Holley Ulbrich

Foldvary, Fred. Public Goods and Private Communities: The Market Provision of Social Services. Brookfield VT: Ashgate Publishing, 1994, 288 pp.,

Do public goods and services, such as streets, parks and dams have to be provided by government? In Public Goods and Private Communities, Fred Foldvarys innovative application of public choice and social choice theory to questions of urban economics shows how collective goods can be provided by agents in a market process. Rejecting the market-failure hypothesis, Dr Foldvary argues that an entrepreneur can provide collective goods by consensual community agreements. Instead of studying particular services, as previous studies have done, this book concerns itself with entire private communities. A series of case studies demonstrate how real world communities, such as Walt Disney World, the Reston Association in Virginia and the private neighbourhoods of Saint Louis, are in fact financing their own public goods and services in accordance with this theory. For such communities to rise and prosper, the author contends, government must eliminate zoning and many other restrictions, as well as the taxation of private services. After considering the implications of his work for urban economies - at a time when many of Americas cities are plagued by decay, violence and poverty - Dr Foldvary argues that prosperity can be restored to cities if private communities are allowed to develop. As an original response to an urgent, contemporary problem this well-written book will be welcomed by social scientists, policy makers and business leaders seeking solutions to problems of urban decay.

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The persistent sex differential in church attendance found by many researchers has often been attributed to differential labor force participation. Using 1980 survey data from the National Opinion Research Center, this paper explores the effect of workforce status of women on their church attendance. While there is indeed a statistically significant mean attendance differential between working and nonworking women, it is not due to coefficient differences in the explanatory variables, but is due to differences in the mean values of certain of the significant explanatory variables, particularly religious intensity, spouse of the same denomination, age, presence of young children in the household, and membership in non-mainline denominations. Thus, the rise in female labor force participation cannot generate long term projections of declining attendance on that basis alone.

Women's Work Force Status and Church Attendance

Summary and ConclusionsThis mixed bag of empirical evidence does not resolve the theological and econmic questions raised in conjunction with the “afterlife capital” model of church attendance, including not only afterlife but a mixture of current benefits as well, is present in all of the evidence cited. What evidence we have to offer suggests a decline in the afterlife motivation between 1973 and 1980 and a strengthening of other current consumption motives, but the afterlife motive is clearly still present in varying degrees of strength in some religious groups. What our findings do strongly suggest is that self-reported religious intensity, which undoubtedly contains elements of current consumption benefits, is a more important determinant of church attendance than belief in an afterlife.

Church attendance, age, and belief in the afterlife: Some additional evidence

That our budget and trade deficits have reduced national saving has been argued widely. But much discussion of saving and deficits is careless of definitions and irrelevant to the economic variables that should concern us. Net foreign investment, the other side of the coin of the trade deficit — or more properly, the current account deficit — is not what it appears to be. And the budget deficit may actually contribute to more national saving, rather than less.

National Saving and the Twin Deficits: Myth and Reality

pairing the ability of households to maintain their customary standards of living-generally reflects reductions (or slow growth) in jobs or income. Economic stress is often highly localized. Localities with highly specialized economic bases are vulnerable to market disturbances that affect only a few industries but reduce jobs and income in particular communities. Prolonged economic stress will lead to localized fiscal stress. Fiscal stress is unexpected declines in tax revenues, and (or) unplanned increases in expenditure demands that the tax base cannot support. Fiscal stress may lag behind economic stress because the time profiles of tht. economic base and the tax base may differ. Lags in property tax assessment may mean that temporary declines in real estate values are not registered on the tax base. During periods of economic stress, individual taxpayers may have difficulty paying taxes, but there may be little immediate tax revenue impact. Localized economic stress may sometimes have little impact on the fiscal condition of local governments because of the role played by the state. Generous state aid to political subdivisions or a larger state share of responsibility for public services may prevent local fiscal stress from following local economic stress.

Fiscal Stress in Rural America: Some Straws in the Wind

Conventional macroeconomic models suggest that expansionary fiscal policy causes higher interest rates, resulting in crowding out of private investment. In this article, we argue that such models ignore the default risk differential between the interest rates on government bonds and corporate bonds. If expansionary fiscal policy causes an expansion in real GNP, default risk falls on corporate bonds. Our model suggests that if the default risk premium falls, (1) corporate interest rates may fall relative to rates on government bonds and (2) private investment is crowded in. We find some supporting empirical evidence of this effect for the period 1929–1945.

Default Risk and the Effects of Fiscal Policy on Interest Rates: 1929–1945

The determinants of membership in private voluntary organizations have received intermittent attention in the sociological literature but have attracted little interest among economists. Sociologists have explored the socio-demographic correlates of membership, with some theoretical explanations cast in terms of role definitions and life cycle behavior [Knoke and Thompson, 1977; Cutler, 1976; Wright and Hyman, 1958]. Knoke and Thompson subdivide the types of clubs into six categories (work-related, recreational, fraternal-service, civic, youth, and other) and look for differences in the determinants of memberships by type of club. McPherson and Smith-Lovin [1987] look at status similarity and homogeneity as determining factors in the type of group selected. From an economic perspective, an individual would be expected to join a private voluntary organization as long as the value of the perceived benefits exceeded the opportunity costs. Measures of opportunity cost may include direct monetary outlay, e.g., membership dues, but the most significant cost is likely to be the opportunity cost of the members time. The costs of participating in private clubs would tend to rise with ones own income; opportunity cost, therefore, should be higher for higher earning individuals. Benefits of membership in such groups are usually of a consumption nature, and will be higher, ceteris paribus, when the clubs complement other uses of non-market time (e.g., child-raising). An exception to consumption benefits would be work-related clubs, which may complement work rather than non-market (leisure and home produc-