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2019-05-13
Center for Effective Government;
OMB Watch partnered with Georgetown University's Public Policy Institute and Accenture's Institute for Public Service to craft consensus recommendations for the next president related to improving government performance measurement systems. The project convened a wide range of policy experts, academics, government representatives, and others to explore areas of agreement in a very disparate field.
2019-03-06
Center for Economic and Policy Research;
Patent monopolies on prescription drugs raise their price by one or two orders of magnitude above the free market price. In this way, they are equivalent to tariffs of several thousand percent or even tens of thousands of percent. Just as tariffs lead to economic distortions, and provide incentives for corruption, so do patent monopolies on prescription drugs. We continually see evidence of this as drug companies are routinely found to make payoffs to keep generics out of the market, promote their drugs for uses for which they are inappropriate, and conceal evidence they are less effective than claimed, or even harmful.
The enormous distortions from patent monopolies mean that there are large potential gains from working around them. This working paper discusses four mechanisms for getting drug prices closer to free market levels with actions at the state or local level or by private actors.
2019-02-04
Center for Economic and Policy Research;
In the absence of national paid leave laws, some states have responded by creating programs that provide partial replacement of lost wages when urgent health or family needs mean workers must miss work. The three states with the longest track records are California, which implemented paid family leave in 2004; New Jersey, which implemented it in 2008; and Rhode Island, which followed in 2014. All three have had paid medical leave to address a worker's own serious illness for 70 years or more. Today, six states and the District of Columbia have enacted laws that provide workers with paid family and medical leave. Despite the existence of these state laws, both awareness and usage — especially among workers in low-paid jobs and members of minority communities — have been low.
This report examines a number of innovative projects in California, New Jersey, and Rhode Island designed to produce usable knowledge about what works — and what doesn't — in raising awareness among workers most likely to need paid family leave and least likely to know about it. It draws the lessons learned in the field and provides guidance to advocates in states with paid family and medical leave programs as they design interventions to address this challenge.
2018-12-01
Indian Land Tenure Foundation;
This ninth issue of the Message Runner discusses on fractionation of ownership title and provides ways for effective land management.
2018-10-31
Carsey School of Public Policy at The University of New Hampshire;
The share of people without health insurance has dropped dramatically since the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), but declines have been most dramatic among young adults age 19 to 25. In 2008, one-in-three 23-year-olds were uninsured, likely reflecting their graduation from college and therefore, their ineligibility to be covered on parental plans. Beginning in 2010, the ACA allowed young adults to remain on their parents' plans until age 26; the orange line in Figure 1 reflects this shift, as 26-year-olds, rather than 23-year-olds, became the most often uninsured by 2013.
2018-10-16
Rockefeller Archive Center;
I visited the Rockefeller Archive Center to research the William H. Whyte papers for my doctoral dissertation, "Transactional Terrains: Partnerships, Bargains and the Postwar Redefinition of the Public Realm, New York City 1965-1980," that traces the architectural and urban history of the privatization of the public realm. At the center of the research is New York City during the "urban crisis" years of the 1960s. The period saw an ongoing shift in how city and state governments initiated, financed, and managed architecture and urban development. As an administrative apparatus of crisis management, the public-private partnership was the fiscal and legal device that was at the center of this shift. With the public-private partnership, there was an increased emphasis on transactions between jurisdictional authorities and private sector actors. The 1960s witnessed the beginnings of organized cultivation of private sector participation by city and state governments, in the funding, management, and provision of public goods (parks, plazas, and housing). By examining the ecology and economy of these public-private partnerships, the dissertation seeks to examine the privatization of the public realm in New York City as a series of complex intersections between the city's economic, political, urban, architectural and real-estate histories beginning in the 1960s. Urbanist William H. Whyte's writings, research, and speeches on the design and value of public spaces in New York City have shaped policy and theory in architecture, urban design, and planning since the early 1960s. He was a prominent figure, specifically for my first chapter.
2018-10-04
John S. and James L. Knight Foundation;
How did misinformation spread during the 2016 presidential election and has anything changed since? A new study of more than 10 million tweets from 700,000 Twitter accounts that linked to more than 600 misinformation and conspiracy news outlets answers this question.
The report reveals a concentrated "fake news" ecosystem, linking more than 6.6 million tweets to fake news and conspiracy news publishers in the month before the 2016 election. The problem persisted in the aftermath of the election with 4 million tweets to fake and conspiracy news publishers found from mid-March to mid-April 2017. A large majority of these accounts are still active today.
2018-10-02
Center for Economic and Policy Research;
This paper raises three issues on the relationship between intellectual property and inequality. The first is a simple logical point. Patents, copyrights, and other forms of intellectual property are public policy. They are not facts given to us by the world or the structure of technology somehow. While this point should be self-evident, it is rarely noted in discussions of inequality or ways to address it.
2018-10-01
Center for Economic and Policy Research;
The main purpose of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was to extend health insurance coverage to more individuals. Another potential benefit of the ACA, however, was to free up workers to find jobs that better fit their needs, by ending their dependence on employer-provided health insurance. There is considerable evidence indicating that before the implementation of the ACA, many workers stayed in jobs that they otherwise would have left solely because they needed the health insurance provided by the employer. This was likely to be especially true of workers with children, workers who either have a disability or have a family member with a disability, and older workers. By increasing access to insurance outside of employment, either through Medicaid or the health care exchanges, the ACA made it easier for workers to get jobs that better fit their needs.
There was a substantial increase in voluntary part-time employment in the years immediately after the main provisions of the ACA took effect, which is evidence of this effect on the labor market. The rise in voluntary part-time employment was largest among young people and was especially pronounced for young women.
This study uses data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) to assess how people voluntarily employed part-time use the time freed up from work. The ATUS relies on detailed time diaries compiled by respondents to determine how people use their time.
2018-09-17
Oxfam;
Oxfam estimates that just one of the richest men in Ghana earns from his wealth more in a month than one of the poorest women could earn in 1,000 years. Inequality is slowing down poverty reduction, hampering economic growth and threatening social cohesion. Nearly 300,000 more men, women and children in Ghana could have been lifted out of poverty between 2006 and 2013 had inequality not increased during this period. Inequality is not inevitable and can be addressed. In 2017, servicing public debt cost Ghana more than the annual amount the government would need to pay for free quality healthcare for all Ghanaians and to deliver on its globally agreed health goals by 2030.
In this report, Oxfam calls on the government of Ghana to use public spending to reduce inequality, and put women's economic empowerment at the heart of policy making.
2018-09-01
Center for Economic and Policy Research;
It is ten years since we were at the peak of the financial crisis — the collapse of Lehman Brothers, an investment bank. This sent tremors throughout the world, and media outlets began talking about a return of the Great Depression. While the fear generated by politicians and media was able to get enough support for saving the financial industry, the country was left to deal with the painful fallout from a collapsed housing bubble. Millions lost their homes and jobs. Even a decade later, by some measures, most notably prime-age employment rates, the labor market has still not recovered.
This discussion makes several points concerning the bubble and its collapse. First and foremost, it argues that the primary story of the downturn was a collapsed housing bubble, not the financial crisis. Prior to the downturn, the housing bubble had been driving the economy, pushing residential construction to record levels as a share of GDP. The housing wealth effect also led to a consumption boom. The saving rate reached a record low. When the bubble burst, it was inevitable that these sources of demand would disappear and there were no easy options for replacing them, except very large government budget deficits.
