Economic Policy Commons^™

The Primacy Of Context: An Exploration Into The Causes Of Food Insecurity In Kitere, Kenya., William O. Aludo

Capstone Collection

The purpose of this study was to explore the specific reasons why households in Kitere village, Kenya experience persistent food insecurity every year while the region enjoys the advantage of two planting/harvest seasons in a year. Kitere village lies within the lakeside region of Nyanza Province in Kenya, generally considered to be one of the more agriculturally productive parts of the country. The Participatory Rural Appraisal method was employed to gather qualitative data on the causes of food insecurity in Kitere village. The data sources were focus groups and a self-administered, one-time survey of random and non-random samples of key …

How Foreign Firms Transformed Ireland’S Domestic Economy, Paul Donnelly

Articles

Today, Ireland is host to 1,033 multinational corporations. They directly employ 152,785 and account for 70 per cent or €122.5bn of exports. It’s a story that has its roots in the 1940s.

Pathologies In International Policy Transfer: The Case Of The Oecd Tax Transparency Initiative, Richard Eccleston, Richard Woodward

Articles

The importance of international organizations to the development and diffusion of international policy norms is widely recognized but is increasingly tempered by an appreciation of the pathologies of policy transfer. Using a case study of the OECD’s campaign to promote transparency in global tax affairs, this paper identifies a new and relatively distinctive form of dysfunctional policy transfer. Specifically it argues that international organizations face bureaucratic incentives to promote weak or lowest common denominator standards in order to maximize their prospects of brokering successful international agreements. However the paper also notes that while international organizations may have a short-term interest …

The Impact Of Research And Development On Economic Growth And Productivity In The Us States, Luisa Blanco, James Prieger, Ji Gu

School of Public Policy Working Papers

We estimate the impact of R&D on TFP and output in the private sector at the state level in the US from 1963 to 2007. R&D has a large effect on both output and TFP at the state level in the long run. The R&D elasticity in a state averages 0.056 to 0.143, implying returns to state GDP from R&D spending of 83% to 213%. There are also positive R&D spillovers, with 77% of the total returns accruing to other states. The R&D elasticities are either stable or increase slightly after 1993. The effects of R&D are dependent on the …

Health Promotions 2.0: The Future Of Wellness Programs In America, Rajiv Kumar

Center for Policy Research

In no small part because of technology, the way we live and work is being transformed. I believe that those of us who are interested in health policy can play an important role in guiding that transformation. I submit to you that unhealthy living is a social issue; that conditions such as obesity and diabetes are social diseases and that their prevalence is a social problem. If we have a social problem, then we need a social solution. I believe part of that solution can be found in the worksite health promotion and wellness programs that have taken root across …

Spatial Lag Models With Nested Random Effects: An Instrumental Variable Procedure With An Application To English House Prices, Badi H. Baltagi, Bernard Fingleton, Alain Pirotte

Center for Policy Research

This paper sets up a nested random effects spatial autoregressive panel data model to explain annual house price variation for 2000-2007 across 353 local authority districts in England. The estimation problem posed is how to allow for the endogeneity of the spatial lag variable producing the simultaneous spatial spillover of prices across districts together with the nested random effects in a panel data setting. To achieve this, the paper proposes new estimators based on the instrumental variable approaches of Kelejian and Prucha (1998) and Lee (2003) for the cross-sectional spatial autoregressive model. Monte Carlo results show that our estimators perform …

Review Of Proposed Plan For New Police And Fire Facilities, Carver, Ma, Edward J. Collins, Jr. Center For Public Management, University Of Massachusetts Boston

Edward J. Collins Center for Public Management Publications

The Edward J. Collins, Jr. Center for Public Management at the University of Massachusetts Boston was hired by the Town of Carver to perform an independent assessment of the Buildings Study Committee’s proposals for the construction/renovation of three new public facilities including a fire station, police station, and elementary school. Specifically, the team from the Center was asked to review: 1) the selected and considered sites for the facilities; and, 2) the funding plan recommended by the Buildings Study Committee.

This analysis has been divided into two components. This, first report presents the Center’s findings as they relate to the …

Women’S Political Leadership In Boston, Center For Women In Politics And Public Policy, University Of Massachusetts Boston

Publications from the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy

The center tracks the status of women at all levels of government in the New England states. It also provides dynamic web resources to inform and support public leadership of women of color.

This fact sheet presents information and statistics following the 2013 municipal elections in the City of Boston.

Introduction: Education Finance In New York State, John Yinger

Center for Policy Research

It’s Elementary is a series of essays on topics in education and education policy. The main focus is on education finance in New York State, but general research findings in education and education policy issues in several other states are also discussed. John Yinger, Professor of Economics and Public Administration at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University is the author of most of these essays, although a few are written by or co-authored with other scholars.

The Allocation Of Time In Sleep: A Social Network Model With Sampled Data, Xiaodong Liu, Eleonora Patacchini, Edoardo Rainone

Center for Policy Research

We analyze peer effects in sleeping behavior using a representative sample of U.S. teenagers from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health. The sampling design of the survey causes the conventional 2SLS estimator to be inconsistent. We extend the NLS estimator in Wang and Lee (2013a) to estimate network models with sampled observations on the dependent variable. When accounting for sampling, we find that the sleeping behavior of the friends is important to shape own sleeping behavior, besides the impact of individual, family and friend characteristics.

Can America Govern Itself?: Deficits, Debt, And Delay, Ron Haskins

Brookings Scholar Lecture Series

America has now been in the throes of a deficit and debt crisis for nearly a decade. Over the last three years, the federal government has tied itself in knots trying to reach a long-term solution. Any effective solution will involve tax increases and entitlement cuts. But both parties have been unwilling to openly bargain about either the tax increases or spending cuts they are willing to consider as part of a grand bargain. Why are both parties being so intransigent? What are the prospects for a grand bargain and what might it look like? What are the consequences if …

Measuring Social Unrest Based On Income Distribution, Yoonseok Lee, Donggyun Shin

Center for Policy Research

This paper develops a social unrest measure by revising Esteban-Ray (1994, Econometrica) polarization index. For the purpose of measuring more effectively the level of social unrest that is generated by separation of income classes, the new index allows for asymmetry between the rich and the poor groups’ alienation feeling against the other, and it constructs a more effective group identification function. To facilitate statistical inferences, asymptotic distribution of the proposed measure is also derived using results from U-statistics, and an easy-to-implement jackknife-based variance estimation algorithm is obtained. Since the new index is general enough to include the Esteban-Ray index and …

The Dangers Of Aggressive Trade Liberalization: Why The Washington Consensus Is Not A Global Consensus, Stephen T. Hanshaw

Government Undergraduate Publications

The theory of trade and capital market liberalization has been floated around in discussions about economic stability and development for decades. Due to the fact that the world is becoming more and more interdependent and interconnected each and every day, the necessity for a global market emerged in the early 1990’s. The Western response to globalization in many cases was dubbed the "Washington Consensus," of which trade liberalization is a huge part. The idea of trade liberalization is centralized in the idea of a free-market economy, originally posited by Adam Smith. His model proposed the idea of the "invisible hand", …

Community-Based Analytics: Big Data And Decision Making For Community-Based Organizations, Michael P. Johnson

McCormack Graduate School General Publications (active until 2013)

Community-based organizations face significant challenges in identifying data needs, and assembling data resources for service provision, strategy design and advocacy. We develop principles by which CBOs can develop and share large datasets in order to formulate and solve decision problems that improve the well-being of localized, often marginalized or distressed communities. We illustrate these ideas using field research from Boston, MA.

Model Selection In The Presence Of Incidental Parameters, Yoonseok Lee, Peter C.B. Phillips

Center for Policy Research

This paper considers model selection in nonlinear panel data models where incidental parameters or large-dimensional nuisance parameters are present. Primary interest typically centers on selecting a model that best approximates the underlying structure involving parameters that are common within the panel after concentrating out the incidental parameters. It is well known that conventional model selection procedures are often inconsistent in panel models and this can be so even without nuisance parameters (Han et al, 2012). Modifications are then needed to achieve consistency. New model selection information criteria are developed here that use either the Kullback-Leibler information criterion based on the …

How Local Workforce Investment Boards Can Help Support Job Creation, Randall W. Eberts

Employment Research Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Does Retirement Induced Through Social Security Pension Eligibility Influence Subjective Well-Being? A Cross-Country Comparison, Arie Kapteyn, Jinkook Lee, Gema Zamarro

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

How does retirement influence subjective well-being? Some studies suggest retirement does not affect subjective well-being or may improve it. Others suggest it adversely affects it. This paper aims at advancing our understanding of the effect of retirement on subjective well-being by (1) using longitudinal data to tease out the retirement effect from age and cohort differences; (2) using instrumental variables to address potential reverse causation of subjective well-being on retirement decisions; and (3) conducting cross-country analyses, exploiting differences in eligibility ages for retirement benefits across countries and within countries. We use panel data from the US Health and Retirement Study …

The Trajectory Of Warwick Junction As A Site Of Inclusivity In Post-Apartheid South Africa, Kara Van Schilfgaarde Van Schilfgaarde

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Warwick Junction, a thriving trading hub in the inner city of Durban, has long been considered one of the best examples of collaborative urban management practices between the local government and informal traders. In a post-apartheid South Africa, there was a national desire to transform the old systems of governance, which in Warwick translated to city government institutions making an effort to include informal traders in the policymaking and management processes. This paper tracks the history of Warwick Junction, using its oppressive past to frame common perspectives of informal trade. It considers the legacy of the post-apartheid era South Africa, …

Valuation Of The Ecosystem Services Provided By Coastal Ecosystems In Shandong, China: Developing A Non-Market Valuation System, Stephen Hynes, Rui Zhao, Jing Guo

Working Papers

Based on unique geographical, economic and ecological characteristics, the coastal regions have been serving as the most important supports for human benefits. From food provision, ecosystem regulation, wildlife habitat to various recreational and aesthetic activities, humans have been obtaining direct and indirect well-being from the coastal ecosystems. If properly managed and sustainably protected, these benefits should be translated to human welfare for current and future generations (Brenner, et al., 2010) . The lack of complete understanding of total values obtained from coastal ecosystems, especially the underestimating of ecosystem benefits has led to management failures. As a result, most coastal resources …

Technical Appendix: Economic Impact Of The Commercial Fisheries On Local County Economies From Catch In California National Marine Sanctuaries 2010, 2011 And 2012. Marine Sanctuaries Conservation Series Onms-13-07, Vernon R. Leeworthy, Desiree Jerome, Kelsey Schueler

Working Papers

This report documents the data and methods of estimation used in estimating the economic impact of commercial fishing catch from all four National Marine Sanctuaries in California on local county economies in terms of harvest revenue received by fishermen and the associated economic impacts, including multiplier impacts, on total output, value added, income and the number of full- and part-time jobs.