An analysis of returns to scale in public production, with an application to fire protection
区分了公共生产中服务品质、政府活动水平和人口规模三个维度的规模收益，并定义了范围经济，以消防为例用超越对数成本函数发现范围经济、品质规模收益递增和人口规模收益不变。
This paper analyzes returns to scale in public production. Existing studies fail to differentiate among three dimensions of scale: service quality, the level of governmental activity, and the number of people served. A fourth dimension, economies of scope, is need for agencies that provide multiple services. This paper provides a formal definition of returns to scale for each dimension. This framework is applied to fire protection, using a translog cost function with two services, fire prevention and fire suppression. The results indicate economies of scope, increasing returns to quality scale, and constant returns to population scale.