Public Policy Commons^™

Exploring Local Elected Officials' Capacity To Govern Effectively, Mario King

Dissertations

A successful local government exemplifies inclusivity, innovation, and deliberate decision-making, all advancing responsible management of taxpayers' resources. In this qualitative investigation, a phenomenological approach is employed to delve into the lived experiences of local elected officials. The aim of this study was to gain insights into the capacity of these local elected officials for success in governance. Subsequently, the insights from these local elected officials' experiences are harnessed to evaluate their influence and impact on municipal performance.

The management of municipal performance encompasses the provision of social services, the maintenance of fiscal operations, and adherence to statutory obligations (Avellaneda, 2008). …

What Is The Potential Of Non-Battery Energy Storage To Increase Grid Resilience?, Andrew Withers

All Graduate Reports and Creative Projects, Fall 2023 to Present

This paper seeks to evaluate different technologies in energy storage to determine which ones have the most potential to benefit the energy grid. Technologies like pumped hydro, thermal, gravity, hydrogen, and compressed air storage will be evaluated based on overall costs, marginal costs, unique applications, and efficiency. This paper compares the technologies to batteries on the previous criteria. I also provide a discussion on the policy and economic barriers to the further use of non-battery technologies to support grid reliability during the transition to a cleaner grid that is more reliant on variable renewable generators.

Greening The Cement Industry In Egypt: Exploring Decarbonisation Policies For The Cement Industry, Saleh Elghamrawi

Theses and Dissertations

The cement industry is a major contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for approximately 7% of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Cement is the most consumed material on earth, second only to water, and its demand is fueled by continuous urbanization and the lack of alternative materials. In Egypt, the cement sector is responsible for 14% of CO2 emissions, emitting over 800 kilograms of CO2 per ton of cement, surpassing the global average of 600. In 2016, Egypt ratified the Paris agreement to address climate change and has committed in its National Determined Contributions (NDC) to reduce CO2 emissions. However, …

Investment Fraud In The Mountain West, Riley Ruff, Vanessa Booth, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Criminal Justice

This fact sheet focuses on investment fraud data in the Mountain West states of Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah. The original report includes data from “The 2023 State of Investment Fraud” study conducted by Carlson Law.

Distribution Of Federal Expenditures And Receipts In The Mountain West, 2019-2021, Isabelle G. Graham, Emily J. Daclan, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Elections & Governance

This fact sheet presents data on state and federal fiscal relations from 2019 to 2021 in five Mountain West states: Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah. The original report from The Rockefeller Institute of Government is published each fiscal year and includes information on state and federal government expenditures and the net difference between state and federal spending for all 50 states. The original report sources data from the “Budget of the U.S. Government, Fiscal Year 2023.”

Review Of Making Livable Worlds: Afro-Puerto Rican Women Building Environmental Justice, Ava L. Corey-Gruenes

Feminist Pedagogy

Making Livable Worlds: Afro-Puerto Rican Women Building Environmental Justice, by Hilda Lloréns, highlights Black Puerto Rican women’s efforts to create equitable futures for their communities in the face of capitalism, racism, colonization, and ecological collapse. This review covers key concepts in Making Livable Worlds, including matriarchal dispossession, decolonizing ethnography, the myth of a homogenous Puerto Rico, and myths of inherent economic self-interest. Analyses of these concepts through an absence lens are suggested to enrich formal and informal feminist learning spaces.

The Top 1% Of Earners In The Mountain West, Ivan Sun, Zachary Billot, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Economic Development & Workforce

This fact sheet examines data from the Smart Asset report, “America’s Top 1% Is Different in Each State: From a $370k to $950k Income,” which examines the thresholds of the top 1% of earners and the tax rates associated with those earners. The original report contains the income threshold, national rankings, and tax rates for the top 1% of earners in all 50 states. This fact sheet focuses on the data for the top 1% of earners in the Mountain West: Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah.

Intentional Conversations: Co-Creating Global Family, School, And Community Engagement Research, Emily Markovich Morris

Brookings Scholar Lecture Series

As part of the Brookings Scholar Lecture Series, Brookings Mountain West presents a lecture titled "Intentional Conversations: Co-Creating Global Family, School, and Community Engagement Research" by Brookings fellow in global economy and development, Emily Markovich Morris. The more that families, schools, and communities work in partnership, the more students and schools have the support needed to thrive. This lecture explores a school and community-based research study representing education institutions in 14 countries across 6 continents. The project identifies beliefs held by families, educators, and students on the purpose of school, and global barriers to family, school, and community engagement. Surveys …

From "Our Poor" To "Personal Responsibility": Changing Welfare Rhetoric In Political Party Platforms Of The Carolinas And The Nation, 1950-2005, Felicity N. Ropp

Senior Theses

In this thesis, I track political rhetoric surrounding poverty and welfare from 1950-2005. I first provide thorough context on the history of welfare policy in the United States and the way these issues were framed by politicians leading up to the period my data covers. My analysis centers on 108 political party platforms from the national Republican and Democratic parties and from state parties in North and South Carolina, ranging from 1950 to 2005 (31 of which I located in archives and manually digitized for the first time ever). I explain the significance of party platforms and review the literature …

Smart Growth Strategies: Mountain West Metros, Issac Hernandez-Alcaraz, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Economic Development & Workforce

This fact sheet examines data on smart growth strategies provided by the Brookings Institution’s Smart Growth Tool and includes data on the economic and industry overview of Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) in five Mountain West states (Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah). The Smart Growth Tool identifies high-impact economic and workforce development strategies that may help states and MSAs achieve inclusive and sustainable growth.

Unemployment, Alcohol, And Tobacco Use: Separating State Dependence From Unobserved Heterogeneity, Monica Deza

Center for Policy Research

Previous literature presents mixed evidence on the effect of alcohol consumption on labor market outcomes. On one hand, heavy alcohol consumption has been shown to have detrimental effects on labor market outcomes. On the other hand, moderate consumption is positively associated with wages and employment. Despite substantial reduced form evidence, previous literature has not been able to separately identify the causal pathways linking moderate versus heavy alcohol use to labor market performance due to the lack of natural experiments that only target moderate versus heavy drinking, as well as limitations of available structural methods that model state dependence and unobserved …

Treatment For Mental Health And Substance Use: Spillovers To Police Safety, Monica Deza

Center for Policy Research

We study the effect of community access to mental health and substance use treatment on police officer safety, which we proxy with on-duty assaults on officers. Police officers often serve as first-responders to people experiencing mental health and substance use crises, which can place police officers at risk. Combining agency-level data on police officer on-duty assaults and county-level data on the number of treatment centers that offer mental health and substance use care, we estimate two-way fixed-effects regressions and find that an additional four centers per county (the average annual increase observed in our data) leads to a 1.3% reduction …

Covid-19 Has Strengthened The Relationship Between Alcohol Consumption And Domestic Violence, Monica Deza, Aaron Chalfin, Shooshan Danagoulian

Center for Policy Research

A large body of evidence documents a link between alcohol consumption and violence involving intimate partners and close family members. Recent scholarship suggests that since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent stay-at-home orders, there has been a marked increase in domestic violence. This research considers an important mechanism behind the increase in domestic violence during the COVID-19 pandemic: an increase in the riskiness of alcohol consumption. We combine 911 call data with newly available high-resolution microdata on visits to bars and liquor stores in Detroit, MI and find that the strength of the relationship between visits to alcohol …

The Mundlak Spatial Estimator, Badi H. Baltagi

Center for Policy Research

The spatial Mundlak model first considered by Debarsy (2012) is an alternative to fixed effects and random effects estimation for spatial panel data models. Mundlak modelled the correlated random individual effects as a linear combination of the averaged regressors over time plus a random time-invariant error. This paper shows that if spatial correlation is present whether spatial lag or spatial error or both, the standard Mundlak result in panel data does not hold and random effects does not reduce to its fixed effects counterpart. However, using maximum likelihood one can still estimate these spatial Mundlak models and test the correlated …

The State Of The Unions 2023: A Profile Of Organized Labor In New York City, New York State, And The United States, Ruth Milkman, Joseph Van Der Naald

Publications and Research

This report released by the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies, State of the Unions 2023: A Profile of Organized Labor in New York City, New York State, and the United States, is a part of an annual publication series, documents recent trends in unionization patterns. The overall level of unionization in both the City and State has been roughly double the national rate over the past two decades. But recently, union density has fallen more in New York City and New York State than in the United States as a whole. In the mid-2010s, both the City and …

Child Care Costs In The Mountain West, 2021, Mohit Pande, Vanessa Booth, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Economic Development & Workforce

This fact sheet examines data on child care costs in five Mountain West states: Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah, from the Child Care Aware of America’s (CCAoA) report “Price of Care: 2021 Child Care Affordability.” The original report includes data on the cost of child care and the percent of yearly income allocated to child care for married and single parents. The report analyzes single family respondents and the impact of child care on work schedules. The report also provides information on the state of the child care workforce, including annual incomes of child care workers and the …

State Of Urbanization In Nepal: The Official Definition And Reality, Keshav Bhattarai, Ambika P. Adhikari, Shiva Gautam

Himalayan Research Papers Archive

Nepali government’s official delineation of several human settlements as new urban areas has been questionable because many important criteria such as urban infrastructure and services, open space, population density and economic viability are not thoroughly analyzed while defining what is urban. Many settlements in Nepal officially defined as urban, often driven by political considerations, are operating in the rural framework forming ruralopolises. This paper analyzes various criteria needed for defining urbanization that are internationally accepted to assess Nepal’s official definition of urban settlements. Urban areas have been expanding in Nepal at the cost of agricultural, forest, and shrubland land uses. …

Effect Of The Zero-Covid Policy On Chinese Fdi Inflows And Government’S Response: Has The Pandemic Led To Distinctive Paradigm Change In China’S Hypergrowth Approach To Development?, Nicolas Demeure, Brice Tseen Fu Lee

Journal of Strategic and Global Studies

This study examines the effects of China's zero-covid policy on its economy and investigates whether the policy reflects a broader shift in the country's development paradigm. Employing a mixed-methods approach, we analyze key macroeconomic indicators, conduct case studies of strict lockdowns, perform textual analysis of official documents, and apply the concept of fragmented authoritarianism to explore the relationship between central and local governments. The findings indicate that while the zero-covid policy has had negative economic repercussions, China's response does not signify a major departure from its pre-pandemic development paradigm. The initial success of the policy in curbing the spread of …

Trust In Public Programmes And Distributive (In)Justice In Taxation, Orkhan Nadirov, Bruce Dehning

Accounting Faculty Articles and Research

In the tax psychology literature, there is a lack of empirical evidence on the degree of distributive justice in taxation. This article aims to test the relationship between trust in public programmes and distributive justice in taxation at the cross-country level. The sample consists of 47 countries. Trust in public programmes and distributive justice in taxation are measured based on data collected from Wave 7 of the World Values Survey, which took place worldwide in 2017-2022. An Ordered Probit Model was utilised for the empirical analysis. This study finds that if taxpayers support preferential organisations like the police and universities, …

Aclp - Further Updated Estimates Of State Bead Allocations - As Of June 16, 2023, New York Law School

Reports and Resources

No abstract provided.

America Without A Minimum Wage: Why The Federal Minimum Wage Should Be Abolished, Zachary Cary

Helm's School of Government Conference - 2021-2024

Minimum wage policy may be the greatest economic policy issue where the common man has a strong opinion. Nearly every person has a view of how minimum wage policy should be enacted, whether it be in raising the federal minimum wage, changing the scope of authority in the federal government, or another policy. However, in discussing any kind of policy, the key details of the policy must be discussed in the framework of both how it would be affected and how it would impact its stakeholders. In this policy analysis, the Iron Triangle of Public Policy – the key executive …

Examining The Effects Of Student Loan Forgiveness And The Christian Perspective, Sarah Rogers

Helm's School of Government Conference - 2021-2024

On August 24, 2022, President Joe Biden announced his plan for federal student loan forgiveness. The program allows individuals who make less than $125,000 a year and families under $250,000 relieve up to $10,000 of their loan debt. Those who fall under the Pell Grant program are able to relieve up to $20,000 of their debt. The reactions to this “revolutionary” program were mixed. Typically, those who the program would directly affect were very enthusiastic about this idea while those, most notably Republicans, were less than thrilled. While the idea is good in theory, the execution of debt forgiveness will …

Moving Policies Toward Racial And Ethnic Equality: The Case Of The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Alfonso Flores-Lagunes, Hugo B. Jales, Judith Liu, Norbert L. Wilson

Center for Policy Research

We analyze the role played by the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in alleviating or exacerbating inequality across racial and ethnic groups in food expenditures and in the resources needed to meet basic food needs (the “food resource gap”). To do this, we propose a simple framework that decomposes differences across groups in SNAP benefit transfer levels into three components: eligibility, participation, and generosity. This decomposition is then linked to differences in food expenditures and the food resource gap. Our results reveal that among the three components, differences in eligibility contribute the most to SNAP benefits differentials for Black and …

Pursuing Antiracist Public Policy Education: An Example Connecting The Racist History Of Housing Policy To Contemporary Inequity, Craig W. Carpenter, Tyler Augst, Harmony Fierke-Gmazel, Bradley Neumann, Richard Wooten

Journal of Extension

We review the antiracism concept and contextualize it in Extension public policy education and the Extension system itself. Despite public policy education having a long history in Extension on a wide variety of issues, missing from this programming is the pursuit of antiracism. As a programmatic example, we review some historical causes of present-day housing inequities and an associated example approach for pursuing antiracism in housing policy education. Finally, we conclude by noting additional opportunities to pursue antiracism in Extension public policy education. In doing so, we emphasize that public policy education cannot be “nonracist” if it is not antiracist.

Developing The Food Navigator Role At Everyone's Harvest, Chase Rodriguez

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Everyone’s Harvest (EH) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that operates farmers’ markets. In order to reduce hunger in Monterey County, Everyone's Harvest offers several food assistance programs for low-income people including the Market Match (MM) incentive program which matches CalFresh money, modern day food stamps, dollar for dollar. The problem is that in Monterey County 1 in 4 adults and 1 in 3 children are food insecure. The purpose of the Food Navigator (FN) at EH is to engage with the local community and connect low-income people with food assistance resources, primarily the MM program. This project was a role development …

Public Sector Leadership During The Covid-19 Crisis In Ghana, Komla D. Dzigbede, Anthony M. Ivanov

Public Administration Faculty Scholarship

This article examines public sector leadership during the economic crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic in Ghana. It focuses on the Bank of Ghana–the nation’s central bank responsible for monetary policy and financial sector leadership–and examines the critical leadership attributes that the central bank demonstrated through its administrative and policy responses to the crisis. The findings from textual analysis of monetary policy committee press briefings show that the central bank demonstrated several criteria of effective public service leadership during the crisis, namely sensemaking, critical decision-making, communication, accountability, adaptability and, to an extent, learning. However, the textual evidence suggests that the …

Congressional Oversight Of U.S. Government Programs, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Provides detailed overview of how the U.S. Congress conducts oversight of federal agency programs. Contents include a letter from a member of Congress to an agency head concerning an environmental development in Indiana, information on the foundations of congressional oversight, details on how Congress may require agency reports on various subjects in public laws, an example of a congressionally mandated report by the Department of Defense, documentation of congressional funding of individual federal agencies, examples of congressional committee hearings, congressional committee issuance of oversight and investigative reports which may include dissenting opinions, Congressional Budget Office cost estimates on congressional committee …

Dampak Jangka Pendek Program Bahan Bakar Minyak Satu Harga Terhadap Biaya Transportasi Di Daerah Tertinggal Indonesia, Thamrin Prima Simatupang

Jurnal Kebijakan Ekonomi

This research aims to know the short-term impact of the One Price Fuel program implemented in 2017 on transportation cost in underdeveloped areas of Indonesia. Observation is conducted to 585 villages since 2006, 2014 and 2018 with a total observation unit of 1,755 villages. With Difference-in-Difference analysis method, this study shows the program has a significant impact on reducing transportation costs in villages that are a radius of 15 km from the gas stations (SPBU). On the other hand, villages that are more than 15 km from distribution gas stations, do not experience a significant impact on reducing transportation cost.

The Two-Way Mundlak Estimator, Badi H. Baltagi

Center for Policy Research

Mundlak (1978) shows that the fixed effects estimator is equivalent to the random effects estimator in the one-way error component model once the random individual effects are modeled as a linear function of all the averaged regressors over time. In the spirit of Mundlak, this paper shows that this result also holds for the two-way error component model once this individual and time effects are modeled as linear functions of all the averaged regressors across time and across individuals. Woolridge (2021) also shows that the two-way fixed effects estimator can be obtained as a pooled OLS with the regressors augmented …

The Future Of Banking: Consumer Protection And Contagion Risks Of Cryptocurrency, Anthony Choi

Student Publications

The emergence of digital assets in the financial services industry in the 21st century raised concerns pertaining to consumer protection, regulatory oversight, and the safety and soundness of the United States financial system. In the efforts to foster digital assets in financial markets, lawmakers at both state and federal governments have begun spearheading regulatory initiatives aimed at protecting investors and consumers. This paper considers historical and current issues surrounding cryptocurrency, as well as existing policy and regulatory responses at the federal level. Among a wide array of policy issues regarding digital assets, this paper examines the consumer protection and contagion …