Bill Simonsen
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 4399342 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Bill Simonsen |
| NOMBRES | Bill |
| APELLIDO | Simonsen |
| FIRMA | SIMONSEN B |
| AFILIACIONES | University of Connecticut |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0793-9056 |
| VERIFICADO | No |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 15 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 35 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 14 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1996 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 3 |
The Intergenerational Transmission of Policy Feedback in the United States
Do government actions, or inactions, committed decades (or centuries) ago toward a specific community influence how members of that community trust and perceive government today? Past government actions that extracted resources (a negative resource effect) and communicated an individual's place within American Society (a negative interpretative effect) may diminish trust. This paper explores this question by examining the relationship between the…
Citizen perceptions of public school efficiency
Improving efficiency is the basis for important public school reforms. While there has been substantial scholarship examining the relationship between actual and perceived performance, there has been very little research examining this relationship for efficiency. We use a large and representative sample of U.S. residents and data on student achievement and public school spending to examine the relationship between actual and perceived efficiency…
The impact of demographic structure on citizen perceptions of school district efficiency
Researchers have found that elderly white voters are less supportive of school spending if they reside in a community with a high concentration of non-white school children, a finding typically attributed to growing intergenerational and ethnic conflict between older and younger generations. We test whether white voters living in high minority areas are more likely to perceive their schools as being inefficient and find evidence of such racial mi…
Attachment to Government and Support for Government Debt
In this paper, we seek to improve models of support for taxes, spending and borrowing beyond income, ideology and party identification. We discuss how trust in government and willingness to pay taxes have been measured in research around the globe. We present the notion of attachment as how citizens characterize the quality of their relationship to government. We test our measure of attachment, using well-understood analogies, with a sample of ad…
Property Tax Information and Support for School Bond Referenda
This article reports on an experiment testing whether additional information influences support for bond referenda. Respondents were randomly assigned to treatment conditions that varied the way the potential implications of property tax increases were presented to voters. The results show a persistent negative effect of tax information on the probability of support for school bond referenda across all treatments. Specifically, the results show t…
Experimental evidence about deficit reduction strategies
Fiscal conditions and budget constraints in the United States have placed solutions to budget deficit problems at the center of the public policy debate. Preferences for deficit reduction strategies are likely to be heavily associated with particular ideologies and other demographic and economic variables. Therefore, since this study is a true randomized experiment, it provides strong evidence about the influence of question wording on deficit re…
Do Debt Levels Influence State Borrowing Costs
This article reports on research into the possible interest cost penalties when state governments impose increasingly high debt levels on their citizens. The potential effect of debt levels on borrowing costs is a material one, given the large amounts of state debt outstanding. At the same time that government borrowing is heavy, the demand for government obligations also appears to be strong. The authors examine state debt levels and borrowing c…
Citizens, budgets and performance measures
This article reports on a design for citizen identified performance measures for budgeting that seeks to overcome problems of validity and representativeness that typically exist in citizen involvement processes. This design selected participants using random sampling so that each resident had the same chance of being invited to be in one of the focus groups that worked to develop outcome measures for a set of town services. In order to assure th…
Citizens and Resource Allocation
Collective consumption and benefit characterize many government services. Moreover, government services are mostly paid for collectively through taxes—there is little or no relationship between the taxes paid by a household and its use of a particular service. Public sector decision makers face complex budget problems with difficult solutions. Involving citizens meaningfully in these decisions has long been a conundrum. The authors teamed up with…
Symposium introduction
Reasonableness, Satisfaction, and Willingness to Pay Property Taxes
The authors explore whether citizen preferences for taxes are influenced by perceptions of the quality of government and government services. Waterford, Connecticut, was faced with a revenue crisis when the property taxes paid by a nuclear power facility in the town were significantly reduced after deregulation. On the basis of a survey of town residents, the authors find that citizens in Waterford were willing to act reasonably in response to fi…
A dynamic method of citizen preference revelation
In this article we explore two citizen-based approaches to solving the problem of selecting a desirable level of public goods for a jurisdiction. The first approach seeks to inform decision-makers about citizens’ preferences by observing the choices of citizens faced with the actual budget constraint facing the government and asking them to choose service levels within that constraint. The second approach gauges citizens’ willingness-to-pay for t…
The Influence of Jurisdiction Size and Sale Type on Municipal Bond Interest Rates
The authors use data on municipal bond sales in Oregon from 1994 to 1997 to explore whether population (as a proxy for financial‐management capacity) and sale type (competitive or negotiated sale) influence interest rates. They find that smaller jurisdictions pay an interest cost penalty in the municipal bond market, and that competitive sales result in significantly lower interest rates compared to negotiated sales. The authors suggest that meas…
Attempting Non-Incremental Budget Change in Oregon
In 1990 Oregon passed Measure 5, a constitutional property tax limitation that threatens massive funding cuts to education and government services. In response, Governor Barbara Roberts undertook an experiment in policy sharing, engaging in a "conversation" via closed circuit television with some 10,000 Oregonians about taxes and services before she formulated a tax restructuring plan. The resultant tax proposal appeared carefully balanced and mo…
Reasonableness, Satisfaction, and Willingness to Pay Property Taxes
The authors explore whether citizen preferences for taxes are influenced by perceptions of the quality of government and government services. Waterford, Connecticut, was faced with a revenue crisis when the property taxes paid by a nuclear power facility in the town were significantly reduced after deregulation. On the basis of a survey of town residents, the authors find that citizens in Waterford were willing to act reasonably in response to fi…
Property Tax Information and Support for School Bond Referenda
This article reports on an experiment testing whether additional information influences support for bond referenda. Respondents were randomly assigned to treatment conditions that varied the way the potential implications of property tax increases were presented to voters. The results show a persistent negative effect of tax information on the probability of support for school bond referenda across all treatments. Specifically, the results show t…
Attempting Non-Incremental Budget Change in Oregon
In 1990 Oregon passed Measure 5, a constitutional property tax limitation that threatens massive funding cuts to education and government services. In response, Governor Barbara Roberts undertook an experiment in policy sharing, engaging in a "conversation" via closed circuit television with some 10,000 Oregonians about taxes and services before she formulated a tax restructuring plan. The resultant tax proposal appeared carefully balanced and mo…
Attempting Non-Incremental Budget Change in Oregon
In 1990 Oregon passed Measure 5, a constitutional property tax limitation that threatens massive funding cuts to education and government services. In response, Governor Barbara Roberts undertook an experiment in policy sharing, engaging in a "conversation" via closed circuit television with some 10,000 Oregonians about taxes and services before she formulated a tax restructuring plan. The resultant tax proposal appeared carefully balanced and mo…
The Influence of Jurisdiction Size and Sale Type on Municipal Bond Interest Rates
The authors use data on municipal bond sales in Oregon from 1994 to 1997 to explore whether population (as a proxy for financial‐management capacity) and sale type (competitive or negotiated sale) influence interest rates. They find that smaller jurisdictions pay an interest cost penalty in the municipal bond market, and that competitive sales result in significantly lower interest rates compared to negotiated sales. The authors suggest that meas…
A dynamic method of citizen preference revelation
In this article we explore two citizen-based approaches to solving the problem of selecting a desirable level of public goods for a jurisdiction. The first approach seeks to inform decision-makers about citizens’ preferences by observing the choices of citizens faced with the actual budget constraint facing the government and asking them to choose service levels within that constraint. The second approach gauges citizens’ willingness-to-pay for t…
Reasonableness, Satisfaction, and Willingness to Pay Property Taxes
The authors explore whether citizen preferences for taxes are influenced by perceptions of the quality of government and government services. Waterford, Connecticut, was faced with a revenue crisis when the property taxes paid by a nuclear power facility in the town were significantly reduced after deregulation. On the basis of a survey of town residents, the authors find that citizens in Waterford were willing to act reasonably in response to fi…
Symposium introduction
Citizens and Resource Allocation
Collective consumption and benefit characterize many government services. Moreover, government services are mostly paid for collectively through taxes—there is little or no relationship between the taxes paid by a household and its use of a particular service. Public sector decision makers face complex budget problems with difficult solutions. Involving citizens meaningfully in these decisions has long been a conundrum. The authors teamed up with…
Citizens, budgets and performance measures
This article reports on a design for citizen identified performance measures for budgeting that seeks to overcome problems of validity and representativeness that typically exist in citizen involvement processes. This design selected participants using random sampling so that each resident had the same chance of being invited to be in one of the focus groups that worked to develop outcome measures for a set of town services. In order to assure th…
Do Debt Levels Influence State Borrowing Costs
This article reports on research into the possible interest cost penalties when state governments impose increasingly high debt levels on their citizens. The potential effect of debt levels on borrowing costs is a material one, given the large amounts of state debt outstanding. At the same time that government borrowing is heavy, the demand for government obligations also appears to be strong. The authors examine state debt levels and borrowing c…
Experimental evidence about deficit reduction strategies
Fiscal conditions and budget constraints in the United States have placed solutions to budget deficit problems at the center of the public policy debate. Preferences for deficit reduction strategies are likely to be heavily associated with particular ideologies and other demographic and economic variables. Therefore, since this study is a true randomized experiment, it provides strong evidence about the influence of question wording on deficit re…
Property Tax Information and Support for School Bond Referenda
This article reports on an experiment testing whether additional information influences support for bond referenda. Respondents were randomly assigned to treatment conditions that varied the way the potential implications of property tax increases were presented to voters. The results show a persistent negative effect of tax information on the probability of support for school bond referenda across all treatments. Specifically, the results show t…
Attachment to Government and Support for Government Debt
In this paper, we seek to improve models of support for taxes, spending and borrowing beyond income, ideology and party identification. We discuss how trust in government and willingness to pay taxes have been measured in research around the globe. We present the notion of attachment as how citizens characterize the quality of their relationship to government. We test our measure of attachment, using well-understood analogies, with a sample of ad…
Citizen perceptions of public school efficiency
Improving efficiency is the basis for important public school reforms. While there has been substantial scholarship examining the relationship between actual and perceived performance, there has been very little research examining this relationship for efficiency. We use a large and representative sample of U.S. residents and data on student achievement and public school spending to examine the relationship between actual and perceived efficiency…
The impact of demographic structure on citizen perceptions of school district efficiency
Researchers have found that elderly white voters are less supportive of school spending if they reside in a community with a high concentration of non-white school children, a finding typically attributed to growing intergenerational and ethnic conflict between older and younger generations. We test whether white voters living in high minority areas are more likely to perceive their schools as being inefficient and find evidence of such racial mi…
The Intergenerational Transmission of Policy Feedback in the United States
Do government actions, or inactions, committed decades (or centuries) ago toward a specific community influence how members of that community trust and perceive government today? Past government actions that extracted resources (a negative resource effect) and communicated an individual's place within American Society (a negative interpretative effect) may diminish trust. This paper explores this question by examining the relationship between the…
Economics (10 obras) · Political science (10 obras) · Business (8 obras) · Fiscal Policy and Economic Growth (8 obras) · Finance (6 obras) · Public economics (6 obras) · Computer Science (5 obras) · Law (5 obras) · Local Government Finance and Decentralization (5 obras) · Psychology (5 obras)