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An earlier study found that certain Minnesota state aid programs stimulated city property tax levies to a high degree. If this is accurate, it suggests potentially serious problems with state property tax relief efforts. This article re-examines this question and finds that most aid programs have little direct effect on property tax levies. However, certain aid formulas that reduce the effective price of property taxes do indirectly stimulate property taxes. Therefore, states need to be careful in designing aid programs intended to reduce property taxes.

The use of improved storage procedures for route generation for demand actuated systems is necessary for practical implementation of many routing systems. Neighborhood Storage is a method of storing the system information which requires a covering to be generated for a number of sets of points which are generated by the method. The set covering problem is important to the overall practical implementation of the method. The method requires M coverings to be generated for each application. Thus, computational efficiency is of considerable importance in obtaining the required coverings. The problem is defined and formulated as a set covering problem. Solutions are carried out for a number of examples and the results for the optimum covering are reported. An algorithm is then presented for obtaining a suboptimum covering with considerable efficiency in computation and overall data manipulation. The example results are also included. The algorithm presented is applicable to any (V;A,B) modeled in R2.

Cities’ reliance on property taxes has declined since the 1970s. This shift has been attributed to state rules enacted in the wake of the tax revolt and intended to curb property taxes. The extent to which state limits on property taxes have affected their cities’ revenues is unclear. This study examines competing explanations for the change in city property tax reliance among states. Pooled cross-sectional time series analysis is used to assess how much state limits or other factors account for changes in property tax reliance over time. The results of this analysis challenge state limitations’ long-term effects.

This article updates a review submitted to the Department of Health (DH) in the light of the House of Commons Health Select Committee report on Elder Abuse. The review drew on recent research about elder abuse in the UK, including research published after the Select Committee's hearings, that made specific recommendations for areas of development in research and policy. The aim of this paper is to address specific questions posed by the Select Committee in light of developments up to mid 2005.

Corporate casino gambling has expanded from being legal in only two U.S. states (Nevada and New Jersey) in the late 1980s to 12 states in 2006. As a result, the annual gambling revenue realized by the casino industry has grown from $9 billion in 1991 to over $32 billion in 2006. The growth of gambling in many states has not been matched by a corresponding increase in academic research on casino gambling. To shed more light on casino gambling and state budgets, this research examines state education spending following the introduction of corporate casino gambling and attempts to answer the following question: Does gambling revenue earmarked for education spending displace funds usually spent on these programs?

This study examines the fiscal impact of tax and expenditure limitations (TELs) on state spending by expanding the popular, narrow view of examining TELs and taking into account the scope, purpose, and restrictiveness of individual state TELs. Using an efficient estimator, called fixed effect vector decomposition I employ a set of panel data from all fifty states for the period 1997 - 2006. While a number of studies have been inconclusive about the impact of state TELs on spending, this study finds that having a TEL is not what matters. Rather, the impact of TELs depends on the actual features of the individual TEL. Further, TELs impact different categories of spending in different ways and, under the right conditions, TELs can have the desired impact and effectively reduce state spending.

Since the 1978 adoption of Proposition 13 California’s fiscal conditions have steadily deteriorated. This article questions whether this fiscal deterioration is due to a lack of budget affordability or of institutional ineffectiveness. In examining the institutional ineffectiveness of California’s budget system the article focuses on: (1) general revenue mobilization, (2) expenditure mandates in education, and (3) legislative party divisions in face of supermajority requirements. To this end, the article develops a pre-post regression model that analyzes the factors that influenced the state budget balances. The article finds that California’s deteriorating fiscal conditions are strongly influenced by the declining effective tax rate. The study also finds that increases in education spending are a statistically significant factor, but finds mixed support for the argument that political divisions drive California’s budget deficits.

The purpose of this article is to compare Anglo‐American cataloguing codes and practices for description over the past 150 years and assess the contribution that they made to International Standard Bibliographic Description (ISBD).

The major international codes, and those of major British libraries, are examined point by point, using as a basis the main areas of description as outlined in AACR2. Cataloguing textbooks are also referred to when appropriate.

The article finds that general order of elements has been remarkably constant throughout the period, most variation being seen in the physical description area. Primacy of the title page as a source of information is long established. Publisher's name was often of minor importance, and in public libraries physical description was greatly reduced. It is clear from wording that codes often adopted rules from one another, and evidently some libraries made a great attempt to adopt the latest thinking. Solutions to some problems evolved gradually over a long period. Even some apparently minor aspects of punctuation have a long pedigree. ISBD clearly drew on a long‐established consensus as far as possible.

In revising AACR2 it is important to be able to see how we have reached where we are now, and in particular to avoid repetition of past mistakes. In an increasingly international publishing environment it is vital to solve the problem of multiple places of publication.

This subject has never been tackled in this way before, and the findings are timely for the ongoing revision of AACR2.