In this paper, we test the hypothesis that access to electronic payments may reduce crime. Our results suggest that there is a negative and significant statistical relationship between access to electronic payments and the incidence of economic crimes such as robbery and burglary, while...

Why do charitable nonprofit, service-providing organizations save? What are the tradeoffs between using income to build up cash reserves and serving more clients? Saving may generate income, protect the organization against a drop in donations, and increase the organization's chances of...

Prior research on the labor market success of secondary vocational education has produced mixed results, with several studies finding wage gains only for individuals who work in training-related occupations. We contribute to this debate by focusing on a single occupation and organization and by...

It has been argued that organizations which are unable to directly appropriate any of the firm's residual earnings tend to experience various forms of wealth-taking by managers (Alchian and Kessel, 1962). This wealth-taking has been observed in privately-owned, regulated firms (Nelson, 1980) as...

Our results confirm the existence of a positive direct effect of cross subsidies from municipally owned water utilities on city spending. While the results are consistent with the hypothesis that internal subsidization creates a fiscal illusion, they are also consistent with vote-maximizing...

We have found that the fiscal power of a city can be increased by extension of its borders within a land area that is homogeneous with respect to earning opportunities, even when numerous rival jurisdictions exist in the area. We hypothesized that extending municipal boundaries will have a...

The empirical literature on the publicness of local government services has observed no significant degree of publicness. It is difficult to reconcile these findings with Wyckoff's conclusion that bureaucrats prefer pure public goods. Wyckoff's solution is to suggest that bureaucracy has little...

The shift in the institutional stucture in California in 1963 simultaneously reduced the ability of new cities to incorporate and elevated the status of annexation as a favored municipal growth policy. This study finds that cities which grew more rapidly by annexation also experienced more rapid...