Economic Policy Commons^™

Women And Economic Development In The Middle East And North Africa, Lindsay Markle

Student Papers in Public Policy

Women in the Middle East and North Africa face daily challenges due to gender norms in society. These norms are rooted in culture, religion, and family structure and affect the way women are able to participate in their economy and public sphere. In an age of globalization and an increasingly open economy, governments in the Middle East and North Africa would benefit financially from incorporating more women into their workforce.

Three Essays On Local Government Debt, Robert Greer

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy Administration

The local government tax-exempt debt market is a growing, and complex, sector of public finance. As local governments turn to debt financing the factors that contribute to interest costs of that debt have become important considerations for local government officials and politicians. Governance at the local level involves a network of overlapping governments some of which share a tax base. This system of overlapping governments that share a tax base are subject to externalities that arise from taxation, expenditures, and debt. These externalities are usually analyzed in terms of tax or expenditure reactions, but there are implications for local government ...

Mountain Monitor-4th Quarter 2012, Kenan Fikri, Mark Muro

Mountain Monitor

Indicators of economic recovery depicted continued progress in the major metropolitan areas of the Mountain West in the fourth quarter of 2012. The region’s employment recovery gained momentum, and solid home-price increases in the region contributed to the nation‘s broader housing recovery. Such inroads bode well for further advances in 2013. At the same time, the region’s output recovery slowed and unemployment refused to budge.

Mountain Monitor-3rd Quarter 2012, Mark Muro, Kenan Fikri

Mountain Monitor

The major metropolitan areas of the Intermountain West finally put the housing bust behind them in the third quarter of 2012 and in most places made solid progress. House prices rose in all 10 major metropolitan markets in the months from June to September for the first time since the recession began. Likewise, output growth accelerated and the unemployment rate continued to fall. Unfortunately none of this prevented the region’s already feeble jobs recovery from slowing.

Three Essays On Fiscal Stress And Financial Stability In State Government Finance, James B. Gibson

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy Administration

State government finance is a substantial endeavor in the United States. The management of a multitude of revenues and expenditures often involves some level of fiscal stress. In an age of increased public scrutiny, policymakers must be mindful of possible causes of fiscal stress, and the policy options available to mitigate fiscal stress and increase financial stability. This dissertation contains three essays that examine different elements of fiscal stress, and in some cases, the applicable policy responses.

Chapter two examines rainy day funds and their countercyclical goal of reducing recessionary fiscal stress. This essay takes a different approach from much ...

Tobin In Europe: A Case For The Financial Transaction Tax, Stephanie I. Schneider

Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union

No abstract provided.

When Europe Hits Home: How Europeanization Triggers The Conflict Of Capitalism In The German System Of Corporate Control, Alexander El Alaoui

Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union

No abstract provided.

The Economic Context: Growing Disparities Of Income And Wealth, Chuck Collins

New England Journal of Public Policy

In the last few years, poverty rates have remained constant in the New England states. The effort to reduce poverty in New England and the United States has been thwarted by trends of growing income and wealth inequality. Since the late 1970s, the real incomes for the majority of U.S. households have remained stagnant or fallen. During the same time, asset ownership has become dramatically more unequal, and the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few has increased. The causes of this accelerated inequality are complex, but underlying the picture are a series of rule changes, both ...

Devolution: The Retreat Of Government, Judith Kurland

New England Journal of Public Policy

Devolution as practiced in much of the world is decentralization of program authority and responsibility to achieve greater administrative efficiency or program standards. Devolution as practiced by the Bush administration and the Republican Congress is not that, nor is it a diminution of federal power and the strengthening of states’ rights. Rather, it is a radical restructuring of government to prevent the expenditure of funds for traditional Democratic programs of the New Deal and the Great Society, and to prohibit states from being either more generous in social programs or more stringent in regulating industry than this administration desires.

This ...

The Economic Impact Of Metrohealth System, Matthew Hrubey, Ziona Austrian, Candi Clouse, Merissa Piazza

Urban Publications

No abstract provided.

Bargaining Quality In Part-Time Faculty Working Conditions: Beyond Just-In-Time Employment And Just-At-Will Non-Renewal, Gary Rhoades

Journal of Collective Bargaining in the Academy

Two aspects of part-time faculty members’ working conditions that are problematic for educational quality are examined in this article—“just-in-time” employment and “just-at-will” non-renewal. With an eye to enhancing student learning conditions, the article explores feasible strategies that are found in the collective bargaining agreements of units for part-time only bargaining units. Collective bargaining provides a reasonable framework for rethinking, redefining, and renegotiating the working conditions of faculty working in part-time positions to improve student learning outcomes and educational quality.

Women’S Political Leadership In Massachusetts, Paige Ransford, Meryl Thomson, Sarah Healey

Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy Publications

The Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy (CWPPP) at UMass Boston’s McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies has been tracking the election of women at the municipal level in Massachusetts since 1996. In 2003, the Project expanded to include all New England states. CWPPP remains the only research center in the United States that regularly tracks women’s political representation at the local level.

Struggling Recovery And Economic Policy Uncertainty: Testimony Before The Joint Revenue Hearing, House And Senate Ways And Means Committees, Massachusetts State House, Boston, Ma, Christian Weller

Public Policy and Public Affairs Faculty Publication Series

The U.S. economy is in the fourth year of a recovery that started in June 2009. The fact that the economy is in recovery, even modestly, is something of a miracle given how stacked the deck is against it.

This is absolutely unique in American economic history: There has never been a recovery without the housing market expanding substantially as well; There has never been a recovery with state and local governments shrinking for three years in a row; There has never been a recovery with households owing, on average, well more than 100 percent of their after-tax income ...

Will Women Gain Seats?: The 2012 Election And The Representation Of Women In The Massachusetts Legislature, Paige Ransford, Meryl Thomson

Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy Publications

The Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts Boston released this fact sheet just prior to the November 2012 general election. Currently, just less than one quarter (24.5%) of Massachusetts legislators are female, putting Massachusetts behind all other New England states when it comes to the election of women to state legislative office. Vermont has the highest percentage (38.9%) of women in its legislature in the New England region.

A Natural Experiment: Asset Manager Liability, Cally Jordan

Faculty Papers & Publications

It is a natural experiment: two highly integrated national economies, sharing a vast continent, a common language and hundreds of years of common experience. They are bound by a free trade agreement which has fostered strong trade flows in goods, services and capital. Yet, in important respects, the structural characteristics of their financial institutions, and the regulatory framework in which they operate, are different, so different in fact, that one country has been crippled for several years now by the global financial crisis and the other has emerged virtually unscathed. The countries, of course, are Canada and the United States ...

The Far North Act (2010) Consultative Process: A New Beginning Or The Reinforcement Of An Unacceptable Relationship In Northern Ontario, Canada?, Holly L. Gardner, Stephen R. J. Tsuji, Daniel D. Mccarthy, Graham S. Whitelaw, Leonard J.S. Tsuji

The International Indigenous Policy Journal

In northern Ontario, Canada, there have been two “negotiated” documents that required consultation between First Nations and the federated government of the land: Treaty No. 9 signed in 1905-1906 (Dominion of Canada, with the concurrence of the Province of Ontario) and Ontario’s Far North Act (2010). Treaty No. 9 has defined the relationship between First Nations and Canada; while, the Far North Act will define the relationship with Ontario. This article evaluated whether the Far North Act marked a new beginning or the reinforcement of an unacceptable relationship, using primary and secondary data analyses. Analyses revealed that the passing ...

Mountain Monitor-2nd Quarter 2012, Mark Muro, Kenan Fikri

Mountain Monitor

Data for the second quarter of 2012 reveal that the large metropolitan areas of the Mountain region were undergoing some of both the strongest and weakest economic recoveries in the nation—even as the pace of recovery across the region as a whole slackened. The result is a new geography. Crash-blasted Boise and Phoenix, along with Utah’s metropolitan areas, are now recovering relatively strongly while Colorado’s metropolitan areas and Albuquerque, Las Vegas, and Tucson struggle.

International Financial Standards And The Explanatory Force Of Lex Mercatoria, Cally Jordan

Faculty Papers & Publications

The global financial crisis has cast a strong light on some hitherto obscure corners of the financial world, provoking an outpouring of calls for concerted international action. “Hard law” having disappointed, can “soft law”, in the form of international financial standards, substitute for traditional national legislation. This article examines some of the difficulties associated with the “international standards as soft law” discourse.

First of all, conceptual problems in the “soft law” discourse itself reveal profoundly different patterns of legal thought cutting across national boundaries, resulting in different understandings of international financial standards. Secondly, recent experience, over the past decade, with ...

Poverty In America: Why Can't We End It?, Peter B. Edelman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The lowest percentage in poverty since we started counting was 11.1 percent in 1973. The rate climbed as high as 15.2 percent in 1983. In 2000, after a spurt of prosperity, it went back down to 11.3 percent, and yet 15 million more people are poor today.

At the same time, we have done a lot that works. From Social Security to food stamps to the earned-income tax credit and on and on, we have enacted programs that now keep 40 million people out of poverty. Poverty would be nearly double what it is now without these ...

Off Premises Sunday Sales In Georgia Localities: Will It Affect Traffic Accidents?, Forrest Rose, Nathan Dunkel

Georgia Journal of Public Policy

No abstract provided.