Public Policy Commons^™

Three Essays On Consumption Taxation In Indonesia, Partomuan Transparenter Juniult

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

Consumption taxes play a major role in revenue generation for many developing countries. They are also used to encourage or discourage certain consumption behaviors. However, the administrative aspects of implementing these taxes can create challenges for the tax authorities, and lead to distortions in taxpayer behavior. To overcome these challenges, efforts have been made to simplify policies and utilize technology to improve administration and compliance. My dissertation aims to provide empirical evidence on the effects of three consumption or commodity tax policy reforms in Indonesia. The dissertation consists of three essays as follows.

In my first essay, titled “The effect …

Three Essays On Governance, Inequality, And Social Equity, Sarah Ausmus Smith

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

Comprised of three essays, my dissertation is linked by a common focus: the relationship between state or local governance arrangements and inequality or facets of social equity. I draw upon a range of literatures to motivate my research questions and inform my methodologies—welfare and social policy, public economics, intergovernmental relations, public finance and management.

In the first essay, I ask: does localizing welfare governance impact geospatial access to the social safety net? This is an important question because proximity is highly salient to program utilization. I geocode the location of human services nonprofits from tax filings in eight states using …

Collaborative Competition In Homeless Services: Three Essays On Federal-Local Partnerships, Andrew Alfred Sullivan

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

The United States’ federal government funds homeless services provided at the local level through the McKinney-Vento Act, encouraging collaboration among providers. This dissertation studies three aspects of homelessness: merging of local planning bodies, identification of homeless students, and the relationship between experiencing homelessness in high school and long-term educational outcomes.

The first chapter studies the effect of merging Continuums of Care (CoCs), local planning bodies for homeless services. While merging brings organizations into the same network and could make use of economies of scale, it brings service provision to a less-local level, taking away responsiveness to the community and inter-jurisdictional …

Catalyzing Change In Higher Education: Social Capital And Network Leadership In The Competency-Based Education Network, Bruce William Haupt Jr.

Theses and Dissertations--Education Sciences

Collaborative inter-organizational networks can be effective at catalyzing and supporting the generation and diffusion of new models and practices. With shared purpose, structure, and resources, network organizations can facilitate knowledge exchange and the growth of inter-organizational relationships. In this study, I sought to better understand how network organizations influence social capital and the spread of innovative practices. Of particular interest were the roles of national network and sub-national network organizations (sub-networks), and the interactive learning processes of network newcomers. I focused on the diverse array of colleges and universities involved in the Competency-Based Education Network (C-BEN), and their efforts to …

Essays On Economic Development Policies, Hakyeon Lee

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

Tax increment financing (TIF) policy is the most popular economic development policy in the United States. Despite the popularity of research on TIF, only a few comprehensive reviews of previous studies on TIF policy tool have been conducted. In light of this, the purpose of this paper is to review previous TIF studies relating to the controversy surrounding TIF programs. Specifically, previous studies do not provide clear answers about the efficacy of TIF and, indeed, raise more questions than answers. At the same time, this situation begs the question: why do local governments frequently use economic development policies? This is …

The Effects Of Natural Resource Dependence And Democracy On The Incremental Budgeting Theory And Punctuated Equilibrium Within A Budgetary Context, Barrak Ghanim Algharabali

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

I contribute to the literature by providing additional factors that could affect the incremental budgeting theory and punctuated equilibrium theory (PET) within a budgetary context. Because of the fluctuation in the price of natural resources, I argue that dependence on natural resources could lead to less stable budgets than ones not dependent on natural resources. I also argue that democracy is another source that leads to stability in the budget, relative to countries that are not democratic. I theorize that countries with no democracy and heavy dependence on natural resources will have budgets with more volatility than the rest of …

Three Essays On Municipal Structure And Government Fiscal Management Outcomes, Wenchi Wei

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

This dissertation aims to reclassify municipal structures of the U.S. municipalities and investigates the effect of municipal structures on government fiscal management outcomes, including fiscal conditions and fiscal slack balances. This dissertation is comprised of four chapters. The first chapter briefly introduces, and each of the remaining three is an independent research article. The second chapter investigates seven essential structural characteristics of the U.S. municipalities and constructs a municipal structure political-administrative index. It then examines the determinants of municipal structures on a political-administrative dimension. The empirical results show that municipal structure choices are statistically significantly associated with citizens’ socioeconomic and …

Three Essays On Public Finance And Public Policy: Financial Disclosure And Policy Reinvention In U.S. State And Local Governments, Jinhai Yu

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

This dissertation consists of three essays. The first essay, or Chapter 2, advances the literature by examining the conditional effects of lobbying on the relationship between policy learning and policy reinvention. Scholars have consistently shown that learning of successful policies in other states leads to higher likelihood of policy adoption. This essay extends this finding two ways. First, policy learning can also lead to more comprehensive adoption of successful policies. Second, the effect of policy learning on policy comprehensiveness is conditional on lobbying by interest groups, an alternative source of information about policy success. To test these hypotheses, I conduct …

Three Essays On Public Organizations, Changgeun Yun

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

Organizations play key roles in modern societies. The importance of organizations for a society requires an understanding of organizations. In order to fully understand public organizations, it is necessary to recognize how organizational settings affect subjects of organizations and organizing. Although public and private organizations interrelate with each other, the two types are not identical. In this dissertation, I attempt to describe public organizations in their own setting by discussing three important topics in public organization theory: (1) innovation adoption in the public sector; (2) representative bureaucracy; and (3) decline and death of public organizations.

In Chapter II, I scrutinize …

Charter School Locations Across The U.S. And Their Influence On Public School District Revenues, Peter A. Jones

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

Since Minnesota passed the first charter school law in 1991, charter schools have become one of the most prominent school reforms in the U.S. While charter schools educate a small portion of public school enrollments, their existence has prompted various responses from traditional public school districts. For example, districts may change expenditure patterns or work to increase test scores in an effort to retain enrollments. In this sense, a charter school’s most significant impact on public school students may work indirectly through the traditional public school reactions they invoke.

This dissertation explores education finance implications for charter schools and their …

Family Support Caseloads--Determinants Of Kentucky's Division Of Family Support Personnel Allocation, David Bachert

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

This paper is an examination of the determinants of Family Support employee allocation. Specifically, related to Kentucky, the goal of this research is to determine if public assistance caseloads are equitable across nine geographic regions. A review of relevant literature provides a larger context to this topic. Literature primarily suggests three mechanisms by which Family Support resources might be allocated: legal regulations, postcode lottery, and Tiebout migration.

Supported by literature the larger context for this paper leads to the examination of five independent variables: (1) percent of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program recipients \, (2) total population, (3) percent of the …

Utilization Of The Kentucky Aids Drug Assistance Program Versus Kentucky Medicaid Using Medication Possession Ratio: Policy Implications For Public Program, Jenna Parrett

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

Uninsured and underinsured people living with Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (HIV/AIDS) are able to utilize federally funded AIDS Drug Assistance Programs (ADAPs) to cover the price of their HIV-related medications. In Kentucky, this program also provides support services through social workers, a dedicated pharmacist, and medications by mail order. With the Affordable Care Act, many patients previously covered by the Kentucky AIDS Drug Assistance Program (KADAP) will be newly eligible for Medicaid and will no longer receive services through KADAP. There is concern that people in this situation will be at a disadvantage without these services and, in …

Three Essays On Local Government Debt, Robert Greer

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and 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 …

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

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and 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 …

Social Construction And Political Decision Making In The American Prison System(S), Jeremiah Olson

Theses and Dissertations--Political Science

With over two million inmates, the United States’ prison population is the largest in the world. Nearly one in one hundred Americans are behind bars, either in prisons or pre-trial detention facilities. The rapid growth in incarceration is well-documented. However, social science explanations often stop at the prison gates, with little work on treatment inside prisons. This black box approach ignores important bureaucratic decisions, including the provision of rehabilitative services and the application of punishment.

This dissertation offers a systematic analysis of treatment decisions inside the American prisons. I use a mixed methods approach, combining multiple quantitative datasets with environmental …

Developing A Best Practice Model For Forecasting Annual Franchise Fee Revenue: The Case Of The Lexington-Fayette Urban-County Government, Ian K. Banta

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

The LFUCG currently forecasts their revenues internally and has their forecasts validated by the Center for Business and Economic Research (CBER) at the University of Kentucky. However, it does not have a well-developed method of forecasting franchise fee revenue. They are not alone, as the literature on revenue forecasting that finds that between 50 and 75 percent of local governments rely on informal, judgmental approaches to forecast revenue instead of more formal, quantitative techniques. However, the literature also indicates that these judgmental approaches are less accurate.

Inspired by a study of St. Petersburg, Florida by Gianakis et al., and in …

Voter Ideology, Tax Exporting, And State And Local Tax Structure, John M. Foster

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

State and local governments play an important role in financing and delivering public services in the United States. In 2008, state and local governments collected 57 percent of total federal, state, and local revenue (Urban Institute and Brookings Institution, Tax Policy Center, 2009). The decentralization of fiscal responsibility has enabled a high degree of variation in state and local tax structures to emerge. This dissertation presents two empirical studies that extend the positive literature on state and local tax policy.

The extant literature contains evidence of a direct relationship between voter ideology and state and local tax progressivity. However, the …

Privatization And Performance In The Implementation Of Temporary Assistance To Needy Families, Adam Michael Butz

Theses and Dissertations--Political Science

In response to the passage of the Personal Responsibility Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) and its lead cash assistance program Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), states have taken unique and divergent approaches to welfare policy implementation. One popular approach to workfare delivery, known as privatization, involves contracting with non-profit and for-profit entities operating within the private sector. The General Accounting Office reports that nearly every state is privatizing TANF services to some degree through third-party contracts, but very little is understood about why variation in contracting exists and the ramifications for the program outcomes of welfare recipients. This dissertation …

An Analysis Of Regularizations Of Undocumented Residents In Spain And The Underground Economy: Insight For United States Policy Makers, Jon R. Davis

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

There were an estimated 11 million undocumented residents in the United States in 2010. The issue of undocumented migration and how it should be addressed is a contentious topic in the United States. However, the discussions about how to address illegal migration into the United States rarely include any comparisons to other measures that have been taken in other countries. There are many countries, such as Spain, that have large undocumented resident populations.

This analysis looks at policies that have been enacted in Spain since 1985 to enable undocumented residents to receive legal resident status, referred to as regularizations and …

Public Higher Education Governance: An Empirical Examination, Jacob Fowles

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

Public higher education is a large enterprise in the United States. Total state expenditures for higher education totaled nearly $152 billion dollars in FY2008, accounting for over ten percent of total state expenditures and representing the single largest category of discretionary spending in most states (NASBO, 2009). The last three decades have witnessed the introduction of hundreds of pieces of legislation across states which make structural changes to state higher education governance systems (Marcus, 1997; McLendon, Deaton, and Hearn, 2007). Despite the ubiquity of state higher education governance change much remains unknown, both in terms of why states choose to …