IDENTIFYING THE PUBLIC VALUE IN EXTENSION PROGRAMS

Government budget crises have compelled state Extension Services to defend their receipt of state and county funding. A key to that defense is persuading citizens and policymakers of Extension's "public value": the benefit from Extension programs to those who are not directly served. This paper uses the principles of public sector economics to help formulate that defense and describes how Extension staff have applied economic principles to identify the public value in their own programs. The approach, developed into a workshop for program teams, serves to both sustain programs that have strong public value and identify programs that do not.Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

IDENTIFYING THE PUBLIC VALUE IN EXTENSION PROGRAMS

Government budget crises have compelled state Extension Services to defend their receipt of state and county funding. A key to that defense is persuading citizens and policymakers of Extension's "public value": the benefit from Extension programs to those who are not directly served. This paper uses the principles of public sector economics to help formulate that defense and describes how Extension staff have applied economic principles to identify the public value in their own programs. The approach, developed into a workshop for program teams, serves to both sustain programs that have strong public value and identify programs that do not.Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

Minnesota Agricultural Economist 702

Public Economics,

Identifying the Public Value in Extension Programs

Government budget crises have compelled state Extension Services to defend their receipt of state and county funding. A key to that defense is persuading citizens and policymakers of Extension\u27s public value : the benefit from Extension programs to those who are not directly served. This article uses the principles of public sector economics to help formulate that defense and describes how Extension staff have applied economic principles to identify the public value in their own programs. The approach, developed into a workshop for program teams, serves to both sustain programs that have strong public value and identify programs that do not

TOWARD A MINNESOTA MODEL OF THE FISCAL IMPACTS OF RESIDENTIAL DEVELOPMENT

Land use has become a critical issue for Minnesota communities, and for many of those on the suburban fringe, the central land-use policy question is whether or not to approve new residential development. New residences may bring increased property tax revenues, but the new residents will demand additional services from the county, city, utilities, and school district. On net, the impact on finances at all levels of government, especially into the future, is not always clear. In this paper, we describe some of the possible roles for the Extension Service in helping Minnesota communities to predict the fiscal impacts of residential development. We list some principles of fiscal impact modeling, describe an existing fiscal impact tool, and explain a number of issues that arose when that tool was used to estimate the impact of residential development in two Minnesota counties. Finally, we describe a possible framework for the next generation of personal computer-based, fiscal impact models.Community/Rural/Urban Development, Land Economics/Use,

A New Summary Measure of the Effective Tax Rate on Investment

The empirical literature that seeks to measure the effective tax rate on new investment offers a striking paradox. On the one hand, summary measures of the effective tax rate on new investment are normally quite high. On the other hand, the amount of revenue actually collected from taxing capital income is apparently very low. In this paper we derive explicitly how revenue figures (under the existing system and under a hypothetical R-base tax) can be used to construct an estimate of the true effective tax rate on capital income, and how this measure and existing measures are affected by several factors, including resale of assets (churning), risk, pure profits, debt finance and arbitrage, and choice of organizational form.We conclude that our new methodology provides a very useful, but not fail-safe, approach for measuring the effective tax rate on new investment. It is much more robust than the standard measures, such as King-Fullerton marginal effective tax rates complications in the tax law. In trying to reconcile the high conventional measures of the effective tax rate with the low revenue collected, we conclude that the effective tax rate does seem to be much lower than existing measures suggest.

Do We Now Collect Any Revenue From Taxing Capital Income?

The U.S. income tax has long been recognized as a hybrid of an income and consumption tax, with elements that do not fit naturally into either pure system. The precise nature of this hybrid has important policy implications for, among other things, understanding the impact of moving closer to a pure consumption tax regime. In this paper, we examine the nature of the U.S. income tax by calculating the revenue and distributional implications of switching from the current system to one form of consumption tax, a modified cash flow tax. Although earlier work had suggested that in 1983 such a switch would have cost little or no revenue at all, we calculate that in 1995 this switch would have cost $108.1 billion in tax revenues, suggesting that the U.S. income tax does impose some positive tax on capital income. The net gains from such a switch have a U-shaped pattern, with those in the lowest and highest deciles of labor income receiving the largest proportional gains, although those in the highest decile would have by far the largest absolute gains.

IDENTIFYING THE PUBLIC VALUE IN EXTENSION PROGRAMS

Government budget crises have compelled state Extension Services to defend their receipt of state and county funding. A key to that defense is persuading citizens and policymakers of Extension's "public value": the benefit from Extension programs to those who are not directly served. This paper uses the principles of public sector economics to help formulate that defense and describes how Extension staff have applied economic principles to identify the public value in their own programs. The approach, developed into a workshop for program teams, serves to both sustain programs that have strong public value and identify programs that do not

Spreading the Word About Extension\u27s Public Value

In recent years, the idea that Extension can build support for its programs by highlighting how they benefit people who have no contact with the programs has taken root in the Extension system. Providing Extension program teams with resources, training, and leadership can lead to a body of public value messages that can infuse Extension\u27s stakeholder communications. Hundreds of Extension professionals have received public value training, and survey results suggest that many trainees are following up with actions. Many trainees see positive effects from the public value approach, but measurable impacts will take more time

IDENTIFYING THE PUBLIC VALUE IN EXTENSION PROGRAMS

Government budget crises have compelled state Extension Services to defend their receipt of state and county funding. A key to that defense is persuading citizens and policymakers of Extension's "public value": the benefit from Extension programs to those who are not directly served. This paper uses the principles of public sector economics to help formulate that defense and describes how Extension staff have applied economic principles to identify the public value in their own programs. The approach, developed into a workshop for program teams, serves to both sustain programs that have strong public value and identify programs that do not