Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration Commons^™

The Perfect Storm Of Patent Reform?, Ron D. Katznelson

Ron D. Katznelson

No abstract provided.

Determinants Of Historic And Cultural Landmark Designation: Why We Preserve What We Preserve, Douglas S. Noonan, Douglas J. Krupka

Douglas S. Noonan

There is much interest among cultural economists in assessing the effects of heritage preservation policies. There has been less interest in modeling the policy choices made in historic and cultural landmark preservation. This paper builds an economic model of a landmark designation that highlights the tensions between the interests of owners of cultural amenities and the interests of the neighboring community. We perform empirical tests by estimating a discrete choice model for landmark preservation using data from Chicago, combining the Chicago Historical Resources Survey of over 17,000 historic structures with property sales, Census, and other geographic data. The data allow …

Vote For Charity's Sake, Aaron S. Edlin, Andrew Gelman, Noah Kaplan

Aaron Edlin

In a battleground state like Colorado or New Mexico, voting in the presidential election may be equivalent to giving $30,000 - $50,000 to others in expected value, and as such is an extremely efficient form of charity.

Quashing The Financial Firestorm, Aaron S. Edlin

Aaron Edlin

Start the financial rescue with containment, establish unlimited deposit insurance and continuous access to funds, then move to a well thought-out plan to quash the financial flames.

The Dtv Coupon Program: A Boon To Retailers, Not Consumers, Scott J. Wallsten

Scott J. Wallsten

No abstract provided.

Empowering The Public Health Service, Louis Graham

Louis F Graham

Testimony For Fcc En Banc Hearing At Carnegie Mellon University On Broadband And The Digital Future, Scott J. Wallsten

Scott J. Wallsten

No abstract provided.

Bridging Politics And Science, Carl E. Marklund

Carl Marklund

Dissertation Summary In this dissertation I have tried to map how the concept of “social engineering” has been used from its inception in the early 1890s to the beginning of its decline in the late 1940s. The study concentrates upon the 1930s. In particular, I have asked who used this concept, in what contexts, and against which adversaries. I have taken most of my material from Sweden and the USA since both of these countries have been seen as examples of successful “organization of modernity.” And social engineering is indeed often taken to be exactly that—an attempt at organizing modernity.

Designing A Successful Pbrn In Public Health: Key Concepts, Glen P. Mays, Sharla A. Smith

Glen Mays

Successful public health practice-based research networks (PBRNs) will require organizational, financial, and intellectual resources that allow practitioners and researchers to mount relevant studies in real-world public health settings. This brief outlines characteristics likely to be important to the success of public health PBRNs, based on the experience of PBRNs in other practice settings

Understanding International Broadband Comparisons, Scott J. Wallsten

Scott J. Wallsten

No abstract provided.

Reverse Auctions And Universal Telecommunications Service: Lessons From Global Experience, Scott J. Wallsten

Scott J. Wallsten

The United States now spends around $7 billion on universal service programs—subsidies intended to ensure that the entire country has access to telecommunications services. Most of this money supports telecommunications service in “high cost” (primarily rural) areas, and the High Cost fund is growing quickly. In response to this growth, policymakers are considering using reverse auctions, or bids for the minimum subsidy, as a way to reduce expenditures. While the U.S. has not yet distributed funds for universal service programs using reverse auctions, the method has been used widely. First, reverse auctions are akin to standard government procurement procedures, which …

Finding Order In Complexity: A Typology Of Local Public Health Delivery Systems, Glen Mays

Glen Mays

Public health decision-makers and researchers currently lack an evidence-based framework for describing, classifying, and comparing public health delivery systems based on their organizational components, operational characteristics, and division of responsibility. Related typologies developed in the health services sector have proven extremely valuable for policy and administrative decision-making as well as for ongoing research. Performance assessment, quality improvement, and accreditation activities are now blossoming in public health—adding urgency to the need for classification and comparison frameworks. This brief describes a newly-developed empirical typology for local public health systems and highlights its policy and managerial applications.

Kansas In The Great Depression: Work Relief, The Dole, And Rehabilitation. By Peter Fearon. Columbia And London: University Of Missouri Press, 2007. Pp. Xv, 316. $44.95., Joshua L. Rosenbloom

Joshua L. Rosenbloom

The provision of welfare in the United States was transformed in the 1930s as county-based relief efforts collapsed under the burden of massive and sustained unemployment. The system of federal-state partnership that emerged in its place developed less through systematic and conscious planning than as the accidental result of a process of trial and error driven by the interaction between federal government officials and their counterparts in the states. In Kansas in the Great Depression Peter Fearon offers a careful examination of how efforts to address the pressing needs of the unemployed evolved in one state, Kansas, over the course …

A Comparative Analysis Of Mandated Private Pension Arrangements, Mark Hyde

Mark Hyde

Abstract Purpose – According to one influential set of arguments, the privatization of public pensions has been informed by neoliberalism, and has thus been an integral element of a broader program of welfare retrenchment, which is inconsistent with social cohesion. The paper aims to take issue with this negative characterization of pensions privatization. Design/methodology/approach – The argument is illustrated by a cross-national comparative analysis of the principal design features of 32 mandated private pension arrangements. Findings – The market orientation of mandated private pension arrangements is generally ambivalent. Whilst the architects of these arrangements have embraced market principles, they have …

Cele Strategii Lizbońskiej W Regionalnych Programach Operacyjnych, Justyna Sokołowska-Woźniak, Dariusz Woźniak

Dariusz Woźniak

One of the most important policy issues in many parts of the world is the transformation of economies into knowledge driven economies The concept of knowledge economy is given the highest priority also in the European Union’s socio-economic agenda (the Lisbon Strategy launched in 2000 and renewed in 2005). The purpose of this paper is to present how Lisbon Strategy influences the allocation of cohesion funds aimed at Polish regional development. The article consists of three parts. First section reviews the goals of the Lisbon Strategy. In the second part the regional operational programmess for Voivodships are described. The third …

Space Settlements, Property Rights, And International Law: Could A Lunar Settlement Claim The Lunar Real Estate It Needs To Survive?, Alan Wasser, Douglas Jobes

Alan Wasser

The settlement of space and the expansion of the habitat of humanity beyond Earth will benefit all mankind but will be astronomically expensive. Private enterprise would do it if there were a sufficient profit potential, something only Lunar and Martian real estate is valuable enough to provide. Utilization of this tremendous potential value as an incentive has been prevented by the mistaken assumption that the 1967 Outer Space Treaty's prohibition of "national appropriation" and requirement of national supervision of private activities prohibit private property in space. This paper attempts to demonstrate, by expert legal consensus, that the 1967 Outer Space …

Climate Change And Freshwater Resources, Noah D. Hall, Bret B. Stuntz, Robert H. Abrams

Noah D Hall

The Earth’s climate is warming. This is the unequivocal conclusion of climate scientists. Despite the complexities of climatology, certain consistent trends emerge with implications for water availability: as the world gets warmer, it will experience increased regional variability in precipitation, with more frequent heavy precipitation events and more susceptibility to drought. These simple facts will have a profound impact on freshwater resources throughout the United States, as the warmer climate will reduce available water supplies and increase water demand. Unfortunately, current water law and policy are not up to the new challenges of climate change and resulting pressures on freshwater …

From Brown To Busing, Elizabeth Cascio, Nora Gordon, Ethan Lewis, Sarah Reber

Nora Gordon

Brown v. Board of Education had little immediate effect on the dual system of education in the South; by the early 1970s, however, Southern schools were the most racially integrated in the country. This paper uses newly assembled and uniquely comprehensive data to document how different types of Southern school districts made this transition. Controlling for other factors, we find larger districts were more likely to be under court supervision both early and ever; over time the enrollment threshold for court supervision fell. Poorer districts—which stood to lose larger federal grants if they failed to desegregate—were particularly likely to desegregate …

The Economics Of Pacific Bell V. Linkline Communications, Scott J. Wallsten

Scott J. Wallsten

No abstract provided.

Risks, Farmers’ Suicides And Agrarian Crisis In India: Is There A Way Out?, Srijit Mishra

Srijit Mishra

Poor returns to cultivation and absence of non-farm opportunities are indicative of the larger socio-economic malaise in rural India. This is accentuated by the multiple risks that the farmer faces – yield, price, input, technology and credit among others. The increasing incidence of farmers’ suicides is symptomatic of a larger crisis, which is much more widespread. Risk mitigation strategies should go beyond credit. Long term strategies requires more stable income from agriculture, and more importantly, from non-farm sources. Private credit and input markets need to be regulated. A challenge for the technological and financial gurus is to provide innovative products …

On Being Stuck: Looking For The Limits Of Ethics In The Built Environment, Robert Kirkman, Douglas S. Noonan

Douglas S. Noonan

We seek here to lay the groundwork for a multi-disciplinary inquiry into one aspect of the phenomenology of moral experience, which is a general project of elucidating what it is like for people to make ethical decisions in particular contexts. Taking urban and suburban environments as the context for decision making, we focus in particular on the common human experience of being stuck. Just as a person can get physically stuck while trying to crawl through a hole that is too small, people can get ethically stuck when some feature of their relationship with their context blocks or deflects their …

Empowerment Zones, Neighborhood Change And Owner-Occupied Housing, Douglas J. Krupka, Douglas S. Noonan

Douglas S. Noonan

This paper examines the effects of a generous, spatially-targeted economic development policy (the federal Empowerment Zone program) on local neighborhood characteristics and on the neighborhood quality of life, taking into account the interactions amongst the policy, changes in neighborhood demographics and neighborhood housing stock. Urban economic theory posits that housing prices in a small area should increase as quality of life increases, because people will be more willing to pay to live in the area, but these changes in prices and quality of life will also affect the demographics of the population through sorting and the housing stock through reinvestment. …

On Building Clusters Versus Leveraging Synergies In The Design Of Innovation Policy For Developing Economies, Edward J. Feser

Edward J Feser

This paper argues there are two broad ways policymakers might use industry cluster concepts to inform the design of regional innovation policy. The first, and clearly dominant approach, is to view identified technology-based clusters as targets for growth strategies, i.e., to nurture the growth of selected groups of innovative industries and research strengths in a limited set of regions as a means of increasing levels of innovation economy-wide (termed the cluster building approach). The second is to use cluster ideas to reorient development strategies so that they leverage synergies among businesses and non-market institutions, thus improving innovation rates (termed the …

"Planejamento Territorial Da Integração Regional Sul-Americana", Prof. Dr. Eloi Martins Senhoras

Elói Martins Senhoras

No abstract provided.

The Clockwork Commune, Bright B. Simons

Bright B Simons

This paper accepts the thesis that technology is not value-free. It then focuses on technology’s form as being institutional in nature and characteristic. On that basis, it argues that technology “absorbs the surrounding ethos and regurgitate pieces of the normative pattern back into the social kaleidoscope of choices, and by thus doing influence the thrust of liberty.” Hence, rather than the real danger lying in runaway technologies that deepen the process of surveillance and control, and thus curtail liberty, it resides, instead, in the possibility that technology’s role could be usurped to justify otherwise unjustifiable redefinitions of the rights of …

The Basic Income Guarantee And The Goals Of Equality, Efficiency, And Environmentalism, Karl Widerquist, Michael Lewis

Karl Widerquist

No abstract provided.

A Multiple-Perspectives Construct Of The American Global City, Herman L. Boschken

Herman L. Boschken

PAPER ARGUES AND TESTS THE PROPOSITION THAT THE GLOBAL CITY IS BEST DESCRIBED AND ANALYZED FROM A HOLISTIC CONSTRUCT OF COMPETING PERSPECTIVES. IT EMPLOYES FACTOR AND K-MEANS CLUSTER ANALYSIS TO DIFFERENTIATE 53 US URBANIZED AREAS.

Neighborhood Crime And Non-Auto Mode Choice, Shishir Mathur, Christopher Ferrell, Emy Mendoza

Shishir Mathur

No abstract provided.

Securing America's Future: A Bold Plan To Preserve And Expand Social Security, Max Skidmore

Max J. Skidmore

Analysis of the American system of Social Security, with proposals for expansion and for universal health care.

Firm Size And Innovation In European Manufacturing, Mario Pianta, Andrea Vaona

Mario Pianta

The paper investigates the differences between small, medium-sized and large firms regarding their performance in the introduction of new products and processes. After a review of the relevant literature, two models are proposed and tested in search for different business strategies and innovation inputs connected to product and process innovations. The empirical analysis uses innovation survey (CIS 2) data at the industry level for 22 manufacturing sectors, broken down in three firm size classes, for eight European countries. Special attention is devoted to tackling the issues of possible endogeneity of the regressors and of unobserved sectoral heterogeneity. The results – …