This paper studies the hypothesis that local (municipal) expenditures in part can be explained by the expenditures of the regional (county) government. To accomplish this task, we derive and estimate ...a model of local public (municipal) spending that is defined conditional on the level of regional public expenditures. The empirical analysis is based on panel data from the Swedish local public sector for the time period 1981–1986. Among the results, we find that the hypothesis that regional expenditures are weakly separable from local expenditures can be rejected. However, we cannot reject the hypothesis that the regional expenditures are weakly exogenous in the local expenditure equation.
We describe the adaptation of the decision limit cumulative sum method (cusum) to internal quality control in clinical chemistry. With the decision limit method, the cusum is interpreted against a ...numerical limit, rather than by use of a V-mask. The method can be readily implemented in computerized quality-control systems or manually on controls charts. We emphasize the manual application here and demonstrate how the technique can be implemented on existing Shewhart or Levey-Jennings control charts. This permits both cusum and Shewhart control rules to be used simultaneously on a single control chart and also minimizes the data calculations necessary for the cusum method. Computer simulation studies are used to determine the performance characteristics of several different cusum rules, alone and in combination with a Shewhart rule. These studies indicate that improvements in existing quality-control systems should be possible by addition of this simple cusum method and by use of a combined Shewhart-cusum control chart. This should be particularly advantageous when introducing the cusum method in laboratories with manual quality-control systems.
This paper addresses optimal taxation, when therelationship between the consumption of a`dirty' good and the resulting environmentaldamage is uncertain and treated as a randomvariable by policy ...makers. The main purpose isto analyze how increased uncertainty, measuredas a mean preserving increase in the spread ofthis random variable, affects the optimalcommodity tax on the dirty consumption good. Incase the only task of government is to correctthe environmental externality, and if thepreferences are characterized by nondecreasingabsolute risk aversion, we find that thecommodity tax on the dirty consumption goodincreases in response to additionaluncertainty. If, on the other hand, thegovernment provides a public good and uses alump-sum tax in addition to the commodity tax,it is possible that the commodity tax decreasesas a response to additional uncertainty, evenif the preferences are characterized bynondecreasing absolute risk aversion. A similarresult emerges, although for different reasons,if the lump-sum tax is replaced by a laborincome tax. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 2003
Sweden has experienced a sequence of tax and benefit reforms during the last decade. In this paper we evaluate these reforms from labour supply, welfare and inequality points of view. We depart from ...a household labour supply model. Simulation of the model reveals that tax and benefit reforms have led to a considerable reduction of the excess burden. Regarding social welfare and inequality, we show that the results depend to a large extent on the income inequality measure and the measure of social welfare, as well as the income concept (household disposable income or money metric utility).
The three main aspects of analytical quality are 'goals for analytical quality', 'creation of analytical quality', and 'control of analytical quality'. In the NORDKEM-project 'medical need for ...quality specifications within laboratory medicine' the aspects of analytical quality are combined. The aims is to make an appraisal of the different approaches to goal setting, and to develop a practical procedure for assessing analytical quality requirements. The goals are used to define which demands should be met by the process of establishing and maintaining the quality, and for design of internal as well as external quality assurance procedures. The project is an umbrella project with three main subprojects and several satellite projects. In this presentation a model for evaluation of influence of analytical bias and imprecision on the outcome from a diagnostic classification based on bimodal distribution is described.
This paper deals with public provision of a private good in a two-type model with optimal nonlinear income taxation. We assume that the wage rates are determined by bargaining between unions and ...firms, meaning that the equilibrium is characterized by unemployment. The results show that imperfect competition in the labor market gives rise to additional policy incentives associated with the self-selection constraint, which may justify either more or less public provision than under perfect competition. The paper also addresses employment-related motives behind public provision of private goods.
In this paper we test a particular form of interdependent behaviour, namely the hypothesis that individuals' choices of hours of work are influenced by the average hours of work in a social reference ...group. There are problems in empirically disentangling the effects of interdependent behaviour and preference variation across groups. We show that panel data or data from several points in time are needed. In the empirical analysis we combine cross-section data from 1973, 1980, and 1990. Our results support the hypothesis of interdependent behaviour. The implication is that conventional tax policy predictions, in which preference interdependencies are neglected, will tend to underestimate the effect of a tax reform on hours of work. Our point estimates suggest that conventional calculations would capture only about a third of the actual change in hours of work.
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