A Computer Simulation Model of Municipal Resource Allocation

This report contains a description of a particular kind of governmental decision making “ the decisional behavior connected with municipal operating budgets. The theory is stated in the language of a computer program. The model of governmental problem solving is applied to the cities of Cleveland, Detroit, and Pittsburgh. The Model, with appropriate parameter estimates, is used to reproduce operating budget decisions in the three cities* In addition various naive models are tested and then compared with our decision Model (Section 6). Analysis of model residuals (Section 7) and a sensitivity analysis of some model parameters (Section 10) • is used to study "unprogrammed" aspects of budgetary behavior. The formal Model (presented in Section 4) is also related to various theories of individual and organizational behavior in Section 9. The behavioral antecedents of the model are discussed in Section 5* Implications o r the study for political research are touched on in Section 11 and our positive model forms the basis for a normative discussion of municipal resource allocation in Section 12.