Public Policy Commons^™

From Muhammed To The Jobup: Engaging Malemployed Immigrants Through Journalism, Tiziana Rinaldi

Capstones

I focused my graduate work on the local community of malemployed immigrants. They are foreign-educated newcomers — medical doctors, pharmacists, teachers, lawyers and engineers, to name a few of their professions — who lack the resources to find skill- appropriate work in the U.S. They end up either unemployed or working at "jobs for which they’re overqualified or overeducated or both,” I wrote for NJSpotlight in 20171.

Using the social journalism method2 of engaging members of a chosen group to fill important if not crucial information gaps, I developed The JobUp, a series of free, offline educational events, as my …

Examining Racial & Ethnic Disparities In The Reach Of The Medicare Shared Savings Program, Lindsey Arneson

Capstone Experience

It is important to understand the quality of health care for racial and ethnic minorities covered under the largest U.S. government-run insurance program, Medicare, because the demographics of the U.S. are becoming older and more diverse. A new value-based program under Medicare is the Shared Savings Program (MSSP), which creates incentives to improve care quality and health outcomes for Medicare beneficiaries with a specific focus on increasing the provision of preventive care services. This capstone project aims to understand the representation of racial/ethnic minority Medicare beneficiaries, namely African Americans/Blacks and Hispanics/Latinxs, that receive care from providers or facilities (i.e., Accountable …

Pay For Success Financing: Diffusion Dynamics In The U.S., Vanessa R. Fry

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Across the United States (U.S.), communities struggle with numerous social and environmental issues while the funding to provide programmatic services to address these issues continues to diminish. As such, actors both inside and outside of government are seeking new policy solutions that both effectively and efficiently address these issues. Significant hurdles to embarking on a new policy approach exist, however, including a lack of up-front funding and a reluctance to take on the risk inherent in implementing new programs. A recent innovation in the policy domain, Pay for Success (PFS) financing, has been specifically designed to overcome these hurdles. Policy …

Planning For Industrial Land And Industrial Jobs: An Evaluation Of New York City's Industrial Business Zone Program, Jennifer Davis

Masters Theses

In recent years, industrial preservation policies, which aim to preserve urban industrial activity and industrial employment often through the preservation of industrial land, have emerged as a flashpoint in cities across the country that have implemented these policies. While critics contend that industrial preservation policies amount to smokestack chasing in “post-industrial” cities like New York City, industrial preservationists argue that such policies help to preserve well-paying, middle-class jobs and thus represent a tool to mitigate rising income inequalities in cities. Despite considerable attention to these policies, minimal research has evaluated the effectiveness of industrial preservation policies as land use and …

Bridging Gaps Between Constituents And Policymakers In Climate Policy In Washington State, Rebecca Dickson

Global Honors Theses

Climate change is one of the preeminent concerns of our time. As nation-states around the world face rising sea levels, pollution, political instability, and a rise of national security concerns due to climate instability, greater international cooperation is needed in order to target and adapt to cross-border issues. However, international political action is often reliant upon a national support for that action, especially when national officials rely on the support of their citizenry, such as in democracies, like the United States.

In order to understand how countries such as the United States make decisions on the domestic and international level, …

Investigating The Effects Of Student Debt On Career Outcomes: An Empirical Approach, Gideon Moore

Honors Projects

High student debt has been hypothesized to affect career choice, causing students to desire stable, high paying jobs. To test this hypothesis, I rely on plausibly exogenous variation in debt due to a federal policy shift. In the summer of 2007, the Higher Education Reconciliation Act (or HERA) expanded the cap for federally subsidized student loans. I examine how variation in debt affects career choice and eventual salary of students using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 Child and Young Adult Cohort of students who were of college age during the implementation of the policy. I find …

Why Is The Black Population Of Central Brooklyn, The Mecca Of Black Nyc, Diminishing?, Jamell N.A. Henderson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This research looks at three possible reasons that might help to explain this unfortunate exodus. The first approach is through health and examines trends in environmental, mental and physical (general) health. I will explore statistics involving the health and well-being of Central Brooklyn, how the environment plays a disparate role in the poor health and lack of access to services of its African-American residents in comparison to other regions in Brooklyn. The second task is to ask how economics or “racial capitalism” plays a role by looking at gentrification, cooperative economics, and the income inequality in Black Central Brooklyn. The …

Rethinking Retirement For The 21st Century, Stephen C. Russo

Major Papers

Canada’s labour force has been gradually growing older in recent decades. An aging labour force creates significant problems for the country and the future growth of our economy. With an aging labour force, comes the need to start rethinking how Canadians look at retirement in the 21^st century and how both the government and private sector can contribute solutions to adapting to an older workforce. This problem is not unique to Canada, most of the industrialized west has been or will begin to experience the same demographic shift as we are in Canada. The main challenge this paper examines …

The Legalization Of Street Vending In Los Angeles: Exploring The Impact On Vendors And Their Livelihoods, Karen Alpuche Caceres

Pomona Senior Theses

This thesis aims to unpack the impact the legalization of street vending and the subsequent regulation had on sidewalk vendors. Although legalization occurred state-wide through Senate Bill 946 in September of 2017, the rules and regulations for vending were passed at a city-level, and I am focusing on the City of Los Angeles specifically. Through interviews with government officials, non-profit partners and advocates, and vendors from different parts of the City, I analyze information around the policy itself, its history, and the impact it has and is expected to have on vendors and their businesses. While vendors have been central …

Can Uber And Lyft Save Public Transit?, Emily Zheng

Pomona Senior Theses

I examine whether Uber and Lyft are currently complements or substitutes of public transit, and how partnerships between cities and ride sharing companies can increase their complementary relationship and solve parking and mobility issues. The results suggest that transportation network companies (TNCs) like Uber and Lyft do not have a statistically significant effect on public transit ridership overall, but are complements of public transit for certain populations. Policies that give discounts for TNC rides taken to and from transit stops help solve the first mile / last mile problem, which consequently help increase transit ridership.

Tribal Governance In American Indian Country, Terry E. Mcdonald

School of Business Student Theses and Dissertations

Public Administrators seek to synthesize, comprehend, and clarify challenging problems of social progress as it relates to the administration of public services. We must, therefore, think about all forms of governance to have a comprehensive understanding of the discipline. If civilization ignored the prehistory of the past 600 million years, from the Late Precambrian Era through the Mesozoic, there would be a consequential loss of knowledge. A comprehensive understanding would be absent regarding one of the fundamentals in our evolution – life's ability to avoid demise by symbiosis and adaptation. In the same way, we may have overlooked an essential …

Market-Base Solutions To Manage The Guarani Aquifer: Pigouvian Fee And Cap-And-Trade, Julia Hayes Vieira

Master's Theses and Capstones

The objective of this case-study is to analyze the effects and the perception of different groups in possibly implementing market-based approaches of Pigouvian tax and Cap-and-Trade to manage the Guarani Aquifer, Brazil. The Pigouvian Tax is a corrective taxation that assigns a price for the negative impacts water consumption creates to aquifers, as a way to influence a more sustainable level of water consumption. Cap-and-Trade sets a maximum quantity of water allowed to be used from aquifers, and allow economic agents to trade quantities of water they have the right to use, as a way to adapt to the cap. …