Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration Commons^™

Sozialpolitik Anders Denken. Das Verursacherprinzip – Von Der Umweltpolitischen Zur Sozialpolitischen Anwendung, Isidor Wallimann, Esteban Piñeiro

Books

The “polluter pays” principle in environmental law assumes that the actor would reduce or avoid adverse effects of his actions if he had to bear the consequences of those actions (internalization of effects). Such internalization can generally be done in two ways: either by avoiding or eliminating the harmful effects or by wearing the financial consequences of the injury. It is therefore on the one hand to have an incentive effect, on the other to a compensatory effect.

Pineiro and Wallimann apply these societal cost principles from the environmental world to the social realm, where social problems can be seen …

School Finance, Equivalent Educational Expenditure, And Income Distribution: Equal Dollars Or Equal Chances For Success?, Kathryn Wilson, Kristina T. Lambright, Timothy M. Smeeding

Center for Policy Research

This paper breaks new ground in the debate on school finance and equality of per pupil school expenditures. We are able to allocate expenditures per pupil at the *individual* student and family income level. This allows us to examine both student and school district characteristics and to assess several measures of equality of expenditure across the income distribution of parents and by funding sources. We find a surprising degree of equality in the actual amounts expended per child in low- vs. high-income families. But adjusting for student needs to reach equivalent education expenditures results in much greater inequality over the …

Welfare State Expenditures And The Distribution Of Child Opportunities, Irwin Garfinkel, Lee Rainwater, Timothy M. Smeeding

Center for Policy Research

This paper estimates the redistributive effects of welfare state expenditures on social and economic disparities in the economic well-being of citizens in ten nations. Data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and other sources for cash and non-cash social welfare benefits (health and education benefits from third parties) are used to describe differences in the size and nature of welfare states and their distributional effects. The OECD data are combined with micro data on household incomes from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) both to estimate the redistributive effects of the expenditures and taxes and to construct measures …

How Much More Does A Disadvantaged Student Cost?, William D. Duncombe, John Yinger

Center for Policy Research

This paper provides a guide to statistically based methods for estimating the extra costs of educating disadvantaged students, shows how these methods are related, and compares state aid programs that account for these costs in different ways. We show how pupil weights, which are included in many state programs, can be estimated from an education cost equation, which many scholars use to obtain an education cost index, and we devise a method to estimate pupil weights directly. Using data from New York, we show that the distribution of state aid is similar with statistically based pupil weights and an educational …

How To Take Attendance Using Microsoft Excel : Attendance Proposal For Southwest Community Center, Syracuse Department Of Parks, Recreation And Youth Programs, Syracuse University. Maxwell School. Community Benchmarks Program.

Community Benchmarks Program

Position of Attendance Supervisor : It is recommended that one employee of the Syracuse Parks and Recreation Youth Program at the Southwest Community Center be the designated staff person responsible for all attendance procedures. Responsibilities The Attendance Supervisor will be responsible for: • Making sure each member is accounted for on the attendance sheet with a check-mark next to their name as soon as they come into Southwest each day. Describes how Excel can be used to perform this responsibility.

Boys And Girls Club / Dr. King After School Program: Data Collection And Program Recommendations, Syracuse University. Maxwell School. Community Benchmarks Program

Community Benchmarks Program

This report recommends organizational and methodical changes for the Boys & Girls Club of Syracuse (B&G Club) after school program held at the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Magnet School (Dr. King) in Syracuse, New York. The recommendations focus on improvements to the program’s data collection and measurement system as a continuous improvement tool.

Southwest Community Center : Syracuse Department Of Parks, Recreation, And Youth Programs, Syracuse University. Maxwell School. Community Benchmarks Program.

Community Benchmarks Program

This report presents observations and recommendations for the Department of Parks, Recreation, and Youth Programs at Southwest Community Center at 401 South Ave. in Syracuse, New York. The report is a description of the current registration and attendance practices of Southwest Community Center and suggestions for improvement.

What's Property Got To Do With It?, David M. Driesen

College of Law - Faculty Scholarship

This essay reviews Daniel Cole's "Pollution & Property," a recent book on property rights regimes for pollution control. It questions the utility of property rights typologies as a means of understanding pollution control regimes. The review provides a detailed analysis of the shift of rights that occurs in going from a traditional regulatory program to an emissions trading program. It finds that the shift does not create a fundamentally different property regime and explains precisely what changes. This analysis also explains the meaning of calls to perfect property rights in this context. The review concludes that Professor Cole's book does …

The Changing American Hospital In The Twenty-First Century, Ralph W. Muller

Center for Policy Research

One is always hesitant to speak about the future. A famous philosopher from New York, Yogi Berra, said "Making predictions is difficult, especially about the future," and I have some trepidation about doing so now. There is also the difficulty of understanding what really has happened in the past. I recall the Bolshevik general in 1917 who said "The future is clear, but the past is very murky." We anticipate the future with more clarity than is justified, even as we disagree on what is happening right now or what happened before. In that vein, I will describe the role …

Does Whole-School Reform Boost Student Performance? The Case Of New York City, Robert Bifulco, William Duncombe, John Yinger

Center for Policy Research

Thousands of schools around the country have implemented whole-school reform programs to boost student performance. This paper uses quasi-experimental methods to estimate the impact of whole-school reform on students' reading performance in New York City, where various reform programs were adopted in dozens of troubled elementary schools in the mid-1990s. This paper complements studies based on random assignment by examining a broad-based reform effort and explicitly accounting for implementation quality. Two popular reform programs--the School Development and Success for All--do not significantly increase reading scores but might have if they had been fully implemented. The More Effective Schools program does …

Helping Outstanding Pupils Educationally: Public Policy Issues Of The Georgia Hope Scholarship Program And The Lottery For Education, Ross Rubenstein

Center for Policy Research

The HOPE (Helping Outstanding Pupils Educationally_ scholarship program, which began in 1993, is one of the most popular public policies ever enacted in the state of Georgia. This lottery-funded program pays for tuition, fees, and books at any public college or university in the state for any Georgia student who graduates from high school with a B or better grade point average (GPA). To keep the scholarship, students must maintain the B or better GPA in college. The program's popularity has spread well beyond Georgia's borders; at least a dozen other states have instituted similar broad-based merit scholarship programs, and …

2002 Technology Audit Of Onondaga Municipalities, Maxwell School Of Syracuse University. Community Benchmarks Program

Community Benchmarks Program

This study reports information about the recent technology audit of 30 of the 35 municipalities in Onondaga County. Data collection time was designated from Sept. 15 to Oct. 15, 2002. Several extensions were made with the final data accepted on Oct. 23, 2002. Researchers used an instrument designed to gather information about number of computers accessible to staff, type of hardware and software used, funding allocated for computer training, number of printers available, access to the Internet, employee satisfaction with current technology and future technology needs. The report provides the results of the audit comparing the compiled data using bar …

2002 Assessment Of Municipal Web Sites In Onondaga County, Syracuse University. Maxwell School Of Citizenship And Public Affairs. Community Benchmarks Program

Community Benchmarks Program

This report evaluates the Web sites of municipalities in Onondaga County. The Community Benchmarks Program (CBP) revisited a study conducted in 1999 that assessed municipal Web sites in the county. The goal of this study is to report the changes that have taken place since the last research project was conducted, given society’s increased reliance on technology

Nonprofit Compensation : A Study And Comparison Of Nonprofit Agencies In Onondaga County, Syracuse University. Maxwell School. Community Benchmarks Program, Linda Lopez, Martha Roberts, Yusuke Tanno

Community Benchmarks Program

This report is a comparative study of the salary and benefits compensation packages of nonprofit executives in Onondaga County. The local data collected is contrasted to information presented in four similar studies of nonprofit organizations across the country. Three of the research studies were national in scope; one examined nonprofit agencies in New York City.

Weg Von Der Armut Durch Soziokulturelle Integration : Bei Sozialhilfeabhängigkeit, Alter Und Behinderung, Jonas Strom, Matthias Szadrowsky, Isidor Wallimann

Books

A person who has to live alone is marginalized and impoverished socially and culturally. A person must be able to participate in society - through education, culture, through the inclusion in civil society organizations, family and politics. If this is achieved, it will result in the person having more opportunities to secure this social and material existence and will more slowly become financially dependent and would be dependent for a shorter period of time. This in turn means financial relief for the State. It also ensures that human rights are afforded and promotes personal development.Previous research has provided many answers …

Estimating The Cost Of An Adequate Education In New York, William Duncombe

Center for Policy Research

The New York State Board of Regents and Commissioner of Education have identified a set of clear performance standards for students in New York State that matches the knowledge and skills they will need to function successfully as productive citizens in the 21st century. To match these standards, the New York State Department of Education has developed new Regents Examinations, which all students will be required to pass to graduate from high school, and new examinations in 4th and 8th grades that serve as important intermediate checkpoints in assessing student progress. Justice Leland DeGrasse wrote in *Campaign for Fiscal Equity …

Explicit Versus Implicit Income, Thomas J. Kniesner, James P. Ziliak

Center for Policy Research

By supplementing income explicitly through payments or implicitly through taxes collected, income-based taxes and transfers make disposable income less variable. Because disposable income determines consumption, policies that smooth disposable income also create welfare improving consumption insurance. With data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics we find that annual consumption variation is reduced by almost 20 percent due to explicit and implicit income smoothing. Consumption insurance is as important economically as private health or automobile insurance. Although taxes have become an increasingly important source of consumption insurance, the 2001 income-tax reform legislation should have little effect on implicit consumption insurance.

Have 401(K)S Raised Household Savings? Evidence From The Health And Retirement Study, Gary V. Engelhart

Center for Policy Research

The most popular tax subsidy to household saving in the United States is the 401(k)-type pension arrangement, which subsidizes saving through income-tax deferral on wages and salary dedicated to retirement saving and through investment accrual at the pre-tax interest rate. Although enabled by legislation in 1978, 401(k) plans effectively were not adopted until the Internal Revenue Service issued clarifying rules in 1981. Since then, they have grown remarkably and become the primary vehicle for retirement saving. In 1996, 33 percent of all private pension assets, 33 percent of all pension plans, and 45 percent of all active pension participants were …

Pre-Retirement Lump-Sum Pension Distributions And Retirement Income Security: Evidence From The Health And Retirement Study, Gary V. Engelhart

Center for Policy Research

This paper uses data from the 1992 and 1998 Waves of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to examine the extent of retirement wealth erosion from pre-retirement lump-sum distributions. There is little evidence that spent distributions have resulted in significant pension leakage. If spent distributions had been rolled over into a tax-qualified plan instead, they would have represented in present value between 5 and 11 percent of pension and Social Security wealth for the median household that spent a distribution. However, one-quarter of the households that spent distributions—which is 2.25 percent of all households age 51 to 61—could have increased …

The Role Of Microsimulation In Longitudinal Data Analysis, Douglas A. Wolf

Center for Policy Research

The term “microsimulation” has been linked to a range of tools and techniques that are finding growing use in empirical social science applications. This paper considers one such area, namely the potential for microsimulation to serve the needs of the data analyst, in contrast to the more common use of microsimulation by the model user. Furthermore, the focus is on longitudinal rather than cross-sectional data analysis. The paper identifies several types of longitudinal data modeling approaches in which microsimulation is particularly relevant, suggesting algorithms with which to conduct such microsimulations. Microsimulation can be used to extend the range of inferences …

Does School District Consolidation Cut Costs?, William Duncombe, John Yinger

Center for Policy Research

Over the last 50 years, consolidation has dramatically reduced the number of school districts in the United States, and state governments still recommend consolidation, especially in rural school districts, as a way to improve school district efficiency. However, state policies encouraging consolidation are often challenged on the grounds that they do not lead to cost savings and instead foster learning environments that harm student performance. Existing evidence on this topic comes largely from educational cost functions, which indicate that instructional and administrative costs are far lower in a district with 3,000 pupils than in a district with 100 pupils. However, …

Can Policy Changes Be Treated As Natural Experiments? Evidence From State Excise Taxes, Jeffrey D. Kubik, John R. Moran

Center for Policy Research

An important issue in public policy analysis is the potential endogeneity of the policies under study. If policy changes constitute responses on the part of political decision-makers to changes in a variable of interest, then standard analyses that treat policy changes as natural experiments may yield biased estimates of the impact of the policy (Besley and Case 2000). We examine the extent to which such political endogeneity biases conventional fixed effects estimates of behavioral parameters by identifying the elasticities of demand for cigarettes and beer using the timing of state legislative elections as an instrument for changes in state excise …

Comparison Of Law Enforcement Contracts In Onondaga County, Syracuse University. Maxwell School. Community Benchmarks Program

Community Benchmarks Program

This study provides information on the contractual agreements of 14 of the16 police departments

in Onondaga County. The study was conducted by the Community Benchmarks Program (CBP)

at The Maxwell School of Syracuse University.

Information for this study was obtained from the bargaining unit contracts negotiated by

representatives of the police and sheriff’s departments with the governing bodies of their

respective municipalities or the county. The New York State and Local Police and Fire

Retirement System and the 1999 New York Municipal Reference Guide were also used as source material. This report looks at 14 of the 16 contracts in …

United States Poverty In A Cross-National Context, Timothy Smeeding, Lee Rainwater, Gary Burtles

Center for Policy Research

In this paper we use cross-national comparisons made possible by the LIS to examine America’s experience in maintaining a low poverty rate. We compare the effectiveness of United States antipoverty policies to that of similar polices elsewhere in the industrialized world. If lessons can be learned from cross-national comparisons, there is much that can be learned about antipoverty policy by American voters and policymakers. The United States has one of the highest poverty rates of all the countries participating in the LIS, whether poverty is measured using comparable absolute or relative standards for determining who is poor. Although the high …

Fixing New York's State Education Aid Dinosaur: A Proposal, John Yinger

Center for Policy Research

New York State provides aid to local schools through a confusing maze of aid programs that are, according to many commentators, unfair to the neediest school districts, often defined as those with many students who are poor or otherwise "at risk." For example, New York City, which, by any measure, is one of the neediest districts, currently receives less aid per pupil than the average district in the state. On January 9, 2001, in the case of Campaign for Fiscal Equity vs. State of New York (719 N.Y.S2d 475, 150 Ed. Law Rep. 834), the New York State Supreme Court …

Comparison Of Municipal Department Head Compensation In Onondaga County, Syracuse University. Maxwell School. Community Benchmarks Program

Community Benchmarks Program

This study provides information about department head compensation in 28 of the 35

municipalities in Onondaga County. The study was conducted by the Community

Benchmarks Program (CBP) at The Maxwell School of Syracuse University.

Data for this report were primarily collected through surveys distributed via fax to 35

municipalities in Onondaga County during the month of October 2000. Twenty-eight

municipalities returned the survey. The surveys requested information about

compensation and benefits of department heads. Background information about each

municipality was obtained from the League of Women Voters. Population information

was obtained from the Bureau of the Census. Parcel information was …

Chasing The Elderly: Can State And Local Governments Attract Recent Retirees?, William Duncombe, Mark Robbins, Douglas A. Wolf

Center for Policy Research

Recruiting recent retirees to relocate from elsewhere has become an important economic development strategy in an increasing number of states. State governments have planned or enacted a variety of tax and fee incentives to lure retirees. The objective of this paper is to determine whether states can, in fact, influence the retirement destination of elder households using fiscal tools. To estimate the determinants of retiree location decisions we have developed an extensive data set on county attributes, and a methodology for estimating an individual-level discrete-choice model for a very large number of potential locations. Using 1990 county-to-county migration data, we …

Association Between Body Size And Mortality In Later Life, Christine L. Himes

Center for Policy Research

The rising prevalence of obesity in the United States has focused attention on the health consequences of excess weight. Obesity is linked to many of the major causes of death in the United States, including heart disease, some types of cancer, strokes, diabetes, and atherosclerosis. However, the effects of body size on mortality and health among the elderly are much less clear. This paper extends our current understanding of the relationship between body size and mortality by using two nationally representative, longitudinal datasets of individuals at older ages. These analyses indicate that obesity may not contribute greatly to increased mortality …

Comparison Of Salaries And Benefits Of Elected Municipal Officials In Onondaga County. (Executive Summary), Syracuse University. Maxwell School. Community Benchmarks Program

Community Benchmarks Program

This study provides a comparison of the salaries and benefits of elected officials in 35 municipalities throughout Onondaga County. This research project is part of an ongoing effort by the Community Benchmarks Program (CBP) at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.

Patterns Of Time Use Of People Age 55 To 64 Years Old: Some Cross-National Comparisons, Anne H. Gauthier, Timothy M. Smeeding

Center for Policy Research

Objectives. This paper examines the patterns of time use of adults age 55 to 64 years old in six countries: Austria, Canada, Finland, Italy, Sweden, and the United States. It examines the discontinuity in daily activities by employment status and gender. Methods. The paper uses nationally representative samples from time use surveys carried out in each country. We compute aggregate patterns of time use by employment status and gender for seven categories of activities: personal activities, paid work, unpaid work, housework, social leisure, active leisure, and passive leisure. We also compute dissimilarity indices to measure the degree of discontinuity in …