Welfare Theory,Public Goods,and Public Facility Location

The paper discusses a number of issues that are important to the development of a useful normative “welfare theory” of the public space economy. Attention is specifically focused on theoretical welfare economic models of public goods provided at facilities to which consumers must travel for consumption. The recent analysis of Bigman and ReVelle [2] is subjected to critical scrutiny and found wanting. An alternative, more complex but still very simple, analysis is provided.     

The Theory of Welfare Considerations in Public Facility Location Problems

The paper provides a general theoretical framework for analyzing the locational choice of public facilities from the point of view of social welfare. Spatial interactions of individuals and economies to scale in the public sector are taken into account, and that, in turn, adds another dimension to the set of alternatives facing the decision maker. His choice has to be made by considering size as well as space alternatives for the provision of the public service. The paper presents a theoretical structure for ranking those alternatives.     

Equity and Efficiency in Public Facility Location

In designing a system of urban public service centers, planners should consider both equity and efficiency effects in selecting the size of each center and the spacing between centers. The paper establishes theoretical and operational concepts for evaluating equity and efficiency, as affected by size and spacing alternatives. No objective means exists for determining the relative importance of equity and efficiency, so the decision, ultimately, is subjective. However, theoretical, empirical and simulation evidence indicate that equity is more sensitive than efficiency to the selection of size and spacing, within a wide range of alternatives. This suggests that the equity criterion is important in the design of public service systems, and deserves more attention in the public facility location literature than it has received in the past.     

The Evaluation of Urban Public Facility Location: An Alternative to Benefit-Cost Analysis

This paper attempts to overcome some specific problems which exist with the use of benefit-cost analysis in evaluating the impact of public facilities. The concepts developed explicitly recognize the importance of the spatial distribution of impacts and the fact that tastes can differ substantially among people. By utilizing the concepts of the generalized environment and of place utility, a more general and valuable conceptual model can be developed which may be useful in preventing much current conflict over public investment decisions. The model has an explicit concern with the problem of equity and is thus only a small step in a growing field of inquiry within geography.     

Impure Public Goods, Relative Gains, and International Cooperation

The characterization of the products of international cooperation as public goods has been severely challenged, undermining a central pillar of theories of international cooperation. I review the criticism of public goods assumptions, identifying the need to account for both exclusion and rival consumption in international cooperative arrangements. Drawing on the recent debate of states as relative versus absolute gains maximizers, I offer a characterization of international cooperative arrangements as discriminatory clubs. I develop a refined relative gains model, which focuses on relative net gains, and apply it to a hypothetical situation to illustrate its usefulness in predicting patterns of exclusion and distribution in international trade.     

关于侨乡优势的思考——广东潮州大吴村旅外乡亲捐资公益事业调研报告

广东省潮州市是著名侨乡.长期以来,旅外乡亲对家乡公益事业进行了无私的捐资.这些捐资促进了家乡的发展,也成为潮州的一大侨乡优势.本文以大吴村为个案,分析旅外乡亲捐资的情况,总结旅外乡亲捐资成功的大致模式,同时对这一侨乡优势所出现的问题进行初步探讨.     

Multi‐Type,Multi‐Zone Facility Location

The placement of facilities according to spatial and/or geographic requirements is a popular problem within the domain of location science. Objectives that are typically considered in this class of problems include dispersion, median, center, and covering objectives—and are generally defined in terms of distance or service‐related criteria. With few exceptions, the existing models in the literature for these problems only accommodate one type of facility. Furthermore, the literature on these problems does not allow for the possibility of multiple placement zones within which facilities may be placed. Due to the unique placement requirements of different facility types—such as suitable terrain that may be considered for placement and specific placement objectives for each facility type—it is expected that different suitable placement zones for each facility type, or groups of facility types, may differ. In this article, we introduce a novel mathematical treatment for multi‐type, multi‐zone facility location problems. We derive multi‐type, multi‐zone extensions to the classical integer‐linear programming formulations involving dispersion, centering and maximal covering. The complexity of these formulations leads us to follow a heuristic solution approach, for which a novel multi‐type, multi‐zone variation of the non‐dominated sorting genetic algorithm‐II algorithm is proposed and employed to solve practical examples of multi‐type, multi‐zone facility location problems.     

NGOs and Environmental Public Goods: Institutional Alternatives to Property Rights

NGOs are linked to environmental objectives for good reason: non-profit NGOs provide a flexible, private-sector answer to the provision of international environmental public goods. The non-profit sector can link for-profit, non-profit, and public-sector objectives in complex contracts. This article examines how, for the case of the National Biodiversity Institute (INBio) in Costa Rica, such complex contracts with both domestic and international parties provide partial solutions to public goods problems in the absence of private property rights over genetic resources. INBio's ‘monopoly’ position, legitimized by the local government, brings in rents from genetic resources which are reinvested in the production of public goods.     

Paying Attention to Politics: Public Responsiveness and Welfare Policy Change

In order for the democratic process to work properly, it is vital that the public pays attention to politics and signals its opinions and preferences back to its representatives; if this is not the case, representatives have less incentive to represent. This article deals with the question of whether and how the public responds to welfare policy change. The thermostatic model departs from the assumption that the public responds to policy change with negative feedback, in relation to its preferred level of policy. The empirical analysis tests this model on public responses following the implementation of a consumer's choice model in Swedish primary health care. Did the reform trigger a thermostatic response from the public, and how should this be interpreted? A contribution in relation to previous research is the inclusion of ideological orientation and proximity, variables which, I argue, condition the nature and direction of public responsiveness. The study was designed as a natural experiment in which preferences of privatization of health care were measured before and after the health care reform of 2009/2010. The results provide partial support for the thermostatic model: preferences for further privatization decrease after the reform, but primarily within one subgroup. Additionally, public responses are demonstrated to vary according to ideological orientation, where the right‐oriented react thermostatically and the left‐oriented do not. The article contributes to a further understanding of the relation between policymaking and public opinion and to the expansion of thermostatic theory.     

行为区位论的初步研究

本文论述了行为区位论的产生和发展历程,分析了区位决策行为、空间位移行为和消费行为空间等模式,并对行为区位论在区位理论中的地位和作用进行了评价。     

A Hierarchical Flow Capturing Location Problem with Demand Attraction Based on Facility Size,and Its Lagrangian Relaxation Solution Method

This article presents a hierarchical flow capturing location problem (HFCLP) and proposes an effective Lagrangian heuristic solution method. The original flow capturing location problem (FCLP) aims to locate a given number of facilities on a network to maximize the total flow that can be serviced at facilities along their preplanned routes, such as daily commute to work. We extend the original model to allow a decision maker to select the size of facilities among m different size alternatives. Larger facilities are assumed to be more attractive and, therefore, can attract more customers, but they cost more to construct than smaller ones. Customers deviate from their preplanned routes to access a facility's service when the size of the facility is sufficiently large. The degree of deviation from the original path is measured by the additional distance customers have to go to access facilities, and the acceptable deviation distance becomes larger as the size of a facility increases. This article presents a new problem in which the number of facilities of each size and their locations are simultaneously determined so as to capture as much flow as possible within the total budget available for locating all facilities. We present an integer programming formulation of the problem and devise a Lagrangian relaxation solution method. The proposed algorithm is tested using road networks with 300 and 500 nodes. The results show that the method produces high‐quality solutions in a fairly short time. Este artículo presenta un problema de localización de captura de flujo jerárquico (hierarchical flow capturing location problem‐HFCLP) y propone un método heurístico eficiente de tipo Lagrange (lagrangian). En su formulación original el HFLCP tiene como objetivo localizar un número determinado de instalaciones en una red con el fin de maximizar el flujo total que puede ser atendido por las instalaciones existentes a lo largo de rutas preestablecidas, como en el caso por ejemplo, de los desplazamientos diarios del lugar de residencia al de trabajo. Los autores amplían el modelo original para permitir que el tomador de decisiones seleccione el tamaño de las instalaciones entre “m” alternativas. Se asume que las instalaciones más grandes son más atractivas que las más pequeñas y, por lo tanto, pueden atraer a más clientes, pero a la vez, son también más costosas de construir. Los clientes se desvían de su ruta preestablecida para acceder al servicio de una instalación cuando el tamaño de la instalación es lo suficientemente grande. El grado de desviación de las rutas se mide por la distancia adicional que los clientes viajan para acceder a las instalaciones. La distancia de desviación aceptable se hace más grande en relación al tamaño de la instalación. En este artículo se presenta un nuevo modelo para el HFLCP en el que el número de las instalaciones de cada tamaño y su ubicación son determinadas simultáneamente con el fin de capturar la mayor cantidad de flujo dentro del presupuesto total disponible para la localización de todas las instalaciones. Los autores presentan una formulación de programación entera (integer programming) del HFCLP e implementan un método que relaja la solución lagrangiana. El algoritmo propuesto es evaluado utilizando redes viales con 300 y 500 nodos. Los resultados muestran que el nuevo método produce soluciones de alta calidad y en tiempos de computación relativamente cortos. 本文介绍了一种分层的截流选址问题 (HFCLP),提出了一个有效的拉格朗日启发式解决方法。最初的截流选址问题(FCLP)目标是在网络上布局给定数量的设施使总流量最大,使按预定路线的行进流可以获得最大的服务,如每日的工作通勤。本文对原始模型进行扩展,让决策者可在不同的设施规模选择方案中进行规模选择。假设更大规模设施具有更大的吸引力,因此也能够吸引更多的客户,但同时也需要更多的建造成本。当设施规模足够大时,消费者会选择偏离预定路径而进入该设施的服务范围。对原始路径的偏离程度可通过用户进入该设施所增加的额外距离度量。可接受的偏差距离随着设施规模增大而增大。本文提出了在总预算确定条件下,同步确定不同规模设施数量及其位置以实现截取最大流量的新问题,并给出了该问题的整数规划方法,设计了拉格朗日松弛解法。通过300和500个节点的网络测试,结果显示该算法可在相当短时间内获得高质量的解决方案。