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A new technique for gauging PO, designed to complement regular PO surveys, is discussed. The method is based on a refinement of the 'abrometer' areas or 'referendum' approach. 4 countries were selected, each with a record of accurately reflecting the sentiment of its area in the last 4 presidential elections. Election data for each county were carefully analyzed, & this information was then used to select 3 or more small units which, taken together, provided an accurate reflection of the whole county. In this way a referendum becomes manageable & yet produces enough ballots to provide a reliable result for the county. Voters were asked to check questions pro & con certain public issues. The results obtained passed certain tests for present-day representativeness. Both nat'l & regional results of a subsequent survey matched those obtained with the referendum method. It is felt that this technique requires less expertise & is less costly than a regular survey. It can be widely employed to shed light on the public's views on local issues & to illuminate, for the benefit of the representatives of the people, the state of PO on major issues confronting the nation. 2 Tables. Modified HA.

This dissertation consists of three self-contained essays on public finance, that is, on the study of government revenue and expenditure. Taxation and public spending reflect society's values, priorities, as well as its political and informational constraints. This makes them a fascinating subject for economic research and a frequent topic of political debate. Economists have recently studied the optimal design of tax policy using the Mirrleesian mechanism design framework. At the core of this analysis lies a trade-off between equity and efficiency: In order to maximize social welfare, a utilitarian social planner wishes to redistribute consumption from individuals who have high income-earning ability to those with less income-earning ability. Because individual abilities are unobserved by the social planner, the optimal tax system must be incentive compatible and involves distortions of labor efforts. Chapters 1 and 2 of this thesis contain analyses of this trade-off and the resulting labor distortions. Researchers have also considered the effects of political competition on income taxes and public good provision. This part of the literature assumes that politicians design tax schedules in order to win elections instead of maximizing social welfare. Chapters 1 and 3 concern the political economy of taxation and public good provision. Methodologically, the analyses in all three chapters utilize tools from microeconomic theory, in particular mechanism design and game theory. Chapter 1 jointly studies public good provision and nonlinear income taxation. It argues that public revenue and spending should be analyzed simultaneously, because the two are interdependent. Specifically, it assumes that individual income earning ability is a function of innate talent and a public good. The public good in turn is financed by distortionary taxes. The chapter then studies how public good provision affects the efficiency of optimal income taxes and, conversely, how taxation affects the efficiency of public good provision. It first characterizes Pareto efficient allocations and an allocation that results from political competition over both public good provision and nonlinear income taxation. In the political equilibrium, the median voter's favorite policy is the Condorcet winner in an election. Further, it shows that public good provision helps to mitigate the incentive problems of income taxation and that the efficiency of public good provision is dependent on the position of the median voter in the income distribution. Chapter 2 studies optimal income taxation when individuals exhibit intention-based preferences. The chapter is based on the conventional income taxation model with individuals who differ in their skill type and a social planner who redistributes income subject to incentive compatibility and resource constraints. However, it augments the standard taxation mechanism by offering low-ability types the choice of exerting a higher labor effort, which results in a higher utility for high-ability types. Under intention-based preferences, this creates slack in the incentive constraint for high-ability types and allows us to implement an allocation that is Pareto superior to the allocation that results from the standard mechanism. The interpretation is that the rich do not mind helping the poor if they "do their part" by working harder. Interestingly, with intention-based preferences the optimal allocation lies outside the Pareto frontier of the standard model and relies on individuals' concern for procedural justice, which cannot be characterized as the maximization of a social welfare function. Chapter 3 characterizes demand for think tanks in the presence of academic experts. It poses the question: how can demand for think tanks co-exist with research that is made publicly available by academic researchers? To investigate this question the chapter proposes a model in which voters differ in their pre-tax incomes and exhibit uncertainty about the deadweight cost caused by taxation. For example, they might be uncertain about the elasticity of taxable income or the administrative cost of government. An academic expert observes the true deadweight cost of the tax system and communicates this information to the electorate via a cheap talk message. Additionally, voters can choose to pool their resources to finance a partisan think tank that has access to the same information as the academic expert. The chapter shows that individuals are willing to pay for a think tank if and only if the academic expert is partisan with probability greater than zero. That is, demand for think tanks exists if and only if academic experts represent the interests of a certain part of the electorate, instead of always providing truthful information.

An estimated one out of five employees in this country works for some branch of government. Because policies concerning the compensation of these employees rest on assumptions about the economic dynamics of the public sector, the issue of public sector employment is of vital importance in the analysis of the national economy. In Public Sector Payrolls, leading economists explore the independent and interdependent functioning of the public and private sectors and their effect on the economy as a whole. The volume, developed from a 1984 National Bureau of Economic Research conference, focuses on.

Part A: Equality Act 2010 - The protected characteristics - The context - Exceptions - Proportionality - Prohibited conduct - Enforcement and remedies. - Part B: The public sector equality duty. - Part C: Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights - Types of discrimination - The test for discrimination - Justification - Specific situations - Enforcement and remedies. - Part D: European Union law - Retained EU law - EU equality law. - Part E: Public law equal treatment

The paper examines poll survey data to see if the way people invest in public envolvement is different between thos consider themselves to the left and those who consider themselves to the right. It appears that the difference beween rightl and left is small and that the main difference is bewteen those who choose a position and those who refuse to choose or do not answer. Rather interestingly, people that see themselves at the center ressembles strongly to non respondants, as if the center was a "refuge value". ; Peer reviewed

Public nuisance claims against fossil fuel companies, drug companies, lead paint manufacturers, and other industries have raised the specter of onerous abatement orders and damage awards. While courts sometimes have rejected these industry-oriented public nuisance claims on their substantive merits, in climate change cases federal district courts have turned to doctrines of avoidance—including jurisdictional defenses and justiciability doctrines—to dismiss cases and avoid reaching the substantive merits. This dodging of public nuisance, often supported by questionable legal analysis, not only undermines the functions of tort law, but also cuts short important discussions between the judiciary, the political branches, and the broader public. Although plaintiffs ultimately may not succeed, courts should fulfill their responsibility to address public nuisance claims on their substantive merits, rather than reflexively relying on avoidance doctrines to dodge such claims.

The problem of public and private is often thought to be a boundary problem. 'Public' and 'private' are said to denote separate areas of human endeavour – distinct 'realms', 'spheres', or 'spaces'. The task of formulating clear boundaries, however, has proven to be enormously complex. It seems that every attempt at conceptualizing a purely private area of activity runs into a particular kind of difficulty, namely, many of the activities characteristic of the private sphere turn out to be activities toward which no responsible public authority could possibly remain indifferent: abuse within the family, collusion in the business world, criminal conspiracy among friends. It may be, however, that the problem of public and private, conceived as a boundary problem, is thereby misconceived. It would perhaps be better to think of public and private as denoting not primarily – perhaps not at all – separate realms of endeavour but different ways of being in the world, different 'manners of acting'. To act in a private manner is simply different in character from acting in a public manner. Such a formulation, if pursued with care, would allow us to accept fully the arguments of those who would question the very idea of a private realm, while still permitting us to retain a vigorous and compelling public/private distinction.

S. 65-71: Literatur-Hinweise zum Thema "Public relations"

"Recent global appropriations of public spaces through urban activism, public uprising, and political protest have brought back democratic values, beliefs, and practices that have been historically associated with cities. Given the aggressive commodification of public resources, public space is critically important due to its capacity to enable forms of public discourse and social practice which are fundamental for the well-being of democratic societies. Public Space Reader brings together public space scholarship by a cross-disciplinary group of academics and specialists whose essays consider fundamental questions: What is public space and how does it manifest larger cultural, social, and political processes? How are public spaces designed, socially and materially produced, and managed? How does this impact the nature and character of public experience? What roles does it play in the struggles for the just city, and the Right to The City? What critical participatory approaches can be employed to create inclusive public spaces that respond to the diverse needs, desires, and aspirations of individuals and communities alike? What are the critical global and comparative perspectives on public space that can enable further scholarly and professional work? And, what are the futures of public space in the face of global pandemics, such as COVID-19? The readers of this volume will be rewarded with an impressive array of perspectives that are bound to expand critical perspectives on public space"--