Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Voice Without Say: Why Capital-Managed Firms Aren’T (Genuinely) Participatory, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

Why are most capitalist enterprises of any size organized as authoritarian bureaucracies rather than incorporating genuine employee participation that would give the workers real authority? Even firms with employee participation programs leave virtually all decision-making power in the hands of management. The standard answer is that hierarchy is more economically efficient than any sort of genuine participation, so that participatory firms would be less productive and lose out to more traditional competitors. This answer is indefensible. After surveying the history, legal status, and varieties of employee participation, I examine and reject as question-begging the argument that the rarity of genuine …

Public Pensions And Debt In The State Of Maine, Ryan Knaus

Muskie School Capstones and Dissertations

Maine has taken important steps in recent years to reduce indebtedness and adequately fund their Public Employee Pension System (MainePERS), and is well-positioned relative to other U.S. states. The challenge for the State is to continue financing MainePERS and existing UALs with the same commitment, diligence and prudence.

An Economic Evaluation Of Primary Care Behavioral Health In Pediatrics: A Case Study, Natasha B. Gouge

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A barrier cited by primary care administrators in integrating behavioral health is financial risk. Fee-for-service billing mechanisms remain complex and there is little empirical guidance on cost-effective models. This study was an economic evaluation of an integrated care model in a pediatric private practice clinic. The study evaluated cost benefits by examining specific delivery indices such as concerns presented, time spent, billing codes used, and reimbursement received in regards to pediatric primary care visits by comparing days when an on-site Behavioral Health Consultant (BHC) was available versus Non-BHC Days. All 3 hypotheses were supported: 1) more patients were seen in …

The Underutilized Foreign Investor, Griffin Weaver

Griffin Weaver

No abstract provided.

Present At The Creation: Reflections On The Early Years Of The National Association Of Corporate Directors, Lawrence J. Trautman

Lawrence J. Trautman Sr.

Effective corporate governance is critical to the productive operation of the global economy and preservation of our way of life. Excellent governance execution is also required to achieve economic growth and robust job creation in any country. In the United States, the premier director membership organization is the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD). Now over 36 years old, NACD plays a major role in fostering excellence in corporate governance in the United States and beyond. Over the past thirty-six years NACD has grown from a mere realization of the importance of corporate governance to become the only national membership …

How To Create American Manufacturing Jobs, John D. Gleissner Esquire

John D Gleissner Esquire

No abstract provided.

Local Public Health In Financial Crises: Common Decision Drivers For Changes In Services Due To Economic Downturn, Gulzar H. Shah

Health Policy and Management Faculty Presentations

We measured the impact of the 2008-2010 economic recession on local health departments (LHDs) across the United States. Between 2008 and 2010, we conducted 3 Web-based, cross-sectional surveys of a nationally representative sample of LHDs to assess cuts to budgets, workforce, and programs. By early 2010, more than half of the LHDs (53%) were experiencing cuts to their core funding. In excess of 23 000 LHDs jobs were lost in 2008-2009. All programmatic areas were affected by cuts, and more than half of protecting the health of the public, such as monitoring health status to identify and solve community health …

A Beautiful Life: Some Lessons For Legal Scholars, F.E. Guerra-Pujol

F.E. Guerra-Pujol

The author reviews Jeremy Adelman's biography of Albert O. Hirschman (Adelman, Worldly Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O. Hirschman, Princeton University Press, 2013). In particular, the author considers three episodes in Hirschman's life that not only expose the secret life of the scholar but also offer important lessons about law and legal scholarship generally.

A Theory Without A Movement, A Hope Without A Name: The Future Of Marxism In A Post-Marxist World, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

Just as Marx's insights into capitalism have been most strikingly vindicated by the rise of neoliberalism and the near-collapse of the world economy, Marxism as social movement has become bereft of support. Is there any point in people who find Marx's analysis useful in clinging to the term "Marxism" - which Marx himself rejected -- at time when self-identified Marxist organizations and societies have collapsed or renounced the identification, and Marxism own working class constituency rejects the term? I set aside bad reasons to give on "Marxism," such as that the theory is purportedly refuted, that its adoption leads necessarily …

Will The Income-Based Repayment Program Enable Law Schools To Continue To Provide "Harvard-Style" Legal Education?, Greg Crespi

Greg Crespi

Legal education provided in the prevailing “Harvard-style” now costs students on average between $160,000 and $250,000 for their three years of study, the precise amount depending on the law school attended, the alternative employment opportunities foregone, and the amount of scholarship assistance provided. However, the median starting salary for full-time, entry-level legal positions has declined in recent years to only $60,000/year, and upwards of 45% of recent law graduates are now unable to obtain full-time legal employment, and this dismal employment situation is unlikely to significantly improve over the next few years. While the attractive job opportunities still available to …

No Longer The Sleeping Dog, The Fcpa Is Awake And Ready To Bite: Analysis Of The Increased Fcpa Enforcements, The Implications, And Recommendations For Reform, Rouzhna Nayeri

Rouzhna Nayeri

No abstract provided.

The Lawyer Rent-Seeker Myth And Public Policy, Teresa J. Schmid

Teresa J Schmid

ABSTRACT Two enduring fallacies in public policy are that lawyers are rent seekers who impair rather than stimulate the economy, and that there are too many of them. While lawyers may disagree with the first premise, they tacitly accept the second. These two fallacies have led leaders in both the political and professional arenas to adopt policies that impair access to justice. This study documents the negative effects of those policies and recommends courses of action to reverse those effects.

The Organic Beauty Industry: A Gendered Economic Review, Brianna D. Connelly

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Organic beauty has grown to a $6 billion dollar industry supplying consumers with products that align with unique social consumption preferences. This thesis explores the historical economic perspective of the traditional beauty industry and the development of the organic beauty industry. Capitalism influenced the traditional beauty industry during the pursuit for profits that lead to jeopardizing customer and environmental safety. Consumers responded to this behavior by founding an organic beauty industry that not only considered social issues, but negated gendered beauty standards in the process. Organic product efficacy has emerged as an issue that must be dealt with by regulation …

Expenditure Comparison Of Overseas, Canadian, And Domestic Nonresident Travelers To Montana: 2012, Kara Grau

Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research Publications

This report gives a comparison of overseas, Canadian and domestic visitation and spending during 2012. It includes total expenditures and average daily spending in different spending categories.

Automobiles Autarky And Authority: The Effects Of Nazi Centralized Economic Planning 1932-1942, Andrew Stinchfield

Honors Theses

This thesis examines the benefits and drawbacks of Nazi centralized economic planning. From an entirely political and economical standpoint, Hitler and the National Socialists’ highly regulated and restrictive policies were initially beneficial for Germany because they created a centralized economic vision and improved national morale. The liberal ideology of the Weimar Republic resulted in major class divisions within the nation, where laissez-faire economics left middle-citizens marginalized and at the mercy of profit-seeking big businesses. The Wall Street Crash of 1929 exposed the weaknesses of liberalism and resulted in a massive rise in political resentment. The regime accumulated power because their …

The Shadow Economy, Colin C. Williams, Friedrich Schneider

Colin C Williams

No abstract provided.

Waging War On Specialty Pharmaceutical Tiering In Pharmacy Benefit Design, Chad I. Brooker

Chad I Brooker

Specialty drugs represent a growing concern for both health insurance issuers and beneficiaries given their exceedingly high (and growing) costs—representing almost half of all drug spend by 2017. Payers have sought to reduce their specialty drug spend by sharing more of the cost of these drugs with the beneficiaries who depend on them through the creation of specialty drug tiers. This has forced some patients to choose between forgoing other needs to pay for their medications or not take them at all. While several states have sought to outlaw the use of specialty drug tiers or limit pharmaceutical OOP cost-sharing, …

Snopa And The Ppa: Do You Know What It Means For You? If Snopa (Social Networking Online Protection Act) Or Ppa (Password Protection Act) Do Not Pass, The Snooping Could Cause You Trouble, Angela Goodrum

Angela Goodrum

No abstract provided.

Patent Trolls Among Us, Kent R. Acheson

Kent R Acheson

As Acheson (2012) suggested in A Study of the Need to Change United States Patent Policy, software should not be patented, but the Intellectual Property Rights should be protected in another manner that does not entail a Copyright, Trademark, or secrecy. A new form of protection should be created based on certain criteria, such as useful life of a patent, incremental innovation, value to society, and or value to life.

Urban Parking Economics And Land Consumption: A Case Study Of New Haven, Connecticut And Cambridge, Massachusetts, Bryan P. Blanc

Honors Scholar Theses

It has become increasingly apparent that providing copious off-street parking has deleterious effects on urban form and function. This study compares parking policy in New Haven, Connecticut and Cambridge, Massachusetts that have pursued very different types of parking policies that have resulted in different outcomes in terms of land use. Since 1951, off-street parking provision has increased by nearly 400% in New Haven, meanwhile both employment and residential population have declined in the city. In contrast, off-street parking provision in Cambridge has risen around 140% since 1952, while employment and residential populations in the city have increased by 50% and …

Valuing Mom & Dad: Calculating Loss Of Parental Nurture In A Wrongful Death Action, Andrew J. Laurila

Andrew J. Laurila

No abstract provided.

Guns Of Fortune: How Guns Move To Fulfill Demand, Michael J. Coates

Senior Honors Projects

Legislators face a compelling dilemma, how can they decrease the prevalence of gun violence? Cities and States around the United States have laws intended to prevent violent criminals from acquiring and using weapons, but it remains debatable whether these laws are effective.

This study posits that guns are subject to the laws of supply and demand and the variable gun laws in states across the country decreases the effectiveness of local and state gun legislation. In short, guns are trafficked across state lines to meet demand in states with stricter gun laws.

Data for the study was collected from the …

Terrorism And Illicit Drug Prices: Does A Drug-Terror Nexus Exist? A Regression Analysis Of The Relationship Between Illicit Drug Prices And Terrorist Events, Abigail Burnette

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

Since the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, global counterterrorism policies have increasingly targeted terrorist financing sources. These increased financial counterterrorism regulations have diverted the traditional sources and methods of terrorist funding, including illicit drug revenue streams. The purpose of this paper is to measure the relationship between terrorist events (both domestic and transnational) and the prices of cocaine and heroin. Using regression analysis, I find that the annual U.S. illicit drug prices of heroin are statistically significant with domestic and transnational terrorist events. These results suggest that future counterterrorism policies should continue to be used in …

Idaho Land Use/Regulation & Off Road Highway Vehicle Use, Johnny Whittemore, Raul Ramirez, Kellen Hill, David Welsh, Jeff Dee

College of Business and Economics Poster Presentations

In the last twenty-five years, Idaho has noticed a dramatic increase in the usage of motorized vehicles in Idaho’s backcountry. This land has mass appeal for its remote wilderness qualities that include hiking, fishing, hunting, and other recreational activities. To accommodate the increased amount of off-road vehicles, Idaho’s government agencies have found it difficult to designate cohesive usages of the land. With the expansion of ATV use in Idaho backcountry, ecological damages have progressively gotten worse. In order to address these damages, in 2005 travel management plans were implemented for future ATV usage. Because these restrictions were put in place, …

Inconvenient Truth About Boise Public Transportation, Benjamin Case, Kellen Hill, Lexy Leahy, Morgan Porter, Jesse Sonoda

College of Business and Economics Poster Presentations

The Boise-Nampa metropolitan area is growing rapidly, and its transportation system must expand to account for this growth. However, in order for a public transportation system to be effective, citizens must have both the ability and the incentive to make use of it. Our research will focus on the demand for public transit in the Boise-Nampa metropolitan area. First, we will determine current ridership on the existing public transit system, frequency of use, reasons for using mass transit over other alternative modes of transportation, and what attributes of the system make it an attractive option. Next, we will determine what …

Critical Tax Policy: A Pathway To Reform?, Nancy J. Knauer

Nancy J. Knauer

The Global Recession of 2008 and ensuing austerity measures have renewed the urgency surrounding the call for fundamental tax reform. Before embarking on fundamental tax reform, this Article proposes adding a critical lens to existing US tax policy to ensure that any proposals for change are informed, transparent, and responsive to the needs (and abilities) of individual taxpayers. This Article makes the case for a specific method of inquiry – Critical Tax Policy – that is built on the articulation of difference rather than false assumptions of sameness. Critical Tax Policy incorporates the insights of a growing international tax equity …

The Economy Rules: An Analysis Of The Ever-Shifting Portrayal Of Attorneys In Popular Culture, Neely M. Peden

Neely M Peden

There has most definitely been a shift in the view of elite professionals within modern pop culture. Attorneys especially have come to face “anti-establishment” movement by popular culture. Those professions which used to be revered are now examples of ill-morals and ill-behavior. Indeed, popular culture goes out of its way to make villains out of attorneys by showing unprincipled characters in legal television shows or by churning out movies that revolve around attorneys whose lives and morals are so corrupt that they need to go through some sort of personal tragedy to be redeemed. It is this paper’s contention that …

What’S Age Got To Do With It? Supreme Court Appointees And The Long Run Location Of The Supreme Court Median Justice, Matthew L. Spitzer

Matthew L Spitzer

For approximately the past 40 years Republican Presidents have appointed younger Justices than have Democratic Presidents. Depending on how one does the accounting, the average age difference will vary, but will not go away. This Article posits that Republicans appointing younger justices than Democrats may have caused a rightward shift in the Supreme Court. We use computer simulations to show that if the trend continues the rightward shift will likely increase. We also to produce some very rough estimates of the size of the ideological shift, contingent on the size of the age differential. In addition, we show that the …

Negative Externalities And Subprime Auto Financing: Time To Let The Hanging Paragraph Go(2), Chunlin Leonhard

Chunlin Leonhard

Economists generally agree that when private transactions generate negative externalities (i.e. unintended harmful byproduct), government intervention is potentially necessary. Negative externalities are considered socially inefficient because they destroy market supply and demand equilibrium. The existence of negative externalities is therefore one of those rare occasions when government intervention in private transactions is justified. It follows that when the government does choose to intervene, its goal should be to remedy, not to encourage, negative externalities. This article identifies one bankruptcy rule, commonly known as the Hanging Paragraph in the Bankruptcy Code, 11 U.S.C. § 1325(a)(9), that violates the basic principle of …

Displacement In D.C.: A Case Study Of Gentrification And Granger-Causality In Our Nation's Capitol, Will Lawrence

Honors Projects

This study looks at the causal forces behind the social relocation phenomenon known as gentrification. Location theory posits that ever increasing commute times coupled with falling crime rates in the city-center incentivize the high-income population to move from the suburbs to the city, driving up housing prices and displacing the low-income, original residents who live in the city. This paper applies location theory to Washington, D.C. in an attempt to explain the ongoing gentrification process through the displacement of original residents. City-wide data at the neighborhood level for housing prices and crime rates are analyzed to explore the causal relationships …