The Roles of Population,Place, and Institution in Student Diversity in American Higher Education

Student racial and ethnic diversity in higher education is an important and timely topic, as institutions, policy makers, and economists increasingly recognize the value that accrues at many levels of having a skilled and diverse student body and workforce. Students benefit from learning in a diverse environment; firms may benefit from a diverse workforce; and more demographically diverse regions may experience higher rates of economic growth. However, the forces governing institution‐level student diversity are poorly understood, as little prior research on the topic exists. This paper uses school enrollment data to parse out the contribution of institutional characteristics, geographical setting, and local demographic characteristics to student body diversity at each level of study. Results indicate that geographical location and local demographic composition play a role in student body diversity, as do the type and orientation of the institution. Institutional characteristics explain a lot of the variation in student body diversity and actual location of schools matters less than the demographic composition of young people around that location. Two broad conclusions emerge with regard to schools seeking to increase their student diversity. First, some may find their efforts hampered by circumstances outside their control (e.g., location). Second, the influence of public/private status and even school size suggests further research on the ways in which these factors influence student diversity so that eventual policy action can be more effective.     

Fiscal Decentralization and Economic Growth in Central and Eastern Europe

The majority of the literature on fiscal decentralization has tended to stress that the greater capacity of decentralized governments to tailor policies to local preferences and to be innovative in the provision of policies and public services, the greater the potential for economic efficiency and growth. There is, however, little empirical evidence to substantiate this claim. In this paper we examine, using a panel data approach with dynamic effects, the relationship between the level of fiscal decentralization and economic growth rates across 16 Central and Eastern European countries over the 1990–2004 period. Our findings suggest that, contrary to the majority view, there is a significant negative relationship between two out of three fiscal decentralization indicators included in the analysis and economic growth. However, the use of different time lags allows us to nuance this negative view and show that long‐term effects vary depending on the type of decentralization undertaken in each of the countries considered. While expenditure at and transfers to sub‐national tiers of government are negatively correlated with economic growth, taxes assigned at the sub‐national level evolve from having a significantly negative to a significantly positive correlation with the national growth rate. This supports the view that sub‐national governments with their own revenue source respond better to local demands and promote greater economic efficiency     

State Fiscal Structure and Economic Development Policy

This essay adds a new dimension to the debate concerning taxes and business location decisions by raising a simple, but perhaps underappreciated point concerning political implications of state and local fiscal structure for state economic development policy. Low taxes may well be attractive to business owners and their employees; however, a fiscal structure that is not incentive-compatible with economic expansion may end up frustrating public policies of all types aimed at promoting growth. Economic growth may be seen as increasing types aimed at promoting growth. Economic growth may be seen as increasing demands for public services, thereby placing upward pressure on tax rates faced by the original taxpayers. In Wyoming, this problem is compounded because the tax base is narrow and highly income inelastic and the incidence of taxes levied falls significantly on out-of-state residents who do not benefit from public services provided. Additionally, prospects for reducing the mismatch between taxpayers and public service beneficiaries appear to be limited because, quite understandably, state residents do not wish to pay more for public services for which they have historically paid cents on the dollar.     

Private Government Formation in the DC Metropolitan Area

ABSTRACT This paper examines a variety of quasi-governmental organizations, mandatory homeowners' associations, special service districts, and transportation management associations, recently established in the urban region. Using the Washington, DC metropolitan area as a case study, this paper explores reasons for their development and implications of them for urban governance. It is argued that these organizations marry the concepts of public special districts and public-private partnerships in a process of private government formation. Private governments, it is suggested, are not wholly a private response to the shedding of services by the public sector, the dominant notion of privatization and local state restructuring, but the result of demands emerging in the private sector stimulated by social and spatial change. This signals the need to add to the concept of public-driven privatization the process of private initiated change where the resulting goods and services are more fully shaped by the needs of private interests. The evidence suggests these institutions do not represent a scaling back of the local state as privatization implies, but an extension of state structures in a fundamentally new direction, an extension which could be labeled the parallel state.     

The Spatial Impact of Language Policies on the Marginal Bids for English Education in Hong Kong

In 1997 the government of Hong Kong reformed its policy on the language medium for teaching at the secondary‐school level and removed schools' right to choose their own medium. Among the 404 public and “aided” secondary schools in Hong Kong, the government allowed only 100 to use English as the medium for teaching and required the remaining 304 to use the native language, Chinese. The authors assess the spatial impact of the policy reform and estimate the bid function for English‐language schools. The results show that the 1997 policy reform shifted parental preferences from public to private education and increased the marginal bid for proximity to private English schools by 2 percent. Following the reform, homeowners were willing to pay, on average, HK $8,400 for each additional 100 metres closer to a private English school.     

The Impact of Public School Attributes on Home Sale Prices in California

The quality of public schools is often cited as an important attribute which distinguishes a community. Indeed, a recent public opinion poll conducted by the California Public Education Partnership indicates that residents rank improvements in public education higher than such high profile issues as environmental quality and crime reduction. In order to explore the role of educational quality in determining residential property values, a hedonic housing price model is used on a large sample of homes which sold within Fresno County in California over the period 1990‐1994. After controlling for a wide range of housing characteristics and neighborhood features, the findings indicate that the school district does significantly influence the real sale price. Then the relative importance of inputs into the production of educational services is investigated as compared to output measures of productivity. These findings suggest that both input and output measures are important. However, elasticity estimates of input measures tend to be higher than those of output measures, with the average class size by far the strongest influence. There is some evidence to suggest that the benefits of additional teachers likely outweigh the costs. Finally, the findings suggest that attributes of schools are more highly valued by local residents than either crime or environmental quality measures within the community.     

Did incentives help municipalities recover from the Great Recession? Evidence from Midwestern cities

This study assesses the impacts of local business incentives in the largest urban areas of Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, three Midwestern states that share similar histories and settings. We assembled a unique dataset combining information on two types of incentives, tax increment financing districts and tax abatements, together with socio‐economic, geographic, fiscal, and spatial competitive characteristics for all of the municipalities in six metropolitan areas. The outcome measures include employment growth, establishment formation, and business relocation. The analysis extends knowledge of the effects of economic development incentives in two ways. First, we improve upon previous research by incorporating key factors in municipal decisions to offer incentives. Second, we add to limited empirical evidence concerning local incentives following the Great Recession. Variation in the use of incentives reflects not only local decision‐making but also differing fiscal capacities and situations of adaptation to adverse economic conditions, with some governments pulling back on incentives and others initiating new approaches to retain or lure businesses.     

Immigration,Migration, and State Redistributive Expenditures

The effect of immigration on state and local budgets is a frequent topic of both political and academic conversations. A controversial issue among scholars is whether or not immigration induces outmigration of low income native born residents, a population movement which would potentially have implications for the jurisdictional distribution of immigration's fiscal impact. It is hypothesized here that if interstate poverty migration occurred, it should cause fiscal spillovers by distributing some of the public sector burden of immigration from immigrant “host” states to neighboring states. This paper uses cross‐sectional state data from 1988–1995 to explore the relationship between immigration in neighbor states and state redistributive expenditures. The results suggest that there is a positive relationship between immigration to neighboring states and redistributive expenditures. While most discussion of the fiscal impact of immigration has focused on the effects on host states and localities, the implications of these findings are that there are fiscal spillovers to neighboring states, suggesting that fiscal impacts on host states have been over‐estimated and effects on neighboring states have been underestimated. Additionally, the implications of recent welfare reform, which gives states the opportunity to use citizenship as a criterion for program eligibility, are discussed.     

Highway Accessibility,Location Rents,and the Efficiency of Metropolitan Area Tax Base Sharing

One solution that has been proposed for the fiscal disparities in fragmented metropolitan areas is the sharing of taxes generated by commercial and industrial property. A criticism of this proposal is that it distorts the efficient pattern of business locations resulting when an implicit market for business locations is allowed to develop through the independent fiscal behavior of communities and the optimizing location behavior of businesses. Critics recognize that the efficiency argument against sharing a metropolitan area's business tax base must be qualified to the extent that local governments possess location advantages which enable them to extract rents from business firms. This paper presents an empirical analysis which permits a partition of the local property tax payments from industrial firms into accessibility location rents and compensation payments to the community for the negative externalities of industrial development. The empirical analysis suggests that approximately 40 percent of the industrial taxes received by communities in this analysis represents accessibility location rents. It is concluded that these receipts could be redistributed through a metropolitan area tax base sharing program without affecting the efficiency of the implicit market for business locations.     

An Evaluation of State Budget Stabilization Funds Among Midwestern States

Using data from the National Conference of State Legislatures, this paper examines the state budget stabilization funds of Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin. Unlike previous research, this paper examines the movement of the fund balances over time (between 1983 and 1991), to see how the fund balances move in relation to a number of indicators of state fiscal health. The results of this research show that the use of these funds varies significantly among the states as does the level of funding and therefore the ability of the funds to serve as an effective tool for counter-cyclical state fiscal policy.     

Trading in waste: Integrating sustainable development goals and environmental policies in trade negotiations toward enhanced solid waste management in Pacific Islands countries and territories

This paper provides a broad survey of existing literature on contemporary solid waste management (SWM) in the Pacific region to underscore an urgent and compelling need for improved SWM. Despite advances in waste management systems and funding for technical support and capacity building from a range of sources, waste continues to threaten public and ecological health and the economy in Pacific Islands Countries and Territories (PICTs). SWM in the Pacific requires innovative thinking in a challenging environment of remoteness, limited available land, fragile ecosystems, vulnerability to natural hazards and subsequent climate sensitivity. Many PICTs are under considerable pressure to open their markets up to trade liberalisation. Increasing links to the global economy through trade liberalisation could either further exacerbate waste management challenges in the Pacific or contribute to environmental protection and sustainable development goals. The authors argue that if the PICTs' urgent waste management challenges are to be meaningfully addressed, the region's leaders must ensure trading partners conform to local environmental protection policies and that trade agreements align with sustainable development goals.     

Regime Network Restructuring in Akron,Ohio, 1975–2009: A Longitudinal Social Network Analysis

The purpose of this paper is to explore the impacts of extra‐local economic and political forces on the business community participants of the governing regime coalition in Akron, Ohio, and in turn, how other regime partners responded to and engaged with the changing constitution of Akron's business community. Unlike the UK where municipalities receive substantial fiscal support from regional and national governments, American cities are more readily forced into regime partnerships with other public and private actors for fiscal solvency, including, primarily, the local business community. In the case of Akron, the local business community experienced a prolonged and ongoing period of comprehensive deindustrialization and economic restructuring, forcing the city into partnerships with less traditional non‐private sector actors as Akron's business community structure continues to transform. A secondary objective is to forward the utility of social network analysis in regime theory applications. Social network analysis offers a way to situate arguably the most influential actors in a regime coalition. Utilizing the directories of Standard and Poor's Index of Corporations and Directors from 1975 through 2006, social network analysis is performed on the interlocking network of corporations and civic organizations based in Akron for each decade, allowing a longitudinal view of the changing business community partners of Akron's governing coalition.     

Determining Citizen Satisfaction with Local Public Education in Indonesia: The Significance of Actual Service Quality and Governance Conditions

Indonesians appear content with local public education, despite independent concerns about quality in the international context. Over 85 percent of respondents from the recent Governance and Decentralization Survey claim to be at least somewhat satisfied with primary school education. This study argues that the generally high levels of reported satisfaction are probably exaggerated because of courtesy bias, low expectations, and optimistic predispositions. Survey responses are best thought of as indicative of relative, and not absolute, levels of satisfaction. The empirical examination shows that objective measures of service quality and governance conditions are both significant determinants of the probability that households are satisfied with local public education. The significance of governance holds regardless of whether pertinent variables are assumed to be exogenous or whether they are specified as endogenously determined, although the endogenous specification performs much better, in general. The evidence suggests a cautious approach toward the use and interpretation of score card initiatives, which attempt to employ citizen satisfaction as a close proxy for actual quality of services, in nonrandom samples, and without controlling for other factors. In addition, the results provide a novel rationale for improving the local governance environment.     

State and Local Government Finances: Was There a Structural Break in the Reagan Years?

The Reagan administration's “New Federalism” and tax reform proposals were expected to have chilling effects on growth of state and local government revenues and expenditures. This paper examines the hypothesis that there was a structural break in state and local government fiscal behavior in the 1980s. Although the evidence is far from conclusive, it does suggest some different fiscal patterns in this decade. However, the real structural break appears to have occurred in the late 1970s and these trends have continued during the Reagan years.     

The impacts of fiscal decentralization on environmental innovation in China

Environmental innovation is the fundamental support for sustainable development. Exploiting Chinese provincial panel data from 2007 to 2017, this study investigates the impacts of fiscal decentralization on environmental innovation. In particular, we discuss the regulating role of government’s environmental protection expenditures relying on the mediator effect model. The empirical analyses show that fiscal decentralization cannot only directly promote environmental innovation, but also indirectly weaken environmental innovation through the environmental protection expenditure of the local government. The overall performance is that fiscal decentralization promotes environmental innovation. It is noteworthy that there is regional heterogeneity in the impact of fiscal decentralization on environmental innovation. The impact in the east is significantly higher than in the central and western regions in China.     

农村学校“阳光体育”救济制度的研究进展

为了引入“阳光体育”救济制度确保农村学校阳光体育活动正常开展。结合农村学校“阳光体育”救济制度的内涵,在分析现阶段农村学校“阳光体育”活动现状的基础上,提出农村学校“阳光体育”救济制度的必要性,以及其遵循的基本原则,以期进一步完善农村学校“阳光体育”救济制度,为中国阳光体育蓬勃发展提供有益的参考。     

Personal and location-specific characteristics and elderly interstate migration

"The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of locational and individual characteristics upon interstate retiree migration, particularly in state-level public policy variables. Data regarding the characteristics of individual movers are drawn from the 1990 U.S. Census of Population and Housing 5% Public Use Microdata Sample. The household data are merged with location-specific attributes including both natural amenities and local fiscal variables." Three alternative models are developed, involving push factors, pull factors, and differences in site characteristics experienced by migrants. "The results indicate that both personal and locational characteristics are important factors determining the decision of elderly migrants to change their state of residence. While there is some limited support for the push and pull specifications, the difference model is found to provide the best overall fit."     

Regional Economic Activity and Petroleum Industry Incentive Policies: Utah's Uintah Basin

ABSTRACT Proponents of petroleum industry subsidies often assert that such policies will have positive economic implications for rural communities. This paper examines the economic impacts of such a policy in Utah. Specifically, this paper quantifies the direct and indirect economic and fiscal impacts of a tax credit granted for oil and gas well workovers in Utah's Uintah Basin. The analysis is made possible by an input-output model constructed specifically for Utah's oil producing economy. The tax credit policy was found to generate a net fiscal loss for the state. However, it does generate employment in the Uintah Basin. The total per job cost to the state of generating an average of one job per year for 5 years through the tax credit policy is $24,056 (1991 dollars). However, if the public expenditure impacts are taken into account, then the cost per job could be as high as $48,423 (1991 dollars). Whether there are other ways to generate the same employment gains at a lower cost was lost in the political debate surrounding this petroleum industry tax credit.     

Knowledge,Market Structure,and Economic Coordination: Dynamics of Industrial Districts

The industrial rise of the Third Italy has been characterized by the growth of dynamic networks of flexible small and medium–sized enterprises (SMEs) that are spatially concentrated in specialized industrial districts. This network type of coordination has been associated with horizontal, trust–based relations rather than vertical relations of power and dependency between local organizations. This would lower transaction costs (essential for local systems with an extreme division of labor), facilitate the transmission and exchange of (tacit) knowledge (and thus, learning and innovation), encourage cooperation mechanisms (such as the establishment of research centers), and stimulate political–institutional performance (e.g. through regulation of potential social conflicts). From an evolutionary perspective, the focus is on the dynamics of industrial districts drawing from current experiences in Italy. In this respect, this paper concentrates on two main features of industrial districts that have largely contributed to their economic success in the past, that is, their network organization and the collective learning process. The evolution of industrial districts is described in terms of organizational adjustments to structural change. The way in which the size distribution of firms has changed is discussed (in particular the role of large companies), how the (power) relationships between local organizations have evolved, what are the current sources and mechanisms of learning, and to what extent institutional lock–in has set in. Finally, a number of trajectories districts may go through in the near future are presented.     

秦巴山区、武陵山区集中连片扶贫调查及可持续发展模式比较研究

退耕还林与集中连片扶贫是近年来政府实施西部大开发战略的重要举措。通过对秦巴山区、武陵山区两大退耕还林和集中连片扶贫区的调查,分析指出两地区长期贫困落后的原因相似,既包括自身的自然生态、经济、人文三大系统恶性循环,也包括政府制度供给偏向的影响。根据两地区扶贫开发的现状,提出从国家层面应进一步加大对集中连片贫困地区基础设施建设和民生事业的投入;从地方政府层面应结合实际推进制度创新,做好统筹规划,制定适合区域环境要求的扶贫开发策略;在具体实践层面应通过财政转移支付、税收政策及专项资金扶持等发展生态旅游业、特色农业等新兴产业,采取以经济效益、生态效益和社会效益有机结合的扶贫模式,实现区域经济社会的可持续发展。