Factor Substitution, Price Elasticity of Factor Demand and Returns to Scale in Police Production: Evidence from Michigan

Gyapong, Anthony O.; Gyimah‐Brempong, Kwabena

doi:10.2307/1059522

Cited by 25 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…The literature on modeling the efficiency of police forces has led economists to posit two alternative methodologies, the cost and the production approach (see Drake and Simper 2003b). The former relates inputs/costs to possible outputs/outcomes (such as offenses cleared; see early cost function estimation of U.S. policing by Darrough and Heineke 1979, Gyapong and Gyimah‐Brempong 1988; and more recently Nyhan and Martin 1999; for the United Kingdom, Cameron 1989 and Drake and Simper 2000). In contrast, the latter production methodology relates the number of offenses committed to the effectiveness of forces in offenses cleared (see Thanassoulis 1995 for a U.K. example; Sun 2002 for a Taiwanese example; and finally Diez‐Ticio and Mancebon 2000 for an example of the production approach used to assess the efficiency of Spanish policing).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Measurement of Police Force Efficiency: An Assessment of U.K. Home Office Policy

Drake

Simper

2005

Contemporary Economic Policy

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Over the past 20 years, governments around the world have implemented strategies and targets to ensure that public services are efficient in the management of resources. In the United Kingdom this common agenda has led to the recent Police Reform Act 2002 in which consideration was given to how police forces can show value for money based on government strategic policy targets. This article presents a critique of the performance radar technique proposed by the Home Office in the United Kingdom as a new public policy objective to assess police force performance. Using an alternative and innovative nonparametric modeling strategy, the article shows that the use of the former approach can produce biased performance rankings and also demonstrate that environmental factors can have a substantial impact on the apparent efficiency of individual police forces. Finally, the results suggest that survey data (as used by the Home Office) should not be used as a basis to assess police performance. (JEL C14, L3, M2)

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Measurement of Police Force Efficiency: An Assessment of U.K. Home Office Policy

Drake

Simper

2005

Contemporary Economic Policy

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“…For instance, if production occurs in the range of increasing returns, expansion of output will further decrease unit production costs. Cost function estimates of scale economies can be obtained from the translog system as unity minus the cost elasticity with respect to output (Gyapong and Gyimah-Brempong, 1988). That is,…”

Section: Methodological Considerationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In other words, aggregation of different hospital pharmacy labour inputs into one index of pharmacy labour is invalid. Gyapong and Gyimah-Brempong (1988), investigating police production in the state of Michigan (USA) also found that civilian and police labour cannot be consistently aggregated into one single index of labour. 2o For instance, estimated (non-symmetric) factor demand elasticities (selected years) are as follows: (1982): € p p = -0.292, €pr=0*011, €rp=0.002, .$s= -0.oooO17, € I p = -0.00015, €ppk=0.143, €kp=0.041, trr= -1.…”

Section: For All Imentioning

confidence: 99%

Production cost structure of us hospital pharmacies: Time‐series, cross‐sectional bed size evidence

Okunade

1993

J of Applied Econometrics

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There are current concerns about potential factor substitutions and their implications for factor employments and cost containment in US hospital pharmacies. A translog production cost model is estimated for these pharmacies, using 1981–9 times‐series data consisting of seven cross‐sectional bed size classes per year. Zellner's joint GLS estimation of three‐factor cost share equations and the parent translog cost function reveals that pairwise factor substitutions are severely limited; production is non‐homothetic, occurring in the range of scale diseconomies; biased and pure technical change effects dominate the scale‐augmenting component. Implications of findings are rationalized in the context of the emerging biopharmaceutical technologies.

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“…For an analysis of economies of scale in the public sector, see Duncombe & Yinger (1993). While there are a number of cost studies of police services (Darrough & Heineke, 1979;Gyapong & Gyimah-Brempong, 1988), limited research exists on economies of scale in corrections.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Judicial Intervention and Local Spending

Duncombe¹,

Straussman

1994

Policy Studies Journal

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This study develops a methodology for examining the impact of court orders on local budgets and applies it to one of the most important areas of judicial involvement‐local jails. During the 1980s an increasing number of local jails came under court order due to overcrowded facilities. In many counties this has been matched by equally rapid growth in jail capacity and expenditures. Based on simple comparisons of these trends and case studies of individual counties, previous research on court intervention has concluded that the courts have forced reluctant local governments to increase expenditures on corrections. However, past research on judicial intervention may be misleading because of inadequate controls for other factors that may affect both jail capacity and spending. We examine the determinants of jail spending for a national sample of jails in the mid‐1980s. Our results indicate that court orders influence capacity expansion (their impact on current expenditures is less clear); however, other jail and demand factors may have a stronger effect. Contrary to conventional wisdom, our findings suggest that many jurisdictions, given adequate fiscal resources, budget for jail expansion when they need its not when forced by the courts to act.

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Factor Substitution, Price Elasticity of Factor Demand and Returns to Scale in Police Production: Evidence from Michigan

Cited by 25 publications

References 13 publications

The Measurement of Police Force Efficiency: An Assessment of U.K. Home Office Policy

The Measurement of Police Force Efficiency: An Assessment of U.K. Home Office Policy

Production cost structure of us hospital pharmacies: Time‐series, cross‐sectional bed size evidence

Judicial Intervention and Local Spending

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