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Policymakers have an interest in regional economic models which can provide answers to policy related questions. The recognition that one region has effects on adjacent regions highlights the special problems of regional analysis. This requires recognition of economic relationships between the region under study and the remainder of the economy. The two major techniques of modeling regions are input-output and econometric modeling.

This study econometrically examines the determinants of California parimutuel horseracing activity, including the effect on parimutuel wagering and attendance levels of such economic and policy-rel...

Tax limitation measures and reduced transfers from the federal government to local governments have increased local governments' need to examine their revenue sources. User charges are one area rec...

A significant alternative to physical rationing of water to achieve conservation is provided by the price system. To act like profit maximizing firms, municipal water utilities (MWD's) should price their water so as to earn the opportunity cost of capital (the market rate of return) on the assets. The actual internal rate of return is calculated for a sample of 30 California MWD's for a 12-year period. For the 26 MWD's with a rate of return less than 10%, iterative simulations are run with increases in the MWD's average price to achieve the target rate of return. The magnitude of water conservation using the rate of return rule is reported for three alternative price elasticities of demand. The new implicit prices necessary to achieve the target rate of return are shown to be less than the cost of the cheapest new surface supply.

An understanding of the "fairness" of a tariff or price schedule can be useful for many types of policy analysis. The Gini coefficient is suggested as one way to assess fairness where user groups are well defined. The Gini coefficient is calculated for a sample of California water purveyors over a ten-year period.

This report places the engineering estimates of water conservation made by Sonnen and Evenson into the supply demand form used by most economists. Clarification is made concerning evaluation of conservation elasticities.

Renewed interest in incorporating measures of uncertainty in public investment decisions is a welcome addition to applied benefit-cost analysis. Taylor and North's (T-N) recent effort in this Journal to incorporate the consideration of uncertainty in benefit-cost analysis follows a technique that we have endorsed for some time (Mercer and Morgan 1975a, b, and 1976; Stacy and Buxbaum). This paper logically follows T-N by illustrating a more general procedure and demonstrates that inclusion of uncertainty in benefit-cost analysis need not be limited to the triangular distribution. The probability distribution used here is the Weibull. The major advantage of the Weibull distribution is its generality. It does not depend on fixed (absolute) estimates of endpoints (range) and thus offers increased capability to test for sensitivity to uncertainty. Use of the Weibull distribution is illustrated here by application to the Spewrell Bluff project and comparison of the results to those of T-N.

The recent passage of the Jarvis-Gann property tax limitation initiative in California raises questions concerning the interrelationship between state and local revenue sources. This paper develops a general revenue model that incorporates the feedback and interaction between major federal , state and local revenue sources. The model is applied to California for the 1965-75 period using combined cross section and time series analysis. The empirical results indicate that there is considerable interdependence between all state and local tax revenue sources. The results are applied to an analysis of the complete effects of the property tax limitation initiative. I. Introduction

Discussion of the role of internally generated funds as a dynamic and influential determinant of investment decisions has been renewed lately in the macroeconomic investment literature. While there is a current revival, the hypothesis is not a new one. In the classic study of the financial history of eight leading American automobile manufacturers over the period 1910 to 1926, Lawrence H. Seltzer concludes that “the greatest part of the growth in their capital resources was derived from reinvested profits; and that this source accounts for much the greater part of their present invested capital.” He estimates that for the period through 1926 net aggregate reinvested profits were equal, on average, to almost 80 percent of the value of tangible invested capital.3 Seltzer suggests that this remarkably high percentage was the result of the unique situation of the automobile industry, although carefully pointing out that the general importance of internal funds may be greater than commonly realized.

The purpose of this paper is to report on the estimation of quarterly investment functions for the commercial construction (CC) component of GNP. A standard stock adjustment formulation was used to explain investment decision making behavior, a procedure which has not been applied directly to this sector in the literature.1 In addition, we have tried to take some account of potentially important financial market influences on CC as well as to use the Almon technique [1] to estimate part of the lag structure inherent in the investment

Economic historians should thank Larry Neal for his careful revision of the United States railroad investment series for the period between 1897 and 1914 [5]. However, the second major part of his article concerning the determinants of investmenit behavior over this period suffers from deficiencies of interpretation and requires further analysis which is the object of this note. Neal's thesis is that financial models, incorporating interest rates and cash flow variables, better explain railroad investment expenditures over this period than crude acceleration type mechanisms. In fact, he argues the time period 1897 to 1914 logically can be divided into two periods at the year 1907. In the earlier period (1897-1907) Neal argues that both easy access to external funds and the better use of internal funds are the primary explanations for investment behavior, while this was not the case after 1907. This thesis directly contradicts the earlier discussion of railroad investment made by Jan Kmenta and Jeffrey Williamson (K-W) [4]. The K-XV hypothesis purports that external costs were not important during this period and some sort of acceleration mechanism can best explain investment behavior. It is demonstrated below that the dominant determinant of long run railroad investment behavior over this period is the acceleration principle as asserted by K-W but that outside (as opposed to Neal's inside) financial conditions (the demand for financial instruments) contributed to the cyclical fluctuations of investment expenditures in the period prior to 1907.