Public Policy Commons^™

Not Just The Flu: The Impacts Of Asiaflucap Influenza Policy Recommendations On Southeast Asia During The Sars-Cov-2 Pandemic, Rebekah Huber

Honors Projects

During 2008 to 2011, a multi-year influenza pandemic study (ASIAFLUCAP) took place in six Southeast Asian countries: Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Taiwan, Cambodia, and Laos, to analyze their healthcare system capacities and determine appropriate policy recommendations in order that they might be better equipped for future influenza pandemics. This research expands upon that project to see if the countries that implemented higher numbers of ASIAFLUCAP policy recommendations prior to or in the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic fared better than those countries which did implemented fewer recommendations. It finds that results are mixed across the sample, with no clear association between a country’s adoption …

Civil Commitment: An Assessment Of The Alcohol And Drug Statute In Mississippi, Elizabeth Foley

Honors Theses

This thesis assesses the alcohol and drug commitment statute in Mississippi. Substance use disorder has impacted millions of people around the world, including within the U.S. Civil commitment is one of the many policies aimed at helping those with substance use disorder; however, it is highly debated and under researched. This thesis looks specifically at the alcohol and drug commitment statute in Mississippi, interviewing legal and medical professionals who are responsible for implementation of this statute. The findings of this thesis include a lack of uniformity in the implementation of the statute and several areas where procedures can and ought …

A Geographically Targeted Approach For A Preceptor Tax Incentive Using Primary Care Health Professional Shortage Areas (Hpsas), Julia Mattingly, Sarah Belcher, Samuel C. Kessler

Commonwealth Policy Papers

Years before the COVID-19 pandemic brought on a health care shortage in Kentucky, its rural areas were already struggling to obtain and attract primary care medical practitioners. Even though the number of medical school graduates in the U.S. has steadily increased throughout the years, there is a general disinterest in rural or small-town practice, and legislators throughout the country have pondered ways to address this issue plaguing communities. Versions of Preceptor Tax Incentive legislation in Kentucky have been proposed in the General Assembly to address care shortages in the state, however, all have been unsuccessful at truly targeting rural areas …

Employing A Public Policy Evaluative Framework: An Analysis Of Domestic Theme Park Development, Anthony Gray Houser

Honors Theses

The intention of the thesis is to examine the relationship between the development of the Walt Disney Company’s theme parks and public policy. Using the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California and the Walt Disney World Resort outside of Orlando, Florida as case studies, this thesis will execute a comparative analysis to better understand the relationship between the Walt Disney Company’s theme parks and public policy. Using an evaluative framework, this thesis will provide a deeper understanding of how public policy affected the development and the current operations of these theme parks. The driving research question in this thesis is, ‘what …

China, Europe, And The Pandemic Recession: Beijing’S Investments And Transatlantic Security, John R. Deni, Chris Alden, Erik Brattberg, Roger Cliff, Mark Duckenfield, R. Evan Ellis, Nicholas Nelson, Lauren Speranza

Books, Monographs & Collaborative Studies

Given the depth and breadth of the pandemic-induced recession in Europe, private companies in need of capital and governments looking to shed state-owned enterprises may be tempted to sell shares, assets, or outright ownership to investors with liquidity to spare. Of greatest concern is the role that China might play in Europe, building Beijing’s soft power, weakening allied geopolitical solidarity, and potentially reprising the role it played in the 2010s, when its investments in Europe expanded dramatically. More specifically, there is concern over China’s investments in infrastructure and sensitive technologies relevant to American and allied military operations and capabilities.

Whether …

The American Prosecutor And The Carceral State: An Analysis To Address Prosecutorial Power And Discretion In An Effort To Reduce Overincarceration In The United States, Olivia Jordan

Honors Theses

There is perhaps no other actor within our legal system that shares more power and control over the carceral state than the American prosecutor. This thesis examines the powers of the prosecutor at every stage of criminal procedure, how these powers contribute to the carceral state, and how prioritizing prosecutorial policy reform can effectively reduce persistent mass incarceration in the United States. This thesis uses three criteria- effectiveness at reducing overincarceration, feasibility of implementation, and ethical impact- to critically evaluate several proposals for addressing prosecutorial power and discretion. Ultimately, the thesis recommends a combination of three proposals for a more …

Public Policy, Economic Development, And Taxes: An Impact Analysis Of Business Incentive Strategies At The State And Local Level, Richard Nanney

All Dissertations

In an effort to promote economic development, state-level policymakers have exercised discretion over the use of public money to incentivize subsidy packages for decades. Estimates suggest state governments spend approximately $50 billion annually on these initiatives. However, there has been little empirical research about the political and economic benefits received by local residents from these subsidy programs. This dissertation analyzes the effectiveness of state subsidy policy by considering induced economic spillover effects and population attrition rates. It examines how subsidy distribution is related to employment rates, average weekly wages, and population attrition. The project offers two methodological innovations. First, to …

‘Vox Populi?:’ Assessing Nato Popularity Relative To Political And Economic Indicators In Selected Member Nations, Zachary W. Cheek

Undergraduate Economic Review

This paper seeks to identify the impact of political and economic conditions on a nation’s popularity/favorability ratings towards North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the world’s most powerful military alliance. It is found that in random-effect models there exists a significant positive relationship between a country’s democratic strength and favorability, as well as a negative relationship regarding unemployment. In fixed-effect models, however, there is slight evidence of a positive relationship with per-capita GDP, as well as negative relationships with the unemployment rate and the trade index. Overall, differences in member-nations largely account for whether democratic or macroeconomic conditions influence support.

Lessons Learned: Steven Rattner, Mary Anne Chute Lynch

Journal of Financial Crises

Steven Rattner, an investment banker and private equity professional, joined the Obama administration as counselor to the Secretary of the Treasury and head of the Obama administration’s Task Force on the Auto Industry, which was charged with providing aid to Chrysler and General Motors, and later to other entities, to avoid their disorderly failure and the loss of a million or more jobs. The Auto Task Force worked intensely throughout 2009 to swiftly negotiate with the corporate leadership, unions, investors, and other stakeholders of the two manufacturers to design an orderly restructuring that would put the companies on a path …

Lessons Learned: Harry Wilson, Mary Anne Chute Lynch

Journal of Financial Crises

Harry Wilson was one of four senior advisers to the US Department of the Treasury during the Obama administration and served on the President’s Task Force on the Auto Industry, which was established in 2009 and charged with providing aid to General Motors and Chrysler, and later to other entities, to avoid their disorderly failure and the loss of a million or more jobs. The Auto Task Force worked intensively throughout 2009 to swiftly negotiate with the corporate leadership, unions, investors, and other stakeholders of the two manufacturers to design an orderly restructuring that would put the companies on a …

Lessons Learned: Matthew Feldman, Mary Anne Chute Lynch

Journal of Financial Crises

Matthew Feldman was the chief legal advisor to the Department of the Treasury on the Obama administration’s Task Force on the Auto Industry, which was established in 2009 and charged with providing aid to Chrysler and General Motors (GM), and later other entities, to avoid their disorderly failure and the loss of a million or more jobs. The Auto Task Force worked intensively throughout 2009 to swiftly negotiate with corporate leadership, unions, investors, and other stakeholders of the two manufacturers to design an orderly restructuring that would put the companies on a path to stability. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner recognized …

Lessons Learned: Sadiq Malik, Mary Anne Chute Lynch

Journal of Financial Crises

Sadiq Malik was a member of the Obama administration’s Task Force on the Auto Industry, which was established in 2009 and charged with providing aid to Chrysler and General Motors, and later to other entities, to avoid their disorderly failure and the loss of a million or more jobs. The Auto Task Force worked intensively throughout 2009 to swiftly negotiate with the corporate leadership, unions, investors, and other stakeholders of the two manufacturers, to design an orderly restructuring that would put the companies on a path to stability. Malik, working for the Auto Task Force, helped take General Motors through …

Lessons Learned: Mara Mcneill, Mary Anne Chute Lynch

Journal of Financial Crises

Mara McNeill was senior counsel to the US Department of the Treasury on the Obama administration’s Automotive Investment Financing Program (AIFP) during the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2007–09. As senior counsel, McNeill was responsible for the department’s $80 billon financing of General Motors, Chrysler, Ally Financial, and Chrysler Financial. She worked with the Auto Team Task Force, the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) legal team, and the Department of Treasury. The bipartisan AIFP team was charged with overseeing the government’s efforts to assist the companies toward a “new lease on life,” while exercising strong financial principles to protect the …

Lessons Learned: Brian Stoker, Steven H. Kasoff, Matthew A. Lieber

Journal of Financial Crises

Brian Stoker served in Merrill Lynch’s structured credit division for seven years, producing and trading asset-backed securities (ABS). In 2005, Stoker moved to Citigroup as a director of ABS CDO (collateralized debt obligation) and CLO (collateralized loan obligation) structuring. After the financial crisis, Stoker was an analyst at Carlson Capital for three years. In 2011, he joined StormHarbour Securities, serving as a managing director until 2018. From 2019 to 2021, he was director of securitization at Korth Direct Mortgage. Presently, Stoker is a licensed real estate agent in Miami. This Lessons Learned summary is based on an interview with Stoker.

Lessons Learned: Ron Bloom, Mary Anne Chute Lynch

Journal of Financial Crises

Ron Bloom served as senior adviser to Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner on President Barack Obama’s Task Force on the Automotive Industry and as assistant to the president for manufacturing policy (2009–2011). As senior adviser on the Auto Task Force team, Bloom helped lead the restructuring of General Motors and Chrysler LLC. Subsequently, he advised the Obama administration with policy development and strategic planning to revitalize the manufacturing sector. Bloom brought to Treasury his unique experience working with organized labor (including the United Steelworkers Union, United Auto Workers, the Teamsters, the Air Line Pilots Association), and in the investment …

Lessons Learned: Eric Kolchinsky, Steven H. Kasoff, Matthew A. Lieber

Journal of Financial Crises

Eric Kolchinsky served as managing director of ratings for ABS CDOs (asset-backed security collateralized debt obligations) at Moody’s Investor Services from 2005 to 2007. Kolchinsky started his career in structured finance with stints at Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch. He joined Moody’s in 2000 as vice president for credit. In 2007, after Kolchinsky raised questions concerning the ratings of new deals in light of subprime downgrades, Moody’s removed him from his client-facing position. Kolchinsky supervised methodology for structured finance valuations at Moody’s Analytics for two years, before Moody’s suspended him altogether in 2009. Separated from Moody’s, Kolchinsky testified before Congress …

Lessons Learned: Chris Ricciardi, Matthew A. Lieber, Steven H. Kasoff

Journal of Financial Crises

Chris Ricciardi was a CDO pioneer who built the structured products units at CS First Boston and Merrill Lynch before moving to the asset management side. Ricciardi began his career structuring novel fixed-income securities at Prudential. At CS First Boston and Merrill, he catapulted each investment bank’s lagging unit into the top of the league tables for CDO (collateralized debt obligation) issuance. He was CEO of Cohen & Co. from 2006 to 2011, when he left to co-found investment management firm Mead Park Management. A graduate of the University of Richmond with an MBA from the Wharton School of the …

Lessons Learned: Sohail Khan, Matthew A. Lieber, Steven H. Kasoff

Journal of Financial Crises

Sohail Khan was managing director of fixed-income sales at Citigroup from 2005–09. Khan started his finance career in 1996, after completing his MBA at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS). Khan gained broad experience in product structuring and sales of credit derivatives at Citigroup. As managing director during the subprime securitization boom and bust, he was involved with institutional sales of asset-backed securities (ABS) including collateralized debt obligations (CDOs); his clients were hedge funds, structured vehicles, and institutional buyers. In 2009, Khan left Citigroup to co-found StormHarbour Securities, a boutique investment bank he has headed since as managing principal. This …

Lessons Learned: Stephen King, Matthew A. Lieber, Steven H. Kasoff

Journal of Financial Crises

Stephen King started his career in finance at Bankers Trust in 1997 as a computer scientist with a business degree. He worked on structured credit transactions when credit derivatives were just being invented. In 2005, King joined Barclays’ structured credit group, where he managed a CDO (collateralized debt obligation) correlation desk that was different from standard dealer CDO units. In 2009, he launched C12 Capital Management to relieve Barclays of distressed subprime positions. Presently, King finances and builds luxury hotels as founder and CEO of Sardis Developments. This Lessons Learned summary is based on an interview with King.

Lessons Learned: Steven H. Kasoff, Matthew A. Lieber

Journal of Financial Crises

Steve Kasoff was employed at Elliott Management Corporation from 2003 until 2020. His responsibilities centered on developing the structured products and real estate groups at Elliott. He was made senior portfolio manager, a member of the firm’s management committee, and equity partner. Kasoff has extensive experience in the origination, trading, and management of structured products such as collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and mortgage-backed securities, including earlier posts at Deutsche Bank, Merrill Lynch, and Lehman Brothers. He earned his BA in economics from Yale College and his MBA in finance from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. In 2016, …

Lessons Learned: James Finkel, Steven H. Kasoff, Matthew A. Lieber

Journal of Financial Crises

A Wall Street veteran specializing in structured credit transactions, Jim Finkel was co-founder and director of the structured credit asset management firm Dynamic Credit Partners (DCP) from 2003 to 2009. Finkel started his career as a securities lawyer for the international law firm Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP, before moving over to the banking side in 1992. He specialized in mortgage-backed securities and collateralized loan obligations (CLOs) for several firms, including Bear Stearns and Deutsche Bank, where he headed the London-based CLO group. In 2003, Finkel returned to New York to launch and run DCP. In 2010, he joined financial …

Wall Street’S Subprime Debacle: Firsthand Accounts From Inside The Cdo Machine, Matthew A. Lieber, Steven H. Kasoff

Journal of Financial Crises

The observations, perceptions, and actions of participants in the subprime markets remain poorly documented and incompletely understood. Seeking to deepen our understanding, this study has produced seven interview summaries and one article telling the story of a hypothetical CDO deal. This article is organized in four parts. First, it presents our research questions and methods in relation to the existing knowledge on the topic. Second, it describes what we think are the study’s main contributions. Third, it previews the Lessons Learned summaries and interviews from each of the participants. And last, it identifies what we believe are some of the …

A Special Project: Inside The Cdo Machine, Rosalind Z. Wiggins, Andrew Metrick

Journal of Financial Crises

In this issue of the Journal of Financial Crisis, we feature Inside the CDO Machine—a special undertaking recently completed under the auspices of the Yale Program on Financial Stability Lessons Learned Oral History Project by Steven H. Kasoff, a Yale School of Management Fellow and former equity partner and head of real estate and structured products investments at the Elliott Management Corp., a global hedge fund. For the project, Kasoff undertook a series of interviews with industry professionals to focus on one of the critical derivatives products of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), and how they …

Anatomy Of A Trade: The Making Of A Subprime Cdo, Steven H. Kasoff

Journal of Financial Crises

This article presents a short story, a sketch in eight parts of a single fictitious subprime collateralized debt obligation (CDO) transaction. The story is informed by expert interviews, documentary research, and the author’s firsthand experience.

The Rescue Of The Us Auto Industry, Module G: The Auto Warranty Commitment Program, Benjamin Henken

Journal of Financial Crises

On March 30, 2009, President Barack Obama announced a plan for government-funded protection of warranties on new vehicles sold by General Motors (GM) and Chrysler while the companies underwent restructuring. The initiative, which would become known as the Auto Warranty Commitment Program (AWCP), was intended to bolster consumer confidence by alleviating a major risk—the loss of warranty benefits—to consumers associated with the companies’ potential bankruptcies. Under the AWCP, GM and Chrysler established independent special purpose vehicles (SPVs) to which they transferred a combination of their own money along with funding they received from Treasury in the form of a loan. …

The Rescue Of The Us Auto Industry, Module Z:Overview, Rosalind Z. Wiggins, Greg Feldberg, Alexander Nye, Andrew Metrick

Journal of Financial Crises

In the fall of 2008, credit markets tightened amid a broader economic downturn that severely impacted the US auto industry, especially the three largest domestic manufacturers, General Motors (GM), Ford Motors, and Chrysler. The companies requested assistance from the government in a bid to stay afloat, but Congress declined to authorize funding. The Bush administration, however, provided bridge loans to GM and Chrysler under the Auto Industry Finance Program (AIFP), funded through the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), to sustain them until the Obama administration was in place. Within months, the Obama administration decided that a speedy bankruptcy would be …

The Rescue Of The Us Auto Industry, Module E: Emergency Assistance For Chrysler Financial, Alexander Nye

Journal of Financial Crises

In the fall of 2008, due to the confluence of the Global Financial Crisis and years of structural decline in the auto industry, Chrysler was nearing bankruptcy. Chrysler’s related finance company, Chrysler Financial, was also in dire straits. On December 19, 2008, President Bush announced the Automotive Industry Financing Program and that the US Treasury would extend Chrysler a $4 billion Bridge Loan to give the company time to prepare a viable restructuring plan. Two weeks later, the Treasury arranged $1.5 billion in low-interest financing for Chrysler Financial to fund the securitization of new consumer car loans and the facility …

The Rescue Of The Us Auto Industry, Module F: Auto Supplier Support Program, Riki Matsumoto

Journal of Financial Crises

The Global Financial Crisis that began in 2007 intensified the decade-long malaise of two of the largest auto manufacturers in the US, General Motors and Chrysler. Their possible collapse was deemed to pose a systemic risk by the United States government. In response, the Department of the Treasury made efforts to provide support to the automotive industry through the Automotive Industry Financing Program (AIFP). As US auto parts suppliers experienced deteriorated automotive markets, disrupted manufacturer operations, and stressed credit markets, the Treasury announced the Auto Supplier Support Program (ASSP) on March 19, 2009, as an auxiliary program to the overall …

The Rescue Of The Us Auto Industry, Module C: Restructuring Chrysler Through Bankruptcy, Alexander Nye

Journal of Financial Crises

In late 2008, due to the confluence of the financial crisis and years of structural decline in the auto industry, Chrysler was nearing bankruptcy. The US Treasury provided Chrysler’s owner, Chrysler Holding, with a $4 billion bridge loan and Chrysler’s related finance company, Chrysler Financial, with a $1.5 billion financing program under the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP). The government-led restructuring through bankruptcy involved the commitment of roughly $5 billion in debtor-in-possession (DIP) loans from the US Treasury and the Canadian government, under which the US Treasury ultimately lent $1.89 billion, using TARP funds, and Canada lent about $1 billion, …

The Rescue Of The Us Auto Industry, Module D: Emergency Assistance To Ally Financial (Formerly Gmac), Riki Matsumoto, Kaleb B. Nygaard

Journal of Financial Crises

In 2008, GMAC was a $200 billion company providing financing to General Motors customers. As the Global Financial Crisis entered a critical stage in early 2008, GMAC’s funding strategy and liquidity position were adversely affected by the significant disruption in credit markets and the broader economic downturn. This reduced access to financing, which impacted GMAC’s ability to provide automotive wholesale inventory and retail financing to General Motors and Chrysler. In late 2008 and early 2009 GM and Chrysler underwent a complex restructuring process. To restore liquidity to GMAC’s auto finance business, the Federal Reserve agreed to expedite GMAC’s conversion to …