identified, three topics are discussed in detail are economic principles of the government budget, non-tax revenues and the global fiscal commons. The discussion in each case focuses on definitions and principles - both theoretical and applied - rather than real world examples. Other topics identified but not discussed in detail include the choice between modes of intervention for public service delivery, the role of government in the information sector, and public financial management and administration.

GORDON HULL, University of North Carolina at Charlotte - Dept. of Philosophy
Email: ghull@uncc.edu

In U.S. v. American Library Association (2003), the Supreme Court upheld the Child Internet Protection Act (CIPA), which mandated that libraries receiving federal funding for public Internet access install content filtering programs on computers which provide that access. Since almost all public libraries receive such funding, and since they generally require the money to remain in operation, the statute creates a de facto requirement that public libraries install Internet filtering programs. These programs analyze incoming content, and block the receipt of objectionable material, in particular pornography. Thus, patrons at public libraries are protected from unintentionally (or intentionally) accessing objectionable material, and, in the case of minors, from accessing potentially damaging material.

At least, that is the official story. In this paper, I develop three points. (1) I argue that CIPA and ALA are better read as examples of the enforcement of a regime of normative sexuality. The question of minors accessing pornography is only relevant to the official story insofar as it provides a rhetorically persuasive example of deviance from that normative regime. There are less intrusive means to stop kids from getting pornography at the library. Analysis of the legislative history of CIPA, and of the Supreme Court's language in upholding it, suggest its breadth and the extent to which exclusive attention to the regulation of pornography functions as a legitimatory red herring. CIPA's full target includes information about topics such as homosexuality and contraception. (2) Rather than (or in addition to) punishing deviances directly, CIPA attempts to constitute a "public" in which such deviancy can never occur in the first place. Because its appearance is blocked, in the world of CIPA and from the point of view of those who rely on the "public" space of the Internet at the library in the formation of their subjectivities, deviance does not exist. Hence, the designation of a "public" space serves to domesticate alternative sexualities and to sanitize that space of sexual difference. (3) This interaction at the border of the public and private spheres in turn offers an opportunity to reflect on and underscore the ways that subject formation and subjectivity are mediated through technological artifacts like the Internet.

KHALID SAEED, Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI)
Email: saeed@wpi.edu
OLEG V. PAVLOV, Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) - Department of Social Science & Policy Studies
Email: opavlov@wpi.edu

A generic system embodies basic principles and insights that are common to a set of diverse cases and situations. For example, a generic system called "limits to growth" captures the constraints experienced by an organization due to the scarcity of an important resource. Its manifestations range from the tragedy of Easter Island to the spotty performance of early peer-to-peer music networks. This paper presents a new generic system that we name the dynastic cycle structure. It is based on a stylized model of events from the Chinese history. It describes resource allocation between social, asocial and control uses in a variety of institutions, including political economies, markets and firms that experience cyclical behavior and homeostasis symbolizing low levels of performance. Numerical simulations with the model are used to test several policy scenarios.

RUSSELL S. SOBEL, West Virginia University
Email: RSOBEL2@WVU.EDU
CHRISTOPHER J. COYNE, West Virginia University - College of Business & Economics
Email: chris.coyne@mail.wvu.edu
PETER T. LEESON, George Mason University - Department of Economics
Email: pleeson@gmu.edu

This paper investigates the political economy of FEMA after its post-9/11 merger with the Department of Homeland Security. Using panel data for the post-DHS merger but pre-Katrina period, we examine how FEMA's much-debated reorganization has impacted the strong political influences on disaster declaration and relief spending that existed before FEMA's reorganization. We find that although politically-important states for the president continue to have a higher rate of disaster declaration, disaster expenditures are no longer higher in states with congressional representation on FEMA oversight committees. These results suggest reorganization has reduced some of the political pressures within FEMA.

TAKESHI JINGU, Nomura Institute - Capital Markets Research
Email: jingu.takeshi@cn.nomura.com
TETSUYA KAMIYAMA, Nomura Institute
Email: t-kamiyama@nicmr.com

China's private equity market has been growing mainly as a result of recent reforms, with investments totaling US$14.46 billion in 2006. Institutional investors from around the globe have responded by increasing their investments in Chinese private equity. These investments are vulnerable to actions taken by the government, however, and regulatory trends bear close watching.

PIETER A. GAUTIER, Free University of Amsterdam, Tinbergen Institute Amsterdam (TIA), Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
Email: pgautier@feweb.vu.nl
YVES ZENOU, Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IUI), Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)
Email: yvesz@iui.se

We show how small initial wealth differences between low skilled black and white workers can generate large differences in their labor-market outcomes. This even occurs in the absence of a taste for discrimination against blacks or exogenous differences in the distance to jobs. Because of the initial wealth difference, blacks cannot afford cars while whites can. Car ownership allows whites to reach more jobs per unit of time and this gives them a better bargaining position. As a result, in equilibrium, blacks end up with both higher unemployment rates and lower wages than whites. Furthermore, it takes more time for blacks to reach their jobs even though they travel less miles. Those predictions are consistent with the data. Better access to capital markets or better public transportation will reduce the differences in labor market outcomes.

PHILIP D. MURPHY, University of Wales, Swansea - School of Business and Economics
Email: p.d.murphy@swan.ac.uk
PAUL L. LATREILLE, University of Wales, Swansea
Email: p.l.latreille@swan.ac.uk
MELANIE K. JONES, University of Wales Swansea
Email: M.K.Jones@swan.ac.uk
DAVID BLACKABY, University of Wales, Swansea
Email: d.h.blackaby@swansea.ac.uk

Using matched employeremployee data from the Workplace Employment Relations Survey (2004), we find a significant training advantage exists for public sector workers over private sector workers even after accounting for differences in the composition of the two workforces. This finding is robust to all but one change in specification, designed to account for worker sorting effects which can lead to unobserved workplace-based effects being correlated with individual worker characteristics. Using the average characteristics of workers within an establishment as a control for these sorting effects all but eliminates the estimated public sector training advantage, which has otherwise been an empirical regularity of many individual-based training models.

KRISTOF DE WITTE, Catholic University of Leuven (KUL) - Faculty of Business and Economics (FBE)
Email: kristof.dewitte@econ.kuleuven.be
RUI C. MARQUES, Centre of Urban and Regional Systems
Email: rcmar@civil.ist.utl.pt

Knowledge on the scale economies drives the incentives of regulators, governments and individual utilities to scale-up or scale-down the scale of operations. This paper considers the returns to scale (RTS) in non-convex frontier models. In particular, we evaluate RTS assumptions in a Free Disposal Hull model, which accounts for uncertainty and heterogeneity in the sample. Additionally, we provide a three-step framework to empirically analyze the existence and extent of RTS in real world applications. In a first step, the presence of scale (and scope) economies is verified. Secondly, RTS for individual observations are examined while in a third step we derive the optimal scale for a sector as a whole. The framework is applied to the Portuguese drinking water sector where we find the optimal scale to be situated around 7 to 10 million m3.

JANE GIBBON, affiliation not provided to SSRN
JOHN FENWICK, University of Northumbria at Newcastle - School of Arts & Social Sciences
JANICE MCMILLAN, affiliation not provided to SSRN

Alongside formal systems of governance in secondary education there are important informal relationships of accountability among key stakeholders, organized around voluntary obligation in the public interest. Developing these accountabilities enhances sustainability. This article argues that social accounting, when firmly rooted in the values of the school community, can be a valuable tool in developing accountability and a practical means of enhancing sustainability.

JAMES GUTHRIE, University of Sydney
Email: j.guthrie@econ.usyd.edu.au
FEDERICA FARNETI, University of Bologna - Faculty of Economics
Email: federica.farneti@unibo.it

This article analyses voluntary sustainability reporting practices in seven Australian public sector organizations which use the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines. Reporting practices are diverse and the use of the GRI public agency supplement fragmented, with the annual report being only one of several media used by organizations for sustainability disclosures.

SHONA L. RUSSELL, affiliation not provided to SSRN
IAN THOMPSON, affiliation not provided to SSRN

Sustainable development indicators (SDI) can define priorities, determine sustainable actions, evaluate policy options and legitimate government interventions. Sustainable development strategies and indicators used in Scotland, however, show a lack of consistency with a potential for distortion of performance. The attributes of a sustainable Scotland are used to construct a model to develop strategies and indicator sets for sustainable development.

URI SIMONSOHN, University of California, San Diego
Email: usimonsohn@ucsd.edu

Can people voluntarily ignore information they possess? A vast experimental literature suggests not. Here this question is studied with marketplace behavior, exploiting a natural experiment involuntarily performed by Consumer Reports, who retracted a carseat safety evaluation two weeks after its release. Analyzing data from 2,016 auctions for carseats I find that the market responded virtually immediately to the new information. More importantly, in contrast to the experimental evidence, prices returned to baseline levels shortly after the retraction. Additional analyses suggests this was not caused by the actions of sellers (rather than buyers), by the slow depreciation of information over time, nor by post-retraction buyers having been unaware of the retracted information.