Digital Commons Network^™

Ideology And Economic Change, Jared Rubin, Debin Ma

ESI Working Papers

This paper revisits the old theses of the contrasting paths to modernization between Japan and China. It develops a new analytical framework regarding the role of ideology and ideological change—Meiji Japan’s decisive turn towards the West pitted against Qing China’s lethargic response to Western imperialism—as the key driver behind these contrasting paths. Our framework and historical narrative highlight the contrast between Tokugawa Japan’s feudal, decentralized political regime and Qing China’s centralized bureaucratic system as a key determinant driving the differential patterns of ideological realignment. We argue that the 1894-95 Japanese naval victory over China could not be justified under the …

Report Cards: Parental Preferences, Information And School Choice In Haiti, Michael Borger, Gregory Elacqua, Isabel Jacas, Christopher Neilson, Anne Sofie Westh Olsen

Discussion Papers

This paper studies school choice and information frictions in Haiti. Through a randomized control trial, we assess the impact of disclosing school-level test score information on learning outcomes, prices, and market shares. We find evidence that in markets where information was disclosed, students attending private schools increased test scores. The results also suggest private schools with higher baseline test scores increased their market share as well as their fees when the disclosure policy is implemented. While prices and test scores were not significantly correlated in the baseline survey, they exhibited a significant and positive correlation in treatment markets after information …

Southern Nevada Regional Industrial Study, Brookings Mountain West, Center For Business And Economic Research, Transportation Research Center

Policy Briefs and Reports

Recognizing the ongoing need to diversify the Southern Nevada economy, in 2023 GOED commissioned Brookings Mountain West, the UNLV Center for Business and Economic Research, and the UNLV Transportation Research Center to evaluate how Southern Nevada can leverage its geography and connectivity to neighboring states and metros at the megapolitan level to pursue industrial opportunities in the face of shifting global supply chains, diminishing developable land, the need for efficient management of the regional water supply, and the availability of unprecedented federal resources to support clean energy development, manufacturing, electrification of transportation systems, and supply-chain resiliency.

The study builds on …

Policies For Place: How To Make Sustainable Investments In Communities, Kathleen Bolter, Timothy J. Bartik, Brad J. Hershbein, Michelle Miller-Adams, Lee Adams, Brian J. Asquith, Alfonso Hernandez, Kyle Huisman, Iryna V. Lendel, Gabrielle Pepin, Bridget F. Timmeney, Beth C. Truesdale, Yulya Truskinovsky

Reports

No abstract provided.

Employment, Income, And Poverty In Kalamazoo City Core Neighborhoods, Val Klomparens

Reports

This report employs a traditional methodology using American Community Survey data to examine employment, income, and poverty in three neighborhoods in Kalamazoo, Michigan: Eastside, Northside, and Edison. These neighborhoods are studied with an emphasis on eligibility status for the Distressed Area Recompete Pilot Program, administered through the U.S. Economic Development Administration. Eastside residents are unique in that a larger share earn income through wages or employment than do Michigan residents, yet their median income falls below those at the county and state levels in a statistically significant way. The Edison neighborhood is characterized by greater income inequality than the other …

Competing For Innovation: A Case Study Of Knoxville And Similar Metropolitan Areas, Lucille G. Marret

Baker Scholar Projects

Knoxville competes with other mid-sized metropolitan areas for economic development and business attraction at the national level. Cities such as Greenville, SC, Huntsville, AL, and Ann Arbor, MI have similar resources and attributes to Knoxville, yet they are consistently surpassing Knoxville in business attraction and expansion. It is necessary for policy makers to understand what factors are contributing to underperformance in order to better support Knoxville’s efforts to create an innovation fund. Comparing available assets and access to funding for each MSA reveals that Knoxville has the necessary resources through the University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory to …

The Choice Of Technology In Economic Development, Lei Wen, Haiwen Zhou

Economics Faculty Publications

The impact of capital accumulation on job creation is an important and interesting issue in economic development. This model provides a general-equilibrium framework for studying technology choice with unemployment in a developing economy based on micro-foundations. Unemployment in the urban sector results from the existence of efficiency wages. Manufacturing firms engage in oligopolistic competition and choose technologies to maximise profits. A more advanced technology uses more capital and less labour. In the steady state, an increase in the amount of capital induces firms to choose more advanced technologies and the wage rate increases. While a higher capital stock always induces …

Governing Smart Cities As Knowledge Commons - Introduction, Chapter 1 & Conclusion, Brett M. Frischmann, Michael J. Madison, Madelyn Sanfilippo

Book Chapters

Smart city technology has its value and its place; it isn’t automatically or universally harmful. Urban challenges and opportunities addressed via smart technology demand systematic study, examining general patterns and local variations as smart city practices unfold around the world. Smart cities are complex blends of community governance institutions, social dilemmas that cities face, and dynamic relationships among information and data, technology, and human lives. Some of those blends are more typical and common. Some are more nuanced in specific contexts. This volume uses the Governing Knowledge Commons (GKC) framework to sort out relevant and important distinctions. The framework grounds …

The Search For Spices And Souls: Catholic Missions As Colonial State In The Philippines, Dean C. Dulay

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

A growing literature posits that colonial Christian missions brought schooling to the colonies, improving human capital in ways that persist to this day. But in some places they did much more. This paper argues that colonial Catholic missions in the Philippines functioned as state-builders, establishing law and order and building fiscal and infrastructural capacities in territories they controlled. The mission-as-state was the result of a bargain between the Catholic missions and the Spanish colonial government: missionaries converted the population and engaged in state-building, whereas the colonial government reaped the benefits of state expansion while staying in the capital. Exposure to …

Bridging Research And Practice To Achieve Community Prosperity, Kathleen Bolter, Michelle Miller-Adams, Timothy J. Bartik, Brad J. Hershbein, Kyle Huisman, Bridget F. Timmeney, Brian J. Asquith, Gabrielle Pepin, Lee Adams, Jessica Brown, Gerrit Anderson, Allison Colosky

Reports

No abstract provided.

The Evolution Of The Southern Nevada Healthcare Economy: Building The Unlv Academic Health Center, The Lincy Institute

Lincy Institute Events

With the successful launch of the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine at UNLV and the completion of its medical education building, Southern Nevada is positioned to expand its healthcare infrastructure - and its healthcare economy - to create a comprehensive, integrated healthcare system to serve our fast-growing community. As UNLV moves forward with the development of an integrated academic health center within the Las Vegas Medical District, understanding the economic and social benefits of such a transformational project is important to stakeholders throughout the region.

The Lincy Institute hosted representatives of Tripp Umbach - the nation's leading consultant on community …

Executive Summary: Driving The Southern Nevada Health Economy Forward, Tripp Umbach

Policy Briefs and Reports

The University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) plans to develop an integrated academic health center within the Las Vegas Medical District (LVMD).1 The academic health center includes UNLV’s five health science schools and mental and behavioral health, which is distributed among several colleges (medicine, liberal arts, urban affairs, and education) in the university. University Medical Center (UMC), a major teaching hospital, will also be an important driver of the academic health center. For the purposes of this report, UNLV’s medical and health science entities along with UMC are referred to collectively as the UNLV Academic Health Center.

Driving The Southern Nevada Health Economy Forward: Benefits Of A Transformational Unlv Academic Health Center, Tripp Umbach

Policy Briefs and Reports

The University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) plans to develop an integrated academic health center within the Las Vegas Medical District (LVMD). The academic health center includes UNLV’s five health science schools and mental and behavioral health, which is distributed among several colleges (medicine, liberal arts, urban affairs, and education) in the university. University Medical Center (UMC), a major teaching hospital, will also be an important driver of the academic health center. For the purposes of this report, UNLV’s medical and health science entities along with UMC are referred to collectively as the UNLV Academic Health Center. Additional academic health …

Fostering Resident-Centric Economic Development, Ellen Harpel

External Papers and Reports

No abstract provided.

Nevada Economic Development And Public Policy 2022-2026: A Sustainable Future For All Nevadans, The Lincy Institute, Brookings Mountain West

Policy Briefs and Reports

This report evaluates economic development efforts in the State of Nevada since the 2011 publication of Unify, Regionalize, Diversify: An Economic Development Agenda for Nevada; assesses demographic and economic trends for Nevada and its regions; examines how state and federal actions since the onset of COVID-19 can position Nevada and its regions to address long-standing economic, educational, and social deficits; and offers policy recommendations to be implemented in the next four years to facilitate a sustainable future for all Nevadans.

American Rescue Plan Act (Arpa): City And County Budget Allocations In The Mountain West, Katie M. Gilbertson, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Economic Development & Workforce

This fact sheet details how city and county governments within the Mountain West states of Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah allocated funds from the State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund (SLFRF) portion of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). Brookings Metro in partnership with the National League of Cities and the National Association of Counties created the “Local Government ARPA Investment Tracker” to display how communities across the country allocate this financial resource. This interactive site allows budget information from cities and counties to be added as such decisions are made.

Economic Impact Of The Montcalm County Wind Energy Project, Jim Robey

Reports

No abstract provided.

The Rise Of Southern Nevada As A Cluster For Metropolitan Transit Technology Innovations, Arthur C. Nelson

Policy Briefs and Reports

Southern Nevada is emerging as the nation’s leader in private sector-driven innovations in transportation technologies. From the humble beginnings of a monorail system serving a portion of major hotel and gaming venues along the Las Vegas Strip, now supplemented by an array of people movers, Southern Nevada continues to attract transit innovations in tunneling, Hyperloop, and driverless vehicle delivery technologies. The region may soon anchor a high-speed rail system connecting Southern Nevada to Los Angeles. The purpose of this briefing paper is to frame the nature of this emerging transportation cluster and the opportunities this creates for Southern Nevada to …

South Haven Community Health Assessment, Jim Robey, George Erickcek, Kathleen Bolter, Gerrit Anderson, Emily Boyle

Reports

No abstract provided.

The Partition Of Production Between Households And Markets, Christopher Colburn, Haiwen Zhou

Economics Faculty Publications

The process of industrialization was accompanied by the switch from household production to firm production. The industrialization process was also a process of population growth, the appearance of general-purpose technologies, and the expansion of international trade. This paper studies the partition of production between households and firms in an analytically tractable general equilibrium model with a continuum of goods. We show that population growth, development of general-purpose technologies, and the opening of international trade increase the percentage of goods produced by firms. However, with the appearance of a technology biased toward home production, the percentage of goods produced by households …

The Kind Of Solution A Smart City Is: Knowledge Commons And Postindustrial Pittsburgh, Michael J. Madison

Book Chapters

This case study brings new attention to a critical but under-appreciated dimension of so-called “smart” cities: how smart city governance builds and relies on institutionalized sharing of data, information, and other forms of knowledge across all sectors of public administration. Those smart city practices are referred to here as knowledge commons and systematized using the Governing Knowledge Commons (GKC) research framework. That framework extends and modifies Ostrom’s research tradition as to community-based resource governance. As with other GKC-focused research, this work relies on a qualitative case study. It draws a detailed, context-specific portrait of a smart city as knowledge commons …

Urbanization Policy And Economic Development: A Quantitative Analysis Of China's Differential Hukou Reforms, Wen-Tai Hsu, Lin Ma

Research Collection School Of Economics

The household registration system (hukou system) in China has hampered rural-urban migration by posing large migration friction. The system has been gradually relaxed in the past few decades, but the reforms have been differential in city size. We find a striking contrast in migration patterns between years 2005 and 2015; rural people tended to move more to large cities in 2005, but more to small- and medium-sized cities in 2015. We calibrate a spatial quantitative model to the world economy in both years with China divided into rural, mega-city, and other-city regions. We find that alternative urbanization policies that are …

Place-Based Jobs Policies: We Need To Boost Employment Rates In Distressed Places, But: One Size Does Not Fit All, Timothy J. Bartik

Presentations

No abstract provided.

Small Business Equity In Nevada, 2021, Ally M. Beckwith, Olivia K. Cheche, William E. Brown Jr.

Economic Development & Workforce

This fact sheet highlights data on minority and women-owned small businesses in Nevada in 2021, as originally reported by the Small Business Equity Tool. This tool examines the representation of Black, Asian, Latino, minority, and women-owned small businesses in the largest metropolitan areas and cities across the United States.

A Moment Of Opportunity: Strategies For Inclusive Economic Growth, Michelle Miller-Adams, Timothy J. Bartik, Brad J. Hershbein

Upjohn Institute Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

2020 Most Dynamic Micropolitans In The Mountain West, Kelliann Beavers, Katie M. Gilbertson, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Cities & Metros

This fact sheet draws from the “Most Dynamic Micropolitans 2020” report released by Heartland Forward, “an institute for economic renewal […] with a mission to improve economic performance in the center of the United States.” In this report, Heartland Forward offers the Most Dynamic Micropolitan Index to analyze the economies of smaller communities for a total of 515 micropolitan areas nationally. This fact sheet includes information on job growth, annual pay growth, and personal income growth for micropolitan areas in the Mountain West region.

Rethinking The Functions Of Regional Economic Communities: Why African Small States Join And Remain In Sub-Regional Entities, Cliff Kodero

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation advances new arguments about regional integration in Africa. It sheds light on the roles of regional economic communities (RECs) for small-economy states in Africa by examining the benefits and drawbacks of participating in such regional groups for both the small states themselves and their ruling regimes. The study suggests that RECs, rather than being agents of economic development, facilitate regime-boosting agendas of neopatrimonial regimes, promote a sense of (false) sovereignty, and entrench the political elite’s capture of the states.

The significance is threefold. First, it suggests that RECs provide an extension of neopatrimonial networks, which expand state-capture by …

America's Best Small Cities In The Mountain West, Katie M. Gilbertson, Kelliann Beavers, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr., Fatma Nasoz

Cities & Metros

This fact sheet reports the rankings of small cities in the Mountain West, based on perceived desirability for living, visiting, and investment. Resonance Consultancy’s “America’s Best Small Cities 2020,” report examines six key metrics: “People,” “Place,” “Product,” “Programming,” “Promotion,” and “Prosperity.” 11 small cities in the Mountain West are ranked within the top 100 in the United States.

2021 Business Tax Climate In The Mountain West, Katie M. Gilbertson, Peter Grema, Saha Salahi, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Economic Development & Workforce

This Fact Sheet summarizes a report by Jared Walczak and Janelle Cammenga of The Tax Foundation titled “2021 State Business Tax Climate Index.” The index compares how states structure tax systems to bolster state business activity and investments, and possible routes for future improvement. Scores and rankings are offered for the Mountain West states of Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah.

The Case For Public Investment In Higher Pay For New York State Home Care Workers: Estimated Costs And Savings, Isaac Jabola-Carolus, Stephanie Luce, Ruth Milkman

Publications and Research

This report explores one potential solution to the mounting home care labor shortage in New York State: substantially raising wages for the state's home care workers. The analysis presents detailed projections, based on the best available data, of the economic effects of such an intervention, estimating the costs and benefits that would result. We find that public funding to raise home care wages would require significant resources, but those costs would be surpassed by the resulting savings, tax revenues, and economic spillover effects. The net economic gain would total at least $3.7 billion. Lifting wages would also help fill nearly …