Abstract
We introduce a two-stage theoretical framework of fire services that justifies the status of response time as a factor input. In the first stage, the provincial government distributes a budget to its cities, resulting in varied numbers of firefighters and fire engines in each city. In the second stage, each city fire department places its fire stations at spatially optimal locations that minimize expected response times. When a fire occurs, the outputs from these two stages are actualized into dispatch level, response time, and suppression time. These intermediate outputs are then transformed into inputs for producing service output, which is measured in terms of fire spread. Using a data set of 49,000 fire dispatches that occurred in Gyeonggi Province, South Korea in 2014-2018, we estimate a set of models for the above outputs. We find evidence for increasing returns to population scale, while empirically showing that response time and suppression time are indeed inputs for the production of fire services.
Advisor
Burnell, Jim
Second Advisor
Frazier, Marian
Department
Economics; Mathematics
Recommended Citation
Hwang, Hyong-gu, "A Theory of Fire Service Provision: With an empirical analysis of response time, suppression time, and service output" (2020). Senior Independent Study Theses. Paper 8890.
https://openworks.wooster.edu/independentstudy/8890
Disciplines
Economic Theory | Other Economics | Public Economics
Keywords
Fire services, Production, Response time, Suppression time, Service output
Publication Date
2020
Degree Granted
Bachelor of Arts
Document Type
Senior Independent Study Thesis Exemplar
© Copyright 2020 Hyong-gu Hwang