104,804 research outputs found
Exploring sources of local government technical inefficiency: evidence from Flemish municipalities
No full textThe present paper explores sources of technical (in)efficiency of Flemish municipalities in their production of local public goods (in the year 2000). In assessing inefficiency derivation, we focus on socio-economic and political characteristics of the municipalities as potential source. Our main findings indicate that while the socio-economic make-up of the population (i.c. income, income inequality, education and unemployment) appears to bear little relation to local (in)efficiency, the reverse holds for the municipal financial situation (i.c. grants, historical debt and fiscal surplus) as well as population size and density. Also, different types of communities – i.e. agricultural, residential, industrial, touristic or urbanised – are generally found to achieve comparable performance levels in providing ‘core’ public services. While indicative, the limitations of our dataset imply that further work is vital before definitive conclusions (as well as causal inferences) can be made. -- Im vorliegenden Papier untersuchen wir anhand flämischer Gemeindeverwaltungen im Jahr 2002 die Ursachen von technischer Effizienz bzw. Ineffizienz in der Bereitstellung von lokalen öffentlichen Gütern. Als mögliche Quellen von Ineffizienz fokussieren wir in unserer Analyse auf sozioökonomische und politische Charakteristika der jeweiligen Gemeinden. Unsere Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die finanzielle Situation und die Einwohnerzahl und -dichte der Gemeinden (d.h. Subventionen, Altschuldenlasten, Haushaltsüberschüsse etc.) im Zusammenhang mit kommunaler (In)Effizienz stehen, während hingegen die Struktur der Bevölkerung in Hinblick auf sozioökonomische Charakteristika (z.B. Einkommen und deren Verteilung, Bildung und Arbeitslosigkeit) kaum einen Einfluss hat. Ebenso zeigen verschiedene Gemeindetypen (wir unterscheiden hier z.B. nach landwirtschaftlichen Gemeinden, Wohngegenden, Industriegebieten, touristisch erschlossenen und urbanisierten Gemeinden) ein vergleichbares Niveau in der Bereitstellung der wichtigsten öffentlichen Güter. Die Begrenztheit unserer Daten impliziert aber die Notwendigkeit weiterer Analysen bevor eindeutige Kausalitäten und Ergebnisse bestimmt werden können. Die vorliegende Arbeit bietet hierfür ein Beispiel und zeigt, wie eine solche Untersuchung gestaltet werden kann.Technical efficiency,government performance,Socio-economic typology,Flemish municipalities
Flexible quantitative risk assessment for developmental toxicity based on fractional polynomial predictors
No full textRisk assessment for developmental toxicity studies in rodents is faced with the fairly involved data structure of clustered multivariate binary outcomes. While likelihood methods for this setting do not abound, we show that a conditional model, combined with pseudo-likelihood inference and fractional polynomial predictor functions, as proposed by ROYSTON and ALTMAN (1994), are a promising way forward. The methods are illustrated using teratology data collected under the National Toxicology Program
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
No full textThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Evaluating efficient public good provision: Theory and evidence from a generalised conditional efficiency model for public libraries
No full textProvision of most public goods (e.g., health care, libraries, education, police, fire protection, utilities) can be characterised by a two-stage production process. In the first stage, basic inputs (e.g., labour and capital) are used to generate service potential (e.g., opening hours, materials), which is then, in the second stage, transformed into observed outputs (e.g., school outcomes, library circulation, crimes solved). As final outputs are also affected by demand-side factors, conflating both production stages likely leads to biased inferences about public productive (in)efficiency and its determinants. Hence, this paper uses a specially tailored, fully non-parametric efficiency model allowing for both outlying observations and heterogeneity to analyse efficient public good provision in stage one only. We employ a dataset comprising all 290 Flemish public libraries. Our findings suggest that ideological stance of the local government, wealth and density of the local population and source of library funding (i.e., local funding versus intergovernmental transfers) strongly affect library productive efficiency. -- Die Bereitstellung der meisten öffentlichen Güter (zum Beispiel Gesundheitsversorgung, Bibliotheken, Bildung, Polizei, Brandschutz, Stadtwerke) kann durch einen zweistufigen Produktionsprozess charakterisiert werden. In der ersten Stufe werden Produktionsfaktoren (beispielsweise Arbeit und Kapital) zur Erzeugung eines Dienstleistungspotenzials (beispielsweise Öffnungszeiten, Materialien) genutzt. Dieses Potenzial wird dann, in der zweiten Phase, in den beobachtbaren Output transformiert (zum Beispiel in Schulleistungen der Schüler, dem Bücherumlauf einer Bibliothek, aufgedeckte Straftaten). Da das Endergebnis auch von den Faktoren der Nachfrageseite bestimmt ist, führt eine unzureichende Trennung beider Produktionsstufen wahrscheinlich zu verzerrten Rückschlüssen bezüglich der öffentlichen produktiven (In-)Effizienz und ihrer Determinanten. Daher wird in dem Paper ein speziell zugeschnittenes, vollständig nichtparametrisches Effizienz-Modell benutzt. Dieses Modell ermöglicht isoliert für die 1. Produktionsstufe die Analyse der effizienten Bereitstellung öffentlicher Güter in einem Schritt. Dabei benutzen die Autoren einen Datensatz, welcher alle 290 flämischen öffentlichen Bibliotheken enthält. Die Ergebnisse legen nahe, dass die ideologische Einstellung der Gemeindeverwaltungen, Wohlstand und Dichte der ortsansässigen Bevölkerung, sowie die Art der Bibliotheksfinanzierung (zum Beispiel lokale Finanzierung oder überregionale Transfers) stark die produktive Effizienz der Bibliotheken beeinflussen.Public good provision,conditional efficiency,nonparametric estimation,libraries,local govenment
Civic engagement and corruption in 20 European democracies
No full textThis paper analyzes the relation between different forms of civic engagement and corruption. This first of all extends earlier analysis linking generalized trust to corruption by incorporating another element from the social capital complex (namely formal forms of civic engagement). Second, based on the idea that social networks' beneficial or harmful impact may depend on their characteristics, it investigates how the structure of social networks (i.e., inclusive vs. exclusive and isolated vs. connected) matters. Evaluating the engagement - corruption nexus for a cross-section of 20 European democracies in 2002/2003, we confirm that social networks are linked to corruption even when controlling for the effect of generalized trust, and that their relation to corruption is typespecific. These findings survive under various model specifications and robustness checks. --Corruption,civil society,networks,voluntary associations,European social survey
How to make head or tail of bridging and bonding? Adressing the methodological ambiguity
No full textA distinction has recently been proposed between bridging (or encompassing) and bonding (or inward-looking) social networks. However, existing theoretical contributions remain vague as to the fundamental meaning of both concepts. As a consequence, two distinct interpretations have evolved alongside each other. In the present paper, we employ data on voluntary association membership in Flanders to empirically illustrate that both approaches can lead to substantially different outcomes and therefore appear to tap into different dimensions of bridging versus bonding. These findings underline the problematic nature of the current conceptual ambiguity. We conclude that should the bridging-bonding distinction add meaningfully to our understanding of the external effects of social networks, it is essential to resolve the conceptual and methodological imprecision. -- In jüngster Zeit wurde eine Unterscheidung zwischen brückenschlagenden (übergreifenden) und bindenden (nach innen gerichteten) sozialen Netzwerken vorgeschlagen. Die theoretischen Beiträge bleiben dabei aber was die fundamentale Bedeutung beider Konzepte angeht ungenau. So haben sich parallel zwei unterschiedliche Interpretationen entwickelt. Im vorliegenden Artikel zeigen wir empirisch auf der Grundlage von Daten zu freiwilligen Vereinsmitgliedschaften in Flandern, dass beide Ansätze stark differierende Ergebnisse liefern und somit augenscheinlich die Frage „bridging“ versus „bonding“ in verschiedenen Dimensionen betrachten. Diese Ergebnisse unterstreichen die Problematik der aktuellen konzeptionellen Zweideutigkeit der Ansätze. Wir folgern, dass sowohl die konzeptionellen als auch die methodischen Ungenauigkeiten beseitigt werden müssen, wenn die Unterscheidung von ‘bridging‘ und ‘bonding‘ bedeutsamen Einfluss auf das Verständnis von externen Effekten durch soziale Netzwerke nehmen soll.Voluntary associations,bridging and bonding,social networks,membership heterogeneity,social interconnections
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
No full textWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Looking across borders: a test of spatial policy interdependence using local government efficiency ratings
No full textSpatial patterns in (local) government taxation and spending decisions have received a lot of scholarly attention recently. Still, the focus on taxation or expenditure levels in previous studies is incomplete. In fact, (rational) individuals are likely to consider the level of spending on (or taxation for) public goods provision simultaneously with how much public goods they actually receive – thus assessing the ‘price/quantity’ of government policy (in relation to that of neighbouring jurisdictions) rather than concentrating on spending (or taxation) levels alone. Therefore, the present paper argues that incumbents may want their ‘price/quantity’ ratio to be close to that in neighbouring regions. Using Flemish local governments’ efficiency ratings for the year 2000 (which relate tax revenues to the quantity of locally provided public goods), we confirm the existence of such neighbourhood effects in local government policies. -- In jüngster Zeit hat sich die Wissenschaft vermehrt für die räumlichen Muster der lokalen Besteuerung und Ausgabenentscheidungen interessiert. Dabei hat man sich in neueren Studien jedoch hauptsächlich auf die Betrachtung von Besteuerung und Ausgabenhöhe konzentriert. Diese Betrachtungsweise greift zu kurz, denn der (rationale) Bürger betrachtet die Höhe der öffentlichen Ausgaben (oder die Steuern dafür) und vergleicht, wie viel öffentliche Güter er eigentlich dafür bekommt. Er beurteilt also eher das Preis/Mengen-Verhältnis der Lokalpolitik im Vergleich zu den benachbarten Kommunen, als sich allein auf die Höhe der Ausgaben oder der Besteuerung zu konzentrieren. Es lässt sich zeigen, dass Amtsinhaber ein Preis/Mengenverhältnis anstreben, das dem der benachbarten Kommunen ähnlich ist. Die Auswertung von Daten aus dem Jahr 2000, die die Effizienz flämischer Lokalpolitik anhand des Verhältnisses von Steuereinnahmen zu lokal bereitgestellten öffentlichen Gütern bemessen, bestätigt die Existenz solcher Nachbarschaftseffekte in der Kommunalpolitik.Government efficiency,Flemish municipalities,local government,spatial interdependence
Bayesian testing for trend in a power model for clustered binary data
No full textDevelopmental toxicity studies are widely used to investigate the potential risk of environmental hazards. In dose-response experiments, subjects are randomly allocated to groups receiving various dose levels. Tests for trend are then often applied to assess possible dose effects. Recent techniques for risk assessment in this area are based on fitting dose-response models. The complexity of such studies implies a number of non-trivial challenges for model development and the construction of dose-related trend tests, including the hierarchical structure of the data, litter effects inducing extra variation, the functional form of the dose-response curve, the adverse event at dam or at fetus level, the inference paradigm, etc. The purpose of this paper is to propose a Bayesian trend test based on a non-linear power model for the dose effect and using an appropriate model for clustered binary data. Our work is motivated by the analysis of developmental toxicity studies, in which the offspring of exposed and control rodents are examined for defects. Simulations show the performance of the method over a number of samples generated under typical experimental conditions. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.status: Publishe
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
No full textWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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