Municipality Size and Efficiency of Local Public Services: Does Size Matter?

Similarly to western Germany in the 1960s and 1970s, the eastern part of Germany has experienced a still ongoing process of numerous amalgamations among counties, towns and municipalities since the mid-1990s. The evidence in the economic literature is mixed with regard to the claimed expenditure reductions and efficiency gains from municipal mergers. We therefore analyze the global efficiency of the municipalities in Saxony-Anhalt, for the first time in this context, using a double-bootstrap procedure combining DEA and truncated regression. This allows including environmental variables to control for exogenous determinants of municipal efficiency. Our focus thereby is on institutional and fiscal variables. Moreover, the scale efficiency is estimated to find out whether large units are necessary to benefit from scale economies. In contrast to previous studies, we chose the aggregate budget of municipal associations (“Verwaltungsgemeinschaften”) as the object of our analysis since important competences of the member municipalities are settled on a joint administrative level. Furthermore, we use a data set that has been carefully adjusted for bookkeeping items and transfers within the communal level. On the “eve” of a mayor municipal reform the majority of the municipalities were found to have an approximately scale-efficient size and centralized organizational forms (“Einheitsgemeinden”) showed no efficiency advantage over municipal associations.efficiency, local government, DEA, bootstrap, demographic change, local institutions

Observable Dependent Quasi-Equilibrium in Slow Dynamics

We present examples demonstrating that quasi-equilibrium fluctuation-dissipation behavior at short time differences is not a generic feature of systems with slow non-equilibrium dynamics. We analyze in detail the non-equilibrium fluctuation-dissipation ratio X(t,tw) associated with a defect-pair observable in the Glauber-Ising spin chain. It turns out that $X \neq 1$ throughout the short-time regime and in particular X(tw,tw) = 3/4 for $tw \to \infty$. The analysis is extended to observables detecting defects at a finite distance from each other, where similar violations of quasi-equilibrium behaviour are found. We discuss our results in the context of metastable states, which suggests that a violation of short-time quasi-equilibrium behavior could occur in general glassy systems for appropriately chosen observables.Comment: 17 pages, 5 figures; substantially improved version of cond-mat/040571

Derivation of the time dependent Gross-Pitaevskii equation without positivity condition on the interaction

Using a new method it is possible to derive mean field equations from the microscopic $N$ body Schr\"odinger evolution of interacting particles without using BBGKY hierarchies. In this paper we wish to analyze scalings which lead to the Gross-Pitaevskii equation which is usually derived assuming positivity of the interaction. The new method for dealing with mean field limits presented in [6] allows us to relax this condition. The price we have to pay for this relaxation is however that we have to restrict the scaling behavior to $\beta<1/3$ and that we have to assume fast convergence of the reduced one particle marginal density matrix of the initial wave function $\mu^{\Psi_0}$ to a pure state $|\phi_0><\phi_0|$

Climate-Vegetation-Feedbacks as a Mechanism for Accelerated Climate Change: The onset of the African Humid Period

Paleo-environmental records and models indicate that the African Humid Period (AHPabruptly ended about 5000-4000 years before present (BP). Some proxies indicate alsan abrupt onset of the AHP between 14,000 and 11,000 BP. How important are local orbitaforcing, ice-sheet forcing, greenhouse gas forcing, and the reorganization of the AtlantiMeridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) for changes in the African Monsoon/vegetatiosystem? Here we use transient simulations with climate-vegetation models of differencomplexity to identify the factors that control the onset of the African Monsoon/VegetationWe test the following hypothesis:(1) There is no indication for insolation-thresholds for the onset/break of the AHP.(2) Forcing from CO2/ice-sheets significantly controls the climate of North Africa.(3) CO2 fertilization contributes to the vegetation changes over North Africa.(4) A shutdown of the AMOC is as important as orbital insolation for the African Monsoon