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Robert M. La Follette
School of Public Affairs
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Last updated:
August 12, 2008

La Follette School Publications: The Working Paper Series

The Working Paper Series makes research by La Follette School faculty available online, in advance of its presentation at conferences, publication in journals or as book chapters, or as soon as faculty believe the work is ready to be shared. Questions about the research, recommendations, and policy proposals within these papers should be directed to the authors. The La Follette School takes no stand on policy issues; opinions expressed in these working papers reflect the views of individual authors and researchers. Some papers are available through the Social Science Research Network.

For La Follette School faculty to submit papers

Happiness as a Complex Financial Phenomenon: The Financial and Psychological Adjustment to Widowhood in the U.S.: Karen Holden, Jeungkun Kim and Angela Fontes / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2008-016
Using a sample of relatively young widows and widowers, this paper examines the relationship between psychological and financial well-being of the surviving spouse. For all married and widowed men and women, wealth and health shape financial satisfaction, but widowhood has a fairly selective effect. Controlling for financial satisfaction, the authors find that widows and widowers are more depressed than are married men and women.
Nonlinearities, Business Cycles and Exchange Rates: Menzie D. Chinn / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2008-015
The paper brings together the literature on exchange rate models and monetary policy models, with special reference to the importance of output, inflation gaps and exchange rate targets. It focuses on the dollar/euro exchange rate, and the differential results arising from using alternative measures of the output gap for the United States and the euro region.
Dynamics in Performance Measurement System Design and Implementation: Carolyn J. Heinrich and Gerald R. Marschke / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2008-014
The authors scrutinize a commonly used static, principal-agent framework for informing performance incentive system design and highlight the models’ limitations for understanding individual and organizational responses to performance measurement requirements. They develop a dynamic framework for performance measurement systems to account for employees' strategic behavior over time.
Long-Term Effects of Public Low-Income Housing Vouchers on Work, Earnings, and Neighborhood Quality: Deven Carlson, Robert Haveman, Thomas Kaplan and Barbara Wolfe / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2008-013
This analysis of the federal Section 8 housing voucher program finds that voucher recipients live in better neighborhoods within five years of receiving vouchers. The results also show that voucher receipt initially causes lower earnings, but these dissipate over time. The work and earnings effects from voucher receipt differ substantially across demographic groups.
Interpreting interim deviations from cost projections for publicly supported energy technologies: Gregory F. Nemet / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2008-012
Widespread public funding of nascent energy technologies, combined with recent increases in costs the most heavily supported, has introduced a policy dilemma: should policymakers sustain these programs in anticipation cost increases being temporary disturbances or should they eliminate them to avoid risking billions of dollars of public funds on technological dead ends? This paper uses experience curve to estimate possible policy outcomes and to introduce new ways of assessing near term cost dynamics.
Private Information and the Monetary Model of Exchange Rates: Evidence from a Novel Data Set: Menzie D. Chinn and Michael J. Moore / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2008-011
The authors propose an exchange rate model which is a hybrid of the conventional monetary specification and the Evans-Lyons microstructure approach. It argues that the failure of the monetary model is principally due to private preference shocks which render the demand for money unstable.
Cost containment for climate policy requires linked technology policies: Gregory F. Nemet / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2008-010
Safety valves, discretionary advisory boards, and other cost containment mechanisms enhance the political feasibility of stringent climate policy by limiting firms’ and households’ exposures to higher than anticipated costs associated with reducing greenhouse gas emissions. However, cost containment comes at a price; it increases the risk of climate-related damages and it also discourages investments in low-carbon innovation.
Grandparents to Grandchildren Transfers: The Potential Importance to Younger Families’ Economic Stability: Angela Fontes and Karen Holden / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2008-009
Grandparents are more likely to give time and money to their grandchildren's families when grandparents are young, married and financially secure. They are more likely to assist grandchildren if they themselves were assisted or assisted their own children. Grandparents who continue to work are more likely to provide time and money assistance than nonworking grandparents, even controlling for age and income of grandparents. The authors conclude that grandparents may adjust their retirement plans to enable their adult children to fulfill child-rearing needs.
A Faith-Based Initiative: Do We Really Know that a Flexible Exchange Rate Regime Facilitates Current Account Adjustment?: Menzie D. Chinn and Shang-Jin Wei / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2008-008
The authors show that data do not support the assertion that a flexible exchange rate regime would facilitate current account adjustment.
The Euro May over the Next 15 Years Surpass the Dollar as Leading International Currency: Menzie D. Chinn and Jeffrey A. Frankel / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2008-007
The euro has arisen as a credible eventual competitor to the dollar as leading international currency, much as the dollar rose to challenge the pound 70 years ago. The authors find that the euro may surpass the dollar as the world's top reserve currency as soon as 2025.
Demand Subsidies Versus R&D: Comparing the Uncertain Impacts of Policy on a Pre-Commercial Low-Carbon Energy Technology: Gregory F. Nemet and Erin Baker / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2008-006
To compare the effects of publicly sponsored research and development and subsidies for demand, the authors combine a bottom-up manufacturing cost model with information gathered from experts. They apply their model to purely organic photovoltatics, a low-carbon energy technology that is not commercially available, and find that successful R&D programs reduce costs more than demand subsidies. They also find that quality R&D brought the cost of the photovoltaics to 4 cents per kilowatt-hour, which subsidies alone could not achieve.
Supplemental Education Services under No Child Left Behind: Who Signs Up, and What Do They Gain?: Carolyn J. Heinrich, Robert H. Meyer, and Greg Whitten / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2008-005
A federally mandated and funded tutoring program in Milwaukee Public Schools is not necessarily reaching the people who need the help the most, nor is it effective in increasing student achievement, the authors find in their integration of qualitative and quantitative data from a large-scale study of supplemental educational services offered as part of the No Child Left Behind Act.
Education and Labor Market Consequences of Teenage Childbearing: Evidence Using the Timing of Pregnancy Outcomes and Community Fixed Effects: Jason Fletcher and Barbara Wolfe / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2008-004
The authors explore the consequences of teen childbearing to the mother using a comparison group of pregnant teens who had miscarriages. Taking into account birth control choices, the timing of miscarriages, and community factors, they find evidence that teenage childbearing likely reduces the probability of receiving a high school diploma by 5 to 10 percentage points, reduces annual income as a young adult by $1,000 to $2,400, and may increase the probability of receiving cash assistance and decrease years of schooling.
Child Mental Health and Human Capital Accumulation: The Case of ADHD Revisited: Jason Fletcher and Barbara Wolfe / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2008-003
The authors look at a sample of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. They confirm and extend findings by other analysts in terms of implications for schooling, and they explore implications for human capital of siblings.
Explaining Turnover Intention in State Government: Examining the Roles of Gender, Life Cycle and Loyalty: Donald P. Moynihan and Noel Landuyt / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2008-002 is forthcoming in the Review of Public Personnel Administration.
To understand the intent of state employees to leave their jobs, this paper looks at life-cycle, gender and loyalty. The authors find that age, experience, and geographical preference coupled with economic and family constraints temper job-change decisions. Contrary to other results, women are less likely to say they intend to quit their positions. Organizational loyalty and sense of empowerment help predict turnover intention.
Demand Pull, Technology Push, and Government-Led Incentives for Non-Incremental Technical Change: Gregory F. Nemet / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2008-001
This paper uses patent citation data to examine the strength of incentives for inventors created by government policy. The results show only weak effects; the author discusses three explanations for this apparent contradiction of the demand-pull hypothesis.
Master or Servant? Agency Slack and the Politics of IMF Lending: Mark S. Copelovitch / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2007-039
This paper argues that states and International Monetary Fund bureaucrats exercise partial but incomplete control over the fund’s lending policies. Using an original dataset of IMF lending to 47 countries from 1984-2003, the author finds that “agency slack,” or the extent of staff autonomy, is conditional on the intensity and heterogeneity of preferences among the IMF’s largest shareholder countries.
Choose Your Weapon: International Trade Agreements and Exchange Rate Policy Choice: Mark S. Copelovitch and Jon C. Pevehouse / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2007-038
This paper examines the question of whether governments engage in “exchange rate protection” - that is, whether they actively manipulate the exchange rate and/or utilize exchange rate fluctuations as a lever to influence the terms of trade. Using data on 21 countries from 1975-1999, the paper identifies specific conditions under which governments use exchange rate policy as a substitute for trade protection.
Financial Regulation, Monetary Policy, and Inflation in the Industrialized World: Mark S. Copelovitch and David Andrew Singer / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2007-037 is forthcoming in the Journal of Politics.
This paper argues that the institutional mandates of central banks influence inflation outcomes in advanced industrialized countries. When bank regulation is assigned to a separate agency, the central bank is more likely to enact tighter monetary policies geared solely toward maintaining price stability. The authors support this argument with a statistical analysis of inflation in 23 countries from 1975-1999 and a case study of the Bank of England, which lost its bank regulatory authority to a new agency in 1998.
Uncertainty, Context, and the Duration of International Agreements: Mark S. Copelovitch and Tonya L. Putnam / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2007-036
Why are some international agreements set up to operate indefinitely while others are of limited duration? This paper argues that “institutional context” — the existing legal and institutional environment in which states negotiate international agreements — is a significant determinant of states’ choices about the duration of international cooperation.
The Effects of Family Caps on the Subsequent Fertility Decisions of Never-Married Mothers: Geoffrey L. Wallace / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2007-035
The author's estimates suggest that family caps designed to reduce fertility among welfare recipients by denying additional cash assistance to those who have children do not have an effect on subsequent child-bearing among never-married women.
The Effect of Child Support Enforcement Efforts on Nonmarital Fertility and Marriage: Geoffrey L. Wallace / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2007-034
The author finds mixed evidence as to whether the strength of state child support enforcement affects nonmarital birth or marriage rates. In the preferred specifications, increased enforcement leads to a decrease in the likelihood of marriage among never-married, childless women and in the annual likelihood of a non marital birth and marriage among never-married women with one child.
A New Measure of Financial Openness: Menzie D. Chinn and Hiro Ito / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2007-033
In creating an index that measures the extent of openness in capital account transactions, the authors address the lack of proper ways of measuring the extent of the openness in cross-border financial transactions. The data are available for 181 countries for 1970-2005.
Child Mental Health and Human Capital Accumulation: The Case of ADHD Revisited: Jason Fletcher and Barbara Wolfe / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2007-032
La Follette School Working Paper No. 2008-003 is a revision of this paper. The authors look at a sample of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. They confirm and extend findings by other analysts in terms of implications for schooling, and they explore implications for human capital of siblings.
A Decade of Innovation in EU Governance: The European Employment Strategy, the Open Method of Coordination, and the Lisbon Strategy: Jonathan Zeitlin / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2007-031
This paper examines the European Employment Strategy and the Open Method of Coordination as European Union governance tools. It evaluates the Lisbon Strategy and proposes reforms.
China’s Current Account and Exchange Rate: Yin-Wong Cheung, Menzie D. Chinn and Eiji Fujii / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2007-030
The authors examine whether the Chinese exchange rate is misaligned and how Chinese trade flows respond to the exchange rate and to economic activity. They find, first, that the currency is substantially below the value their cross-country estimates predicted. They also find that Chinese multilateral trade flows respond to relative prices.
Price-based Measurement of Financial Globalization: A Cross-Country Study of Interest Rate Parity: Hiro Ito and Menzie D. Chinn / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2007-029
The authors characterize the relationship between ex post exchange rate depreciation and the interest differential for a set of countries that spans developed and emerging market economies. The measured ex post uncovered interest differentials in terms of both levels and absolute values are then related to measures of trade and financial openness, financial development, government budget balances, institutional development, and exchange rate regimes. They find wide diversity in the coefficient relating depreciations and interest differentials.
Public Service Motivation and Interpersonal Citizenship Behavior in Public Organizations: Testing a Preliminary Model: Sanjay K. Pandey, Bradley E. Wright and Donald P. Moynihan / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2007-028 is forthcoming in the International Public Management Journal.
This paper tests the relationships between individual levels of public service motivation and interpersonal citizenship behavior. The authors find that public service motivation increases organizational citizenship, even when accounting for the significant role of co-worker support.
The Ties that Bind: Social Networks, Person-Organization Fit and Turnover Intention: Donald P. Moynihan and Sanjay K. Pandey / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2007-027 is forthcoming in Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory.
The authors argue that employees exist in social networks that shape employee attitudes and behavior. They find that strong relationships with coworkers reduce intent to leave but do not uncover strong support that external networks increase turnover intention. In addition, an employee whose personal values mesh with those of the organization are more likely to make a long-term commitment to that organization.
Measuring How Administration Shapes Citizenship: A Policy Feedback Perspective on Performance Management: Amber Wichowsky and Donald P. Moynihan / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2007-026 is forthcoming in Public Administration Review.
Governments' emphasis on gauging the outcomes of social programs generally do not measure how a policy affects an individual's role as citizen. The authors argue that performance management systems should focus on citizenship outcomes. They offer suggestions for measuring such outcomes.
How do Public Organizations Learn? Bridging Cultural and Structural Perspectives: Donald P. Moynihan and Noel Landuyt / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2007-025 is forthcoming in Public Administration Review.
This article presents a model of organizational learning and finds that leaders seeking to foster learning should recognize that most relevant organizational variables combine structural and cultural aspects, which are mutually dependent on one another.
East Asia and Global Imbalances: Saving, Investment, and Financial Development
: Hiro Ito and Menzie Chinn / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2007-024
The paper investigates the role of budget balances, financial development and openness in the evolution of global imbalances. The authors examinine the effect of different types and aspects of financial development using a cross-country analysis that encompassinges a sample of 19 industrialized countries and 70 developing countries for 1986 through 2005.
Property Tax Responses to State Aid Cuts in the Recent Fiscal Crisis
: Richard F. Dye and Andrew Reschovsky / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2007-023
The paper examines whether states increased property taxes between 2002 and 2004 in order to maintain the level of public services in light of large cuts in state intergovernmental grants resulting from state fiscal crises.
Strengthening the Social Dimension of the Lisbon Strategy
: Jonathan Zeitlin / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2007-022
The author introduces a discussion of how to strengthen the social dimension of the Lisbon Strategy by focusing on the question of how best to implement the conclusion of the spring 2007 European Council that “the common social objectives of Member States should be better taken into account within the Lisbon Agenda.”
The Normative Model in Decline? Public Service Motivation in the Age of Governance: Donald P. Moynihan / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2007-021
This paper examines how public management reforms that foster market values (through performance measurement, financial incentives and contracting out) crowd-out the public service motivation of employees. The flaws of the market model in practice means that it encourages opportunistic behavior, making it even more important that the public sector curtails financial motivators, encourages intrinsic motivation and selects people who are not primarily driven by self-interest.
Learning from Difference: The New Architecture of Experimentalist Governance in the European Union: Charles F. Sabel and Jonathan Zeitlin / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2007-020
The authors identify distinctive and surprisingly effective innovations that have emerged in European Union governance. These innovations might inform the next round of efforts to render the institutions of European
decision-making comprehensible and democratically accountable.
Cost-Benefit Analysis Involving Addictive Goods: Using Contingent Valuation to Estimate Willingness to Pay to Eliminate Addiction: David L. Weimer, Aidan Vining and Randall K. Thomas / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2007-019
To conduct a cost-benefit analysis for social policies related to physically or psychologically addictive goods such as tobacco or gambling, the authors propose an adjustment to consumer surplus, the difference between the maximum consumers will pay for a good and what they actually pay.
Access to Higher Education: Exploring the Variation among Research Universities in the Prevalence of Pell Grant Recipients: Matthew P. Steinberg, Patrizio Piraino and Robert Haveman / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2007-018
The prevalence of low-income students at 148 public and private research universities is studied using receipt of a federal Pell Grant as a proxy for low-income status. The authors consider the factors that may contribute to variation among research universities in the prevalence of low-income students among the undergraduate student body and the extent to which an institution’s actual low-income prevalence deviates from their estimates.
Public Service Motivation and Organizational Citizenship Behavior: Testing a Preliminary Model: Sanjay K. Pandey, Bradley E. Wright and Donald P. Moynihan / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2007-0017
La Follette School Working Paper No. 2007-028 is a substantial revision of this paper. This paper tests the direct and indirect relationship between individual levels of PSM (Public Service Motivation) and organizational citizenship using a structural equation model. It accounts for the effect of organizational environment by incorporating a measure of co-worker support. The authors find that PSM has a direct and positive effect on organizational citizenship, even when accounting for the significant role of co-worker support.
Does Community Participation Produce Dividends in Social Investment Fund Projects?: Carolyn J. Heinrich and Yeri Lopez / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2007-016
In a study of education projects in Honduras, the authors investigate whether participatory, community-driven approaches to social investment fund projects improve educational outcomes and community members’ perceptions of the projects’ effectiveness. Although they do not find significant effects of the education projects on academic outcomes of school-aged youth, they do observe a positive relationship between the use of participatory methods and household opinions of the projects.
The Ties that Bind: Social Networks, Person-Organization Fit and Turnover Intention: Donald P. Moynihan and Sanjay K. Pandey / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2007-015
La Follette School Working Paper No. 2007-027 is a substantial revision of this paper. The authors examine the influence of social networks and values on turnover intention among public and nonprofit employees. They argue that employees exist in social networks inside and outside their organizations, and that these networks shape employee attitudes and behavior. They find that strong relationships with coworkers reduce intent to leave, but do not find strong support that external networks increase turnover intention. The authors also propose and find evidence overlap between employee and organizational values encourages long-term commitments to organizations.
Two Essays in International Finance: Interest Rate Parity and the Forward Premium Puzzle: Menzie D. Chinn / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2007-014
These two essays were prepared for the Princeton Encyclopedia of the World Economy, edited by Kenneth Reinert and Ramkishen Rajan, forthcoming from Princeton University Press.
Evidence-Based Policy and Performance Management: Complementary or Colliding Movements?: Carolyn J. Heinrich / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2007-013 has been published as “Evidence-based policy and performance management: Challenges and Prospects in Two Parallel Movements.” The American Review of Public Administration 37(3): 255-277.
In this essay, the author examines complementarities and tensions between the evidence-based policy and performance management movements. She considers alternative models and approaches for raising the standards for evidence production and for promoting policymakers' effective use of the information produced.
Global Current Account Imbalances: American Fiscal Policy versus East Asian Savings: Menzie D. Chinn and Hiro Ito / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2007-012
The authors consider the origins of global current account imbalances and find that for industrial countries, the government budget balance is an important determinant of the current account balance. Their estimates lead them to conclude that fiscal factors might be as important as excess savings arising from East Asia.
Inequality and Health: Is Housing Crowding the Link?: Sholeh A. Maani, Rhema Vaithianathan and Barbara Wolfe / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2007-011
The authors propose a new mechanism through which income inequality can influence health. They argue that increased income inequality induces household crowding, which in turn leads to increased rates of infectious diseases.
The Gap in Employment of High-Income Professionals in Wisconsin: Donald A. Nichols / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2007-010
A shortfall in employment of high-income professionals in Wisconsin, does exist. The author attributes this to the absence of a mega city with a large financial and business services sector.
Wisconsin's Border Counties: Donald A. Nichols / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2007-009
Given the tendency of some people to live in Wisconsin and commute to the Twin Cities or Chicago metropolitan areas, Wisconsin border communities can take steps to attract and retain these commuters.
Living Costs and Taxes in Wisconsin: Donald A. Nichols / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2007-008
The author takes on the task of looking at how the cost of living, including taxes, affects migration to Wisconsin, especially the decisions of young, highly educated people to relocate in the Badger State.
Migration To and From Wisconsin: Yeri Lopez and John Karl Scholz / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2007-007
Wisconsin exports more college graduates than it imports, with a net 7,000 people with bachelor's degrees leaving, the authors discover. More educated people leave Wisconsin for Chicago and Minneapolis/St. Paul than leave Illinois or Minnesota for Milwaukee.
Perspectives on Economic Development from Site Selection Magazine: Yeri Lopez and John Karl Scholz / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2007-006
The authors find that a Wisconsin presence is missing from an influential magazine that professionals consult when they consider locations for their businesses. The authors categorize themes in the journal's advertisements and measure their prevalence.
Choosing the Right Pond: What are Appropriate Comparison Cities for Wisconsin's Metropolitan Areas?: Yeri Lopez and John Karl Scholz / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2007-005
Using per-capita income, the authors rank Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay and Appleton/Fox River Valley against their 10 closes comparison metropolitan statistical areas. They find that Milwaukee and Madison are similar to or slightly better than similar areas, while the other two are doing very well economically.
The Case for Counter-Cyclical Fiscal Capacity: Yilin Hou and Donald P. Moynihan / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2007-004
The authors suggest that state governments develop "counter-cyclical fiscal capacity" to create and use financial tools to maintain spending and program stability when revenue drops. This would help avoid spending cuts and tax increases.
Finding Workable Levers over Work Motivation: Comparing Job Satisfaction, Job Involvement and Organizational Commitment: Donald P. Moynihan and Sanjay K. Pandey / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2007-003 is forthcoming in Administration & Society.
Managers have varying degrees of influence over aspects of work motivation, with the most over job satisfaction and the least over job involvement. Public service motivation, advancement opportunities, role clarity, job routine, and group culture are some of the variable important to work motivation.
The Overvaluation of Renminbi Undervaluation: Yin-Wong Cheung, Menzie D. Chinn and Eiji Fujii / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2007-002
The authors find little statistical that China's renminbi is undervalued.
The Role of State Governance in the Adoption of Pharmaceutical Technologies in Substance Abuse Treatment: Carolyn J. Heinrich and Carolyn J. Hill / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2007-001 has been published in Health Services Research 43(3): 951-970.
This paper examines policy, institutional, and environmental factors associated with the adoption of a pharmaceutical agentnaltrexonein the treatment of alcohol dependent clients by substance abuse treatment facilities.
Economic Conditions and Poverty: A Comparison of the 1980s and 1990s: Gary A. Hoover and Geoffrey L. Wallace / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2006-031
The authors first establish a benchmark for the relationship between poverty rates among family types and unemployment rates in the 1980s and 1990s. The authors then discuss possible reasons for the differences in responsiveness of family poverty to unemployment rates that this benchmark suggests.
An Assessment of Several Marriage Market Related Explanations for the Decline in Female Marriage Rates Between 1970 and 1980: Geoffrey L. Wallace / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2006-030
This examination of the role of how marriage market conditions affected the decline in 1970-80 female marriage rates documents the importance of changes in mate availability and quality. Much of the decrease in marriage rates among White females ages 18 to 30 remains unexplained. Increases in school enrollment and deterioration of marriage market conditions were important in accounting for the decline in marriage rates among Black females ages 18 to 30.
What Makes Hierarchical Networks Succeed? Evidence from Hurricane Katrina: Donald P. Moynihan / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2006-029
The network of organizations that responded to Hurricane Katrina was inherently difficult to coordinate. This paper examines how network task, capacity and coordination factors weakened the response.
Public Policies, Citizenship Outcomes and the Implications for Performance Management: An Analysis of the Program Assessment Rating Tool: Amber Wichowsky and Donald P. Moynihan / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2006-028
La Follette School Working Paper No. 2007-026 is a substantial revision of this paper. The federal government's new emphasis on gauging the outcomes of social programs may mean that how a policy affects an individual's role as citizen is not being measured. The authors suggest that program performance measures, including the latest and most sophisticated instrument, the Program Assessment Rating Tool, excludes citizenship outcomes.
Current Account Balances, Financial Development and Institutions: Assaying the World Savings Glut: Menzie D. Chinn and Hiro Ito / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2006-027
Through investigation of the medium-term determinants of the current account the authors find that for industrial countries, the government budget balance is an important determinant of the current account balance. However, their empirical findings are not consistent with the argument that the more developed financial markets are, the less saving a country undertakes. There is no evidence of excess domestic saving in the Asian emerging market countries; rather they seem to have suffered from depressed investment in the wake of the 1997 financial crises. The authors find that the more developed equity markets are, the more likely countries are to run current account deficits.
The Color of Devolution: Race, Federalism, and the Politics of Social Control: Joe Soss, Richard Fording and Sanford F. Schram / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2006-026
Through analysis of state-level policy decisions, the authors show how modest but consistent racial effects on policy choices combine to produce large disparities in welfare and criminal justice policies encountered by members of different racial groups.
A Public Transformed? Welfare Reform as Policy Feedback: Joe Soss and Sanford F. Schram / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2006-025
While welfare reform in the 1990s made welfare less salient as a public issue, the authors show that it did little to change the public's willingness to spend on anti-poverty efforts or to support the Democratic Party. After presenting relevant evidence from national survey data, the authors advance a general set of propositions to explain welfare reform's limited effects on mass opinion.
False or Fitting Recognition? The Use of High Performance Bonuses in Motivating Organizational Achievements: Carolyn J. Heinrich / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2006-024 has been published in Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 26(2): 281-304.
This study examines the federal government's payment of bonuses to state organizations to motivate and recognize high performance achievements and finds that the system may be more likely to encourage misrepresentation of actual program results.
The Illusion of Precision and the Role of the Renminbi in Regional Interaction: Yin-Wong Cheung, Menzie D. Chinn and Eiji Fujii / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2006-023
The Chinese renminbi might not be as undervalued as many analysts claim. They find that the currency might even be slightly overvalued, although they concede that this is a small possibility. Changes in China's currency value should be approached very carefully, as abrupt policy changes may cause unintended damage to China's difficult-to-manage economy.
The Chicago O'Hare Expansion: A Case Study of Administrative Manipulation of Benefit-Cost Principles: Robert Haveman / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2006-022
The author describes the application of benefit-cost analysis principles by the Federal Aviation Administration to a major infrastructure investment proposal: the expansion of OHare International Airport.
Generational Income Mobility: A Review Essay: Patrizio Piraino and Robert Haveman / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2006-021
This essay discusses studies collected by Miles Corak that examine changes in economic status from one generation to the next. The essays cover 15 countries, 10 of them North American or European.
Do Youth Nonmarital Childbearing Choices Reflect Expected Income and Relationship Consequences?: Barbara Wolfe, Robert Haveman, Karen Pence, and Jonathan Schwabish / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2006-020
The authors explore whether the perceptions unmarried, adolescent females have about the consequences of choices they make affect those choices and the teens' behavior. The analysis considers expectations about marriage and cohabitation and about income.
The Sufficiency of Retirement Savings: A Comparison of Two Cohorts of Retired Workers at the Time of Retirement: Robert Haveman, Karen Holden, Barbara Wolfe and Andrei Romanov / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2006-019
This paper compares the savings adequacy of two groups of retirees, one of people who retired in 1980-81, the other of people retiring 20 years after that. The results suggest that single people and those with low education and skills and periods of unemployment are the most likely to not have enough savings for retirement.
Learning from Difference: The New Architecture of Experimentalist Governance in the European Union: Charles F. Sabel and Jonathan Zeitlin / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2006-018
La Follette School Working Paper No. 2007-020 is a substantial revision of this paper. The authors identify distinctive and surprisingly effective innovations that have emerged in European Union governance. These innovations might inform the next round of efforts to render the institutions of European decision-making comprehensible and democratically accountable.
ICT Use in the Developing World: An Analysis of Differences in Computer and Internet Penetration: Menzie D. Chinn and Robert W. Fairlie / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2006-017
The authors find evidence indicating that income, human capital, the youth dependency ratio, telephone density, legal quality and banking sector development are associated with the penetration rates of computer and Internet use.
Conventional and Unconventional Approaches to Exchange Rate Modeling and Assessment: Ron Alquist and Menzie D. Chinn / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2006-016
With a new approach, the authors examine the relative predictive power of the sticky price monetary model, uncovered interest parity, and a transformation of the net exports variable.
Challenges of the New Regulation: Graham K. Wilson / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2006-015
The author examines new methods of environmental regulation that seek to reform the traditional "command and control."
Performance-Based Contracting in Social Welfare Programs: Carolyn J. Heinrich and Youseok Choi / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2006-014 has been published in The American Review of Public Administration 37(4): 409-435.
In the context of Wisconsin Works (W-2), Wisconsin's welfare program, the authors discuss government contracting for social welfare services delivery and analyze the implications of different contract structures for the behavior and performance of service providers.
Public and Private Regulation of Organ Transplantation: Liver Allocation and the Final Rule: David L. Weimer/ La Follette School Working Paper No. 2006-013
Private regulation governs how organs from cadavers are allocated. This process led to a change in the rules that more clearly define public and private roles. Several liver transplant centers prompted the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network to adopt a national process for sharing organs. This paper examines the politics behind the decision and finds that private regulation makes effective use of stakeholders' technical expertise when changing the rules.
Cost-Benefit Analysis Involving Addictive Goods: Using Contingent Valuation to Estimate Willingness to Pay to Eliminate Addiction: David L. Weimer, Aidan Vining and Randall K. Thomas / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2006-012
La Follette School Working Paper No. 2007-019 is a substantial revision of this paper. To conduct a cost-benefit analysis for social policies related to physically or psychologically addictive goods such as tobacco or gambling, the authors propose an adjustment to consumer surplus, the difference between the maximum consumers will pay for a good and what they actually pay.
Fiscal Conditions in Selected Metropolitan Areas: Howard Chernick and Andrew Reschovsky / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2006-011
This paper presents the initial steps to better understand the current fiscal condition of local governments within metropolitan areas and to establish the extent to which fiscal disparities exist within a sample of U.S. metropolitan areas. The primary focus is to determine the extent to which fiscal institutions within a metropolitan area taxing authority, mandates, expenditure responsibilities, intergovernmental grants-in-aid, regional governance contribute to the fiscal health of local governments within metropolitan areas.
The Legacy of Rodriguez: Three Decades of School Finance Reform in Texas: Jennifer Imazeki and Andrew Reschovsky / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2006-010
This paper explores the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 Rodriquez ruling that said Texas's heavy reliance on the local property tax to fund public education did not violate the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution. The authors assess whether Texas has achieved the school funding equity objectives that were at the core of the Rodriguez plaintiffs case and whether the current school funding system in Texas is providing school districts with sufficient revenues to educate students to meet the performance standards imposed by the state.
Demand and Supply-Side Determinants of Conditional Cash Transfer Program Effectiveness: Improving the First-Generation Programs: Carolyn J. Heinrich / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2006-009 has been published as World Development, 35(1): 121-143.
The effects of large-scale federal intervention to promote human capital accumulation come to light in this study of a cash-transfer program for youth in Argentina that began in the late 1990s and is a priority for additional support and protection since the 2001 economic emergency in Argentina.
Expectations and Exchange Rate Policy: Michael B. Devereux and Charles Engel / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2006-008
Empirical evidence and theoretical discussion have long emphasized the impact of "news" on exchange rates. In most exchange rate models, the exchange rate acts as an asset price and, as such, responds to news about future returns on assets. But the exchange rate also plays a role in determining the relative price of non-durable goods. This paper argues that these two roles may conflict with one another when nominal goods prices are sticky. If news about future asset returns causes movements in current exchange rates, then when nominal prices are slow to adjust, this may prompt changes in current relative goods prices that have no efficiency rationale. In this sense, anticipations of future shocks to fundamentals can cause current exchange rate misalignments. The paper outlines a series of models in which an optimal policy eliminates news shocks on exchange rates.
The U.S. Current Account Deficit and the Expected Share of World Output: Charles Engel and John H. Rogers / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2006-007
This paper investigates the possibility that the large current account deficits of the United States are the outcome of optimizing behavior. It develops a simple long-run world equilibrium model in which the current account is determined by the expected discounted present value of its future share of world gross domestic product relative to its current share of world gross domestic product.
Taylor Rules and the Deutschmark Dollar Real Exchange Rate: Charles Engel and Kenneth D. West / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2006-006
The authors explore the link between an interest rate rule for monetary policy and the behavior of the real exchange rate. The interest rate rule, in conjunction with some standard assumptions, implies that the deviation of the real exchange rate from its steady state depends on the present value of a weighted sum of inflation and output gap differentials. The weights are functions of the parameters of the interest rate rule. An initial look at German data yields some support for the model.
The Effects of Welfare-to-Work Program Activities on Labor Market Outcomes: Andrew Dyke, Carolyn J. Heinrich, Peter R. Mueser, Kenneth R. Troske and Kyung-Seong Jeon / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2006-005 has been published in Journal of Labor Economics, 24(3): 567-608.
This study uses administrative data on welfare recipients in Missouri and North Carolina to estimate the effects of participating in sub-programs of each state's welfare-to-work program. The authors find that the effects of program participation are negative in the short term and improve in the second year after participation. The results also show that more intensive training is associated with greater initial earnings losses and greater long-term earnings gains.
Temporary Help Service Firms' Use of Employer Tax Credits: Implications for Disadvantaged Workers' Labor Market Outcomes: Sarah Hamersma and Carolyn J. Heinrich / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2006-004 has been published in Southern Economic Journal 74(4): 1123-1148
The authors examine labor market trends affecting low-skilled and disadvantaged workers: their increased participation in the temporary help services employment sector and employers' increased participation in hiring subsidy programs such as the Work Opportunity Tax Credit and the Welfare-to-Work Tax Credit.
The Taxpayer Protection Amendment: A Preliminary Analysis: Andrew Reschovsky / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2006-003
This analysis demonstrates that a proposed amendment to Wisconsin's constitution to limit the annual growth of government revenue would reduce public services and harm economic development. If it had been enacted in 1985 and not changed, Wisconsin would have experienced a 30 percent decrease in its revenue from taxes, bonds and fees. Related news coverage.
Gender Issues and Social Security Reform: Assessing the Role of Social Security and Personal Savings in Well-Being During Retirement: Robert Haveman, Karen Holden, Barbara Wolfe and Andrei Romanov / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2006-002
The adequacy of retirement savings is central to the U.S. debate about the effects of Social Security reform and pension changes that would place greater responsibility on individuals for accumulation of retirement resources. While gender issues have not been neglected in Social Security reform discussions, there has been little attention to gender issues in the discussion of the relative importance of Social Security benefits to retirement savings adequacy. We contribute to this discussion by examining the extent to which Social Security plays a role in the economic status of individuals as they age, specifically whether there is a gender effect on the maintenance of resource adequacy as women and men survive in retirement and experience changes in health and marital status. We use our results to draw conclusions about the importance of Social Security to the well-being of women and men during retirement.
Will the Euro Eventually Surpass the Dollar as Leading International Reserve Currency?: Menzie D. Chinn and Jeffrey Frankel / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2006-001
The euro is a plausible competitor to replace the dollar as the leading currency central banks hold, just as the dollar replaced the pound. Factors affecting the dollar's status include size of the home country, inflation, exchange rate variability and size of the relevant home financial center as measured by the turnover in its foreign exchange market. The euro's success will depend on whether the United Kingdom and enough other European Union members join euroland so it becomes larger than the U.S. economy and whether U.S. macroeconomic policy undermines confidence in the value of the dollar, in the form of inflation and depreciation. This paper is a substantial revision of an earlier work presented at a National Bureau of Economic Research conference on current account sustainability.
Economic Inequality in College Access, Matriculation, and Graduation: Robert Haveman and Kathryn Wilson / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2005-032
This paper concerns the extent to which colleges and universities have succeeded in their desire to promote merit, foster economic mobility, and serve youth from less advantaged families.
Work and Earnings of Low-Skill Women: Do Survey Response and Administrative Records Provide Consistent Information?: Robert Haveman and Geoffrey L. Wallace / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2005-031
The authors find substantial differences in mean earnings and mean employment rates between survey data and Unemployment Insurance data.
SCHIP Expansion and Parental Coverage: An Evaluation of Wisconsin's BadgerCare: Barbara Wolfe, Thomas Kaplan, Robert Haveman and Yoonyoung Cho / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2005-030
In the wake of the expansion of Wisconsin's public health-insurance program, this research explores the extent to which a program like Wisconsin's BadgerCare reduces the proportion of the low-income population without health-care coverage.
Why the Renminbi Might be Overvalued (But Probably Isn't): Yin-Wong Cheung, Menzie D. Chinn and Eiji Fujii / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2005-029
The authors find that some approaches for evaluating China's renminbi imply substantial underevaluation, while others imply little or none, and other methods indicate slight overevaluation.
Learning under Uncertainty: Networks in Crisis Management: Donald P. Moynihan / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2005-028
This paper examines the nature of learning in networks dealing with conditions of high uncertainty. It applies Koppenjan and Klijns (2004) framework for understanding network uncertainty to an extreme example: an inter-organizational crisis task force dealing with an exotic animal disease. The paper identifies the basic difficulties involved in learning under crisis conditions. The task force had to learn most of the elements taken for granted in more mature structural forms the nature of the structural framework in which it was working, how to adapt that framework, the role and actions appropriate for each individual, and how to deal with unanticipated problems. The network pursued this learning in a variety of ways. Most critically, the task force used standard operating procedures to provide a form of network memory, and a command and control structure to reduce institutional and strategic uncertainty.
Creating Desirable Organizational Characteristics: How Organizations Create a Focus on Results and Managerial Authority: Donald P. Moynihan and Sanjay K. Pandey / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2005-027
Published in Public Management Review. This paper examines the factors that lead to desirable organizational characteristics by proposing a model to explain the ability of some organizations to create a focus on results and high levels of managerial authority. The New Public Management literature points to these two organizational characteristics as key steps for improving public performance and providing results-based accountability. Employing a national survey of U.S. state government health and human service agency managers, we find that political support for the organization and purposeful reform efforts do lead to desirable organizational characteristics. In addition, strong internal communication fosters a focus on results, and organizational culture shapes the decision-making authority of managers.
Bureaucratic Red Tape and Organizational Performance: Testing the Moderating Role of Culture and Political Support: Sanjay K. Pandey and Donald P. Moynihan / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2005-026
While targeting bureaucratic red tape is a component of most real-world efforts to improve the effectiveness of government agencies, academic work has not attempted to understand and develop the implications of red tape for agency performance. This paper builds upon developments in the performance management and red tape literatures to propose and test a model of performance that explicitly accounts for red tape. Our findings show that bureaucratic red tape in human resource systems and information systems impede performance. We also find that organizations with a developmental culture (characterized by flexibility, readiness, adaptability and growth) are better able to deal with negative effects of red tape than organizations that lack these cultural characteristics.
Ambiguity in Policy Lessons: The Agencification Experience: Donald P. Moynihan / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2005-025
The policy transfer literature identifies the importance of context in shaping policy selection. However, countries with distinct contexts are pursuing the agencification of the public sector. Why? The solution to this puzzle lies in the ambiguity associated with public management ideas. This ambiguity allows policy adopters room to interpret management doctrines and experience. The result is that public management ideas that carry the same identifying label can mask variation in the understanding of the policy, the motivation for adoption, and in implementation outcomes. The process of interpretation allows policymakers in different contexts to a) adopt superficially similar policy concepts, b) overlook negative experiential learning that contradicts the policy doctrine, and c) adopt policies unsuitable to the national context.
Three Current Account Balances: A "Semi-Structuralist" Interpretation: Menzie D. Chinn and Jaewoo Lee / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2005-024
Three large current account imbalances the U.S. deficit and the two surpluses in Japan and in the euro area are subjected to a minimalist structural interpretation. This simple interpretation enables us to assess how much of each of the imbalances require a real exchange rate adjustment. According to the estimates, a large part of the U.S. current account deficit (nearly 2 percentage points of the 2004 deficit of 5 percent of GDP) will undergo an adjustment process that involves real depreciation in its exchange rate. For Japan, a little more than 1 percentage point of gross domestic product of the current account surplus is found to require an exchange rate movement (real appreciation) as the surpluses adjust down. For the euro area, less than half a percentage point of
its current account surplus is found to require an adjustment via real appreciation.
Current Account Balances, Financial Development and Institutions: Assaying the World Savings Glut: Menzie D. Chinn and Hiro Ito / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2005-023
La Follette School Working Paper No. 2006-027 is a substantial revision of this paper. Through investigation of the medium-term determinants of the current account the authors find that for industrial countries, the government budget balance is an important determinant of the current account balance. However, their empirical findings are not consistent with the argument that the more developed financial markets are, the less saving a country undertakes. There is no evidence of excess domestic saving in the Asian emerging market countries; rather they seem to have suffered from depressed investment in the wake of the 1997 financial crises. The authors find that the more developed equity markets are, the more likely countries are to run current account deficits.
Crisis Management Policy and Hierarchical Networks: Donald P. Moynihan / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2005-022
In crisis situations, good public management combines the virtues of networks and hierarchies. For most complex emergencies, no single organization can comprehensively meet the challenge, so a network becomes necessary. However, networks actors often cannot act quickly, collectively and decisively, so crisis management overlays a hierarchical structure on the network of actors involved. Network characteristics such as mutual trust remain important for a successful response to the crisis, but the actors operate within a clear chain of command that emphasizes authority and standard operating procedures.
What Do We Talk About When We Talk About Performance? Dialogue Theory and Performance Budgeting: Donald P. Moynihan / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2005-021
Published in Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory. This paper examines the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) in the federal budgeting process. The early evidence on PART prompts the search for a theory of budgeting that accepts that performance information will influence decisions, but will not be used in the same way from decision to decision, as the espoused theory of performance budgeting suggests. Dialogue theory emphasizes the ambiguity of performance information and related resource allocation choices. Results of an exploratory test illustrate a variety of ways in which different individuals can examine the same program and come to different conclusions about performance and future funding requirements.
Supply Capacity, Vertical Specialization and Tariff Rates: The Implications for Aggregate U.S. Trade Flow Equations: Menzie D. Chinn / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2005-020
This paper re-examines aggregate and disaggregate import and export demand functions for the United States. This re-examination is warranted because income elasticities are too high to be warranted by standard theories and because they remain high even when it is assumed that supply factors are important. This finding suggests that the standard models omit important factors. An empirical investigation suggests that rising importance of vertical specialization combined with decreasing tariffs rates explains some of results. Accounting for these factors yields more plausible estimates of income elasticities, as well as smaller prediction errors.
A Primer on Real Effective Exchange Rates: Determinants, Overvaluation, Trade Flows and Competitive Devaluation: Menzie D. Chinn / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2005-019
The author discusses alternative measures of effective exchange rates in the context of their theoretical underpinnings and actual construction. Focusing on contemporary indices and recently developed econometric methods, he examines the empirical characteristics of these differing series, including the exchange rates for the United States, the euro area and several East Asian countries. Case studies illustrate the issues that confront the applied economist or policymaker in using the measures of real effective exchange rates available.
Will the Euro Eventually Surpass the Dollar as Leading International Reserve Currency?: Menzie D. Chinn and Jeffrey Frankel / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2005-018
La Follette School Working Paper No. 2006-001 is a substantial revision of this paper. The euro is a plausible competitor to replace the dollar as the leading currency central banks hold, just as the dollar replaced the pound. Factors affecting the dollar's status include size of the home country, inflation, exchange rate variability and size of the relevant home financial center as measured by the turnover in its foreign exchange market. The euro's success will depend on whether the United Kingdom and enough other European Union members join euroland so it becomes larger than the U.S. economy and whether U.S. macroeconomic policy undermines confidence in the value of the dollar, in the form of inflation and depreciation. The authors presented this paper in June 2005 at a National Bureau of Economic Research conference on current account sustainability.
Child Support in the United States: An Uncertain and Irregular Income Source?: Maria Cancian and Daniel R. Meyer / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2005-017
While most mothers with child-support orders receive support, the amount they receive varies substantially, the researchers find upon examining the situations of 14,729 Wisconsin mothers with new child support orders in 2000. Drawing on data from 2001-2003, this study finds that variation in child-support income varies year to year and within a year. More than one-third of families experienced declines or increases of $1,000 or more in support from one year to the next.
Knowledge of Child Support Policy Rules: How Little We Know: Maria Cancian, Daniel R. Meyer and Kisun Nam / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2005-016
People participating in a demonstration project on Wisconsin child support and welfare had little knowledge about child support policy rules. This research, one of the few that examine how much individuals know about policy rules that could affect them, suggests that poeple tend to learn policy rules through experience. The authors find less consistent support for knowledge being imparted during interactions with caseworkers. They discuss the implications of the lack of participant knowledge for policy evaluations.
Doomed to Deficits? Aggregate U.S. Trade Flows Re-Examined: Menzie D. Chinn / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2005-015
This paper examines the stability of import and export demand functions for the United States from the first quarter of 1975 to the second quarter of 2001. Analysis readily identifies an export demand function, with a structural break in the import demand function in 1995 that is rectified by excluding computers and parts from the import series. The resulting point estimates confirm the persistence of the income asymmetry. One policy implication of these findings is that dollar depreciation unaccompanied by a realignment of growth trends is insufficient to substantially reduce the U.S. trade deficit.
The Puzzle of Private Rulemaking: Expertise, Flexibility, and Blame Avoidance in Regulation: David L. Weimer/ La Follette School Working Paper No. 2005-014
Private regulation of transplant organs instead of traditional control by a government agency may surprise some observers, but the practice lends itself to quick decision-making by experts and lets the politicians off the hook for how organs are allocated.
What Does Increased Economic Inequality Imply about the Future Level and Dispersion of Human Capital?: Mary Campbell, Robert Haveman, Gary Sandefur and Barbara Wolfe / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2005-013
With longitudinal data on 1,200 children, the authors consider whether the persistent increase in economic inequality among families and geographic areas has implications for the levels of educational attainment of children in those situations.
Do Newly Retired Workers in the U.S. Have Sufficient Resources to Maintain Well-Being?: Robert Haveman, Karen Holden, Barbara Wolfe and Shane Sherlund / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2005-012
This paper explores whether older adults have the resources they need beyond Social Security to maintain economic well-being after they retire. The discussion examines motivations for accumulating wealth to save for retirement and ponders resources available upon retirement.
The Use of Federal Employer Tax Credits by Temporary Help Service Firms and Their Implications for Disadvantaged Workers' Labor Market Outcomes: Sarah Hamersma and Carolyn J. Heinrich / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2005-011
La Follette School Working Paper No. 2006-004 is a substantial revision of this paper. The authors examine labor market trends affecting low-skilled and disadvantaged workers: their increased participation in the temporary help services employment sector and employers' increased participation in hiring subsidy programs such as the Work Opportunity Tax Credit and the Welfare-to-Work Tax Credit.
Taking a Couples Rather Than an Individual Approach to Employment Assistance: Rachel A. Gordon and Carolyn J. Heinrich / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2005-010
In contrast to the standard individualistic approach to the delivery of employment services, the authors present evaluation results for a program in which both partners in a couple relationship participate at the same time. They find that mothers had larger gains in employment and earnings and decreases in receipts via Temporary Assistance for Needy Families immediately upon program exit relative to mothers who participated as individuals, though gains lessened in the two years after program completion. Fathers show similar though weaker results.
Demand and Supply-Side Determinant of Conditional Cash Transfer Program Effectiveness: Improving the First-Generation Programs: Carolyn J. Heinrich / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2005-009
La Follette School Working Paper No. 2006-009 is a substantial revision of this paper. The effects of large-scale federal intervention to promote human capital accumulation come to light in this study of a cash-transfer program for youth in Argentina that began in the late 1990s and is a priority for additional support and protection since the 2001 economic emergency in Argentina.
The Effects of Welfare-to-Work Program Activities on Labor Market Outcomes: Andrew Dyke, Carolyn J. Heinrich, Peter R. Mueser and Kenneth R. Troske / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2005-008
La Follette School Working Paper No. 2006-005 is a substantial revision of this paper. This study uses administrative data on welfare recipients in Missouri and North Carolina to estimate the effects of participating in sub-programs of each state's welfare-to-work program. The authors find that the effects of program participation are negative in the short term and improve in the second year after participation. The results also show that more intensive training is associated with greater initial earnings losses and greater long-term earnings gains.
What Matters for Financial Development? Capital Controls, Institutions, and Interactions: Menzie D. Chinn and Hiro Ito / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2005-007
The authors examine links between capital account liberalization, legal and institutional development and financial development. They explore financial opening and equity market development, whether opening the goods sector is a precondition for financial opening and whether a well-developed banking sector is required for financial liberalization to lead to equity market development. / Description of data set. / Data set.
Does No Child Left Behind Place a Fiscal Burden on States? Evidence from Texas: Jennifer Imazeki and Andrew Reschovsky / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2005-006
The federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 requires states to establish goals for all students and for groups of students characterized by race, ethnicity, poverty, disability and limited English proficiency. The law requires schools to make annual progress in meeting these goals. In a number of states, officials have argued that increased federal education funding is not sufficient to cover these imposed costs. This paper uses data from Texas to estimate the additional costs of meeting the new student performance standards and finds that these costs substantially exceed federal funding.
Assessing the Use of Econometric Analysis in Estimating the Costs of Meeting State Education Accountability Standards: Lessons from Texas: Jennifer Imazeki and Andrew Reschovsky / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2005-005
This assessment examines two methodologies to determine whether school districts have sufficient funds to meet accountability standards in Texas. One of the methodologies found the funds to be insufficient, while the other determined the support to be adequate. A lawsuit about the constitutionality of Texas school funding featured the two methodologies.
The Political Roots of Disability Claims: How State Environments and Policies Shape Citizen Demands: Joe Soss and Lael R. Keiser / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2005-004
By examining a model of welfare demand in the Social Security Disability Insurance and the Supplemental Security Income programs, the authors test the hypothesis that state environments shape aggregate rates of welfare demand. They find that in addition to citizens' needs for government assistance, the density of civil society organizations, state officials' political perspectives and programs' generosity shape citizen demands on the welfare system. They call for a model of welfare-claiming behavior that accounts for differences across programs and stages of the claiming process.
How Far Has the Dollar Fallen?: Menzie D. Chinn / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2005-003
The extent of the dollar's decline relative to its peak in 2002 depends upon the composition of the basket of currencies used in calculating the dollars value. Further, the appropriate index depends upon the question being asked, with the type of price deflators used if any dependent upon the question at hand. Various measures of the dollars value are discussed, and compared, including alternative weights based on liabilities and assets, instead of the standard trade flow weights.
Enhancing Criminal Sentencing Options in Wisconsin: The State and County Correctional Partnership: Par Jason Engle and David Weimer / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2005-002
The State and County Correctional Partnership proposes providing Wisconsin counties with annual block grants and imposing fees for state prison time served by felons who commit less serious crimes. This policy change would seek to create an environment in which counties can find innovative ways to divert felons safely and cost-effectively from incarceration in state prisons.
Social Europe and Experimental Governance: Towards a New Constitutional Compromise?: Jonathan Zeitlin / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2005-001
This paper examines the normative and empirical debates surrounding the use of the Open Method of Coordination in European social policy. The Open Method of Coordination is an experimental approach to European Union governance based on benchmarking national progress toward European objectives and organized mutual learning. Its potential benefits include reconciling the pursuit of common European concerns with respect to legitimate national diversity and encouraging cross-national learning through comparison of different approaches to similar problems across the European Union's 25 member states.
Understanding Racial Disparities in Health: The Income-Wealth Paradox: Audra T. Wenzlow, John Mullahy and Barbara Wolfe / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2004-008
The authors examine the ways in which racial differences in health vary over the income-wealth distribution, comparing the self-reported health status of non-Hispanic whites with those of individuals of other races and ethnicities.
The Impact of State Government Fiscal Crises on Local Governments and Schools: Andrew Reschovsky / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2004-007
This paper discusses budgetary problems facing state governments, and explores the relationship between state government fiscal conditions and potential impacts on municipal governments and school districts. It examines how state budget cuts have affected the state funding of municipal governments and how these governments are likely to respond to reductions in state funding. The paper discusses the possibilities that the state government budget crisis will increase unfunded mandates imposed on local governments or result in an implicit shifting of costs from the state to local governments. A version of this paper was published in State and Local Government Review, vol. 36, no. 2, (Spring 2004): 86-102.
Institutionalizing Neutrally Competent Policy Analysis: Resources for Promoting Objectivity and Balance in Consolidating Democracies: David L. Weimer/ La Follette School Working Paper No. 2004-006
The creation of institutions that foster objective policy analysis can be eased if the organizations emphasize resources that include reputations of neutral competence, independence, use of professional norms, participation in international organizations and transparency. This essay outlines the logic of designing institutions based on these resources, illustrates their use and speculates on applying them in consolidating democracies.
Public and Private Regulation of Organ Transplantation: Liver Allocation and the Final Rule: David L. Weimer/ La Follette School Working Paper No. 2004-005
La Follette School Working Paper No. 2006-013 is a substantial revision of this paper. Private regulation governs how organs from cadavers are allocated. This process led to a change in the rules that more clearly define public and private roles. Several liver transplant centers prompted the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network to adopt a national process for sharing organs. This paper examines the politics behind the decision and finds that private regulation makes effective use of stakeholders' technical expertise when changing the rules.
The Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR): A Solution to Wisconsin's Fiscal Problems or a Prescription for Future Fiscal Crises?: Andrew Reschovsky / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2004-004
Facts do not support arguments in favor of an amendment to Wisconsin's constitution to limit government spending and taxing authority. The amendment's proposal to tie growth in per-capita or per-public spending to the rate of inflation means public expenditures would become a smaller part of the economy even as the cost of those services, especially health care and education, increase faster than inflation. The author goes back to 1986 and calculates how much Wisconsin governments could have spent under TABOR. He finds that results would include reductions in programs that help the state's most vulnerable residents, a downsizing of the University of Wisconsin System and restrictions in school districts' ability to provide quality education.
SCHIP Expansion and Parental Coverage: An Evaluation of Wisconsin's BadgerCare: Barbara Wolfe, Thomas Kaplan, Robert Haveman and Yoonyoung Cho / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2004-003
La Follette School Working Paper No. 2005-030 is a revision of this paper. In the wake of the expansion of Wisconsin's public health-insurance program, this research explores the extent to which a program like Wisconsin's BadgerCare reduces the proportion of the low-income population without health-care coverage.
The Political Economy of School Choice: John F. Witte, Arnold F. Shober, Paul A. Schlomer, Par Jason Engle / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2004-002
This analysis of the complex political economy of school choice, primarily as it has developed in Wisconsin, focuses on how various forms of choicemagnet and private contract schools, open enrollment, vouchers and charter schoolsinteract and compete with each other.
Macroeconomic Management and Financial Stability: The Implications for East Asia: Menzie D. Chinn / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2004-001
The determinants of economic and financial linkages between developed and developing countries, with special focus on East Asia, are explored. The paper discusses recent efforts to reform the international financial architecture, and the conclusion discusses prospects for adjustment in light of the empirical relationships identified.
Dolphins and Tuna, Shrimp and Turtles: An American Tale or Policymaking Goes Global?: Graham K. Wilson / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2003-005
The internationalization of what was once purely a matter of domestic policy and the domestication of what was once foreign policy leads to what might be regarded as a considerable expansion of policy networks or, more plausibly, conflict between policy networks. This paper explores the evolution of international and domestic policy networks. (HTML only.)
Policy Transfer Versus Varieties of Capitalism in Environmental Policy: Graham K. Wilson / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2003-004
This paper considers why interest in transfer policies from one country's government to another nation seems to be increasing.
Changing Regulatory Systems: Graham K. Wilson / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2003-003
Discussions about national regulatory styles tend to compare the United States to other nations, and differences are often portrayed as other nations being harmonious and mutually accommodating and the United States as being adversarial and conflict-ridden.
Universal Preschool: Much to Gain but Who Will Pay?: Barbara Wolfe, Scott Scrivner / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2003-002
This paper explores ways to finance a preschool program that would be universally available to all 4-year-olds in the country. Experts say that 4-year-olds have much to gain from a stimulating and nurturing preschool
experience, and mounting evidence suggests that these benefits accrue to society on a much larger scale as well.
The Devil May Be in the Details: How the Characteristics of SCHIP Programs Affect Take-Up: Barbara Wolfe, Scott Scrivner with Andrew Snyder / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2003-001
The paper explores whether the specific design of a states Childrens Health Insurance Program has contributed to its success in meeting two objectivesnamely, whether the program has been successful in reducing the proportion of the targeted population that is uninsured and whether this has been accomplished without a significant reduction in private coverage.
Thirty Years of Business and Politics: Graham K. Wilson / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2002-005
The author examines the state of research on the relationship between business and politics.
Spots and Leopards: The Capacity of Systems to Change; First Impression: Graham K. Wilson / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2002-004
A consideration of David Vogel's book National Styles of Regulation.
In the Shadows of Social Democracy? U.S. Unions in a Time of Adversity: Graham K. Wilson / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2002-003
The author suggests that the idealized European image of the social democratic labor union often does not exist, which means that American unions perhaps don't fall quite so short in contrast.
Globalization, Internationalization and U.S. Interest Groups: Graham K. Wilson / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2001-003
The claims that globalization affects the balance of power among interest groups, increases the structural power of some interests, alters public policy preferences and may shift the site of decision-making should not be deemed hardened truths.
Importing Cooperation: Graham K. Wilson / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2002-002
in the late 1990s, Wisconsin adapted an environmental governance model from the Netherlands and Bavaria to create Green Tier, a comprehensive approach to environmental protection that creates a new governance structure to improve the performance of agriculture and industry.
Health Inequality between Black and White Women: Yu-Whuei Hu and Barbara Wolfe / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2002-001
The authors examine the inequality in health status between black and white women and to explore the extent to which such differences are associated with observed dissimilarities in characteristics such as insurance status, utilization of care, and socioeconomic status.
The Dual Motives of Interest Group Research: Graham K. Wilson / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2001-002
Scholars look at interest groups in two ways. Political science informs the first. It examines who makes up the groups and why they act, and determines the consequences of their actions. The second method is more sociological, with an eye toward the relationship between the state and societal interests.
Lost in the Balance: How State Policies Affect the Fiscal Health of Cities: Howard Chernick and Andrew Reschovsky / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2001-001
Fiscal problems in central cities, disparities with suburbs and how state governments cope are addressed in this examination of intergovernmental aid in California, New York and Wisconsin. The authors offer recommendations for new policy at the federal, state and local levels that could improve the fiscal health of central cities.
Searching for a Way off Welfare: A Structural Competing Risk Model of AFDC Durations: Geoffrey L. Wallace / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2000-003
The author's analysis considers how the search for a job or a marriage partner might affect participation in Aid to Families with Dependent Children.
Internationalization, Globalization and Policy Making: The Case of U.S. Agriculture: Graham K. Wilson / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2000-002
With agriculture as the context, the author looks at how globalization and internationalization affect U.S. domestic policy networks and communities.
Globalization, Internationalization and Policy Networks in the U.S.: Graham K. Wilson / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2000-001
Scholars should pay more attention to how world events affect politics in the United States, especially with increasing globalization and internationalization. This paper looks at how globalization and internationalization can affect U.S. policy networks -- the people, interest groups and institutions that interact when making public policy.
Accountability and Internationalization: Graham K. Wilson / La Follette School Working Paper No. 1999-001
Those who see globalization as a threat to the nation state's power should remember to distinguish it from internationalization, the nation state's transfer of authority to another organization. In contrast, globalization is international influence on public policies or economies.
Private and Public Education in Wisconsin: John Witte, Christopher A. Thorn and Kim A. Pritchard / La Follette School Working Paper No. 1995-002
An update to a 1994 paper, this report describes the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program and data; the participating families and students; outcomes after five years; and responses to earlier evaluations. (No PDF available; HTML only.)
Fifth-Year Report: Milwaukee Parental Choice Program: John Witte, Troy D. Sterr and Christopher A. Thorn / La Follette School Working Paper No. 1995-001
An update to a 1994 paper, this report describes the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program and data; the participating families and students; outcomes after five years; and responses to earlier evaluations. (No PDF available; HTML only.)
Fourth-Year Report: Milwaukee Parental Choice Program: John Witte and Christopher A. Thorn / La Follette School Working Paper No. 1994-001
This report describes the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program and data; the participating families and students; and outcomes after two years; and responses to earlier evaluations. It gives an update on the choice schools and offers conclusions and recommendations. (No PDF available; HTML only.)