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Alumni and Friends: La Follette Notes: Spring 2005
Faculty News
Professors inform new legislators about issues
Professor Andrew Reschovsky, center, answers a question from a new Wisconsin Assembly member. Reschovsky and professors Maria Cancian, left, Graham Wilson and Donald Nichols shared their expertise on welfare, government finance, environmental regulation and manufacturing in the Midwest as part of a legislators orientation in January 2005 organized by the Wisconsin Legislative Council.
Menzie Chinn and Charles Engel participated at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago’s Academic Advisory Council meeting in January. In December, Chinn presented a paper on world interest rates at a Federal Reserve Bank of New York conference on financial globalization. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development will publish his paper on “Macroeconomic Management and Financial Stability” this year.
Bob Haveman has published a book, Human Capital in the United States from 1975 to 2000: Patterns of Growth and Utilization, with Andrew Bershadker and Jonathan A. Schwabish. In January and February, Haveman pursued his research at Australian National University, in Canberra, Australia. He and Barbara Wolfe are involved in research on the transmission of welfare dependence between Australian parents and their children.
Karen Holden served on a National Academy of Social Insurance task force on Social Security and individual retirement accounts. She takes over as La Follette School associate director this summer.
Professor elected to organization’s governing council
Geoffrey Wallace
La Follette School faculty member Geoffrey Wallace has been elected to a four-year term, 2005-08, on the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management’s Policy Council. The Policy Council is the board of directors for APPAM, which brings together policy practitioners and researchers to address substantive public policy problems.
Wallace’s research examines labor economics, the economics of marriage and the family, and policy issues relating to poverty. Wallace joins two other La Follette School faculty members on the council, Carolyn Heinrich and Maria Cancian, who serves as secretary. La Follette School professor David Weimer is APPAM president-elect.
The La Follette School will host APPAM’s 28th annual research conference Nov. 2-4, 2006, at the Monona Terrace convention center.
Melanie Manion finishes her term as associate director of the La Follette School in May before heading off to China to conduct research. Her new book, Corruption by Design: Building Clean Government in Mainland China and Hong Kong, contrasts experiences of mainland China and Hong Kong to explore the pressing question of how governments can transform a culture of widespread corruption to one of clean government.
Andrew Reschovsky published two papers that analyzed how state governments have responded to budget shortfalls. Closer to home, he analyzed proposals to amend the Wisconsin constitution by including provisions to limit annual increases in state and local government spending. He presented his research around the state. Reschovsky also organized an OECD conference in Paris on fiscal challenges of metropolitan areas. He presented a paper at the 10th Year Anniversary Conference of the South African Financial and Fiscal Commission in Cape Town.
David Weimer is completing a study to determine why African Americans in New York state tend to have heart by-pass surgery performed by surgeons with higher risk-adjusted mortality rates. During the last year he was an advisor to the Comprehensive Cancer Control Plan for Wisconsin.
John Witte has completed research on charter schools funded by a U.S. Department of Education grant. Contrary to research done in other states, his results found that Wisconsin charter schools performed at least as well, and probably somewhat better, than traditional schools. He also found that charter schools were used with Wisconsin’s open enrollment law to create considerable competition between districts to acquire students and capture their state aid payments.
Jonathan Zeitlin spoke in August at a conference funded by the European Commission. He presented the findings of a new book based on the work of an international research network he co-organized: Jonathan Zeitlin and Philippe Pochet, with Lars Magnusson (eds.), The Open Method of Coordination in Action: The European Employment and Social Inclusion Strategies. Zeitlin’s Local Players in Global Games: The Strategic Constitution of a Multinational Corporation was published last fall. Zeitlin spent July as a visiting scholar at the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies and the Amsterdam Graduate School of Social Research.
Index to La Follette Notes spring 2005