VOLUNTARY EFFORT AS A TAX SUBSTITUTE IN THE REVENUE-SHARING ALLOCATION FORMULA

Public Economics,

Analysis of cost and supply for fire protection services in the smaller municipalities and rural areas of Tennessee

Fire protection is a public service that plays a unique role protecting human life and property in a community. Recent studies indicate that fire protection is one of the key community characteris-tics in the plant location and expansion decisions made by industrial leaders, yet fire protection services are recognized to be severely inadequate in the rural areas of Tennessee. For these reasons, the specific public service to be analyzed in this study is fire protection. The problem faced by local government officials is to maintain and/or increase the quantity and quality of local public services in the face of a generally unfavorable financial situation. This issue, as it relates to the delivery of fire protection services, will be the focal point of the theoretical and policy considerations found in the study. The overall purpose of this study is to gain a fuller understanding of the economic costs of supplying fire protection services to the smaller communities and rural areas of Tennessee. The specific objectives are: 1) To examine topics of importance to the economic analysis of fire protection and to discuss the theoretical viewpoints relevant to the economic analysis of the cost and supply of a public service. 2) To specify and analyze models of the total and average cost of supplying fire protection services. a. To incorporate within the cost models a measure of quality and an imputed value for voluntary effort. b. To determine the existence and magnitude of economies or diseconomies of size associated with the cost of supply-ing fire protection services. 3) To delineate a supply function for fire protection services. An economic model of the cost of supplying fire protection services is presented that incorporates an imputed value for voluntary effort. The basic concern is with those variables that are hypothesized to be determinants of cost. A total cost model is specified with con-sideration given to the measurement of quantity and quality of output, and the definition of the environment in which this public service is delivered. The basic economic model of total cost and two modifications of the model were analyzed by using multiple regression techniques. Data requirements necessary for the analysis were fulfilled from a combination of primary and secondary data sources. Secondary data were supplemented by primary data obtained from a comprehensive survey of fire chiefs in Tennessee. Each estimation is discussed in terms of the explanatory power of the model and the level of significance, behavior, and magnitude of the results displayed by the variables considered. The major conclusions from the study are as follows: 1) The evaluation system for fire departments needs to incorporate within it indicators of individual quality performance such as actual response time, fire suppression effectiveness, and specialized rural equipment. 2) The total cost of supplying fire protection services is more dependent upon the quantity and quality of output supplied, the number of alarms related to fire protection, and the number of professional firemen than the physical environment in which the service is delivered. 3) The average cost function was hypothesized and shown to be L-shaped indicating the presence of economies of scale for the delivery of fire protection service beginning very gradually at a population protected level of 2,000. A stable low point nearly parallel to the quantity of output axis is reached beginning at a population protected level of around 12,000. 4) General revenue sharing is assumed to decrease the risk and uncertainty for local decision makers in terms of finances for public purposes and politics for selfish motives. By the use of specific economic assumptions and analytical techniques, it was shown that this influence of revenue sharing causes the supply function of a public service such as fire protection to be more responsive in terms of increasing the quantity and quality of the output supplied of the public service. The improvement of the level of public services in a community improves the quality of life for the citizens, but more importantly, this improvement may provide the needed emphasis for a sustained period of economic development. Employment providing industries are attracted to communities with good public services, and in particular, a high level of fire protection service

Feasibility of wood industries in Model Valley

Important areas of distress in the American economy have been identified, and the people living in these areas and their problems are major concerns of national, state, and local governments. One such area is Appalachia and within Appalachia there are many valleys that have all the characteristics associated with distressed areas. Model Valley, where this study was made, is one of these areas. This study is concerned with one aspect of alleviating such distress, namely, the creation of job opportunities through the development of an integrated wood industry to use the limited resources of the area. One hope is that the development of an integrated wood industry in Model Valley would offer a partial solution to the problem of economic decline in the area. The objective of this study, therefore, is to deter-mine whether it would be feasible to locate an integrated wood industry in the area. The study was divided into the following sections: a review of the existing wood industries in the area; a compilation of forest inven-tory data; a selection of the wood industries that the available wood resource base can support; the further selection of the wood industries that appear to be feasible for development and an economic analysis of each of these industries. Finally, a set of recommendations was made stating the requirements necessary for the successful establishment and maintenance of the selected wood industries

Multiple sclerosis, the measurement of disability and access to clinical trial data

Background: Inferences about long-term effects of therapies in multiple sclerosis (MS) have been based on surrogate markers studied in short-term trials. Nevertheless, MS trials have been getting steadily shorter despite the lack of a consensus definition for the most important clinical outcome - unremitting progression of disability. Methods: We have examined widely used surrogate markers of disability progression in MS within a unique database of individual patient data from the placebo arms of 31 randomised clinical trials. Findings: Definitions of treatment failure used in secondary progressive MS trials include much change unrelated to the target of unremitting disability. In relapsing-remitting MS, disability progression by treatment failure definitions was no more likely than similarly defined improvement for these disability surrogates. Existing definitions of disease progression in relapsing-remitting trials encompass random variation, measurement error and remitting relapses and appear not to measure unremitting disability. Interpretation: Clinical surrogates of unremitting disability used in relapsing -remitting trials cannot be validated. Trials have been too short and/or degrees of disability change too small to evaluate unremitting disability outcomes. Important implications for trial design and reinterpretation of existing trial results have emerged long after regulatory approval and widespread use of therapies in MS, highlighting the necessity of having primary trial data in the public domain

Optical Signature Analysis of Tumbling Rocket Bodies via Laboratory Measurements

The NASA Orbital Debris Program Office has acquired telescopic lightcurve data on massive intact objects, specifically spent rocket bodies, in order to ascertain tumble rates in support of the Active Debris Removal (ADR) task to help remediate the LEO environment. Rotation rates are needed to plan and develop proximity operations for potential future ADR operations. To better characterize and model optical data acquired from ground-based telescopes, the Optical Measurements Center (OMC) at NASA/JSC emulates illumination conditions in space using equipment and techniques that parallel telescopic observations and source-target-sensor orientations. The OMC employs a 75-watt Xenon arc lamp as a solar simulator, an SBIG CCD camera with standard Johnson/Bessel filters, and a robotic arm to simulate an object's position and rotation. The light source is mounted on a rotary arm, allowing access any phase angle between 0 -- 360 degrees. The OMC does not attempt to replicate the rotation rates, but focuses on how an object is rotating as seen from multiple phase angles. The two targets studied are scaled (1:48), SL-8 Cosmos 3M second stages. The first target is painted in the standard government "gray" scheme and the second target is primary white, as used for commercial missions. This paper summarizes results of the two scaled rocket bodies, each rotated about two primary axes: (a) a spin-stabilized rotation and (b) an end-over-end rotation. The two rotation states are being investigated as a basis for possible spin states of rocket bodies, beginning with simple spin states about the two primary axes. The data will be used to create a database of potential spin states for future works to convolve with more complex spin states. The optical signatures will be presented for specific phase angles for each rocket body and shown in conjunction with acquired optical data from multiple telescope sources

Fundamental and vortex solitons in a two-dimensional optical lattice

Fundamental and vortex solitons in a two-dimensional optically induced waveguide array are reported. In the strong localization regime, the fundamental soliton is largely confined to one lattice site, while the vortex state comprises of four fundamental modes superimposed in a square configuration with a phase structure that is topologically equivalent to the conventional vortex. However, in the weak localization regime, both the fundamental and vortex solitons spread over many lattice sites. We further show that fundamental and vortex solitons are stable against small perturbations in the strong localization regime.Comment: 3 pages, 4 figure