Suchergebnisse

The analysis of public policy issues in the classroom can be a powerful tool to help students learn because it encourages students to actively apply classroom material. The television show The Simpsons provides several episodes that revolve around policy issues amenable to examination. Using The Simpsons to provide students with material for analysis has two advantages over traditional sources such as newspapers or magazines. First, a long-running and popular television show effectively engages students in a way traditional sources cannot. Second, the context of an animated television show can help students separate positive economic analysis from normative economic analysis.

Charitable giving suffers from market failure, which means government redistribution and other forms of social insurance can be justified. According to market failure theorists, charitable giving for poverty alleviation suffers from a free-rider problem. In a free market, giving will, therefore, be underprovided. Using insights from public choice theory and Austrian economics, our paper finds market failure arguments to be an insufficient justification for government intervention. Private charity and redistribution respects autonomy and is more robust in creating incentives for people to help the poor.

Introduction -- Part I Land Use -- Chapter 1. The Case for Dynamic Cities -- Chapter 2. What's Wrong with American Land Use: Market Failures, Bad Policies, or Politics? -- Part II. Education -- Chapter 3. Funding Students Instead of Systems: The Case for School Choice," -- Chapter 4. The Trouble with Outsourcing School Management -- Part III. Trade Openness -- Chapter 5. Free Trade as a Key to Economic Development -- Chapter 6. The Case for Regulated Trade -- Part IV. Labor Markets -- Chapter 7 "Job Creation, Job Destruction, and Economic Performance," Dynamism -- Chapter 8. "Regulations and Outcomes for American Workers: A Look at the Past 75 years -- Part V. Health Insurance -- Chapter 9. "Bad Nudges in Health Care" -- Chapter 10. "Challenges to Market-Based Healthcare for Consumers, Insurers and Society" -- Part VI. Technology -- Chapter 11. "On Coping with Technological Disruption" -- Chapter 12. "Complexity and Obligation: Rethinking Law and Technology's Pacing Problem" -- Part VII. Recreational Alcohol and Drugs -- Chapter 13. "Legalized for Innovation" -- Chapter 14. "Individuals Demand for Bad Health: The Case of Alcohol and Illicit Drugs.

This book examines contemporary policy debates from opposing perspectives. It considers seven key topics in todays society: land use, education, international trade, health insurance, technological change, and recreational alcohol and drugs. Two scholars with differing viewpoints discuss each topic, one working in the classical liberal tradition and the other advocating slower, incremental societal change. While classical liberalism historically presents a vision of society comprised of free and responsible individuals, this book shows the importance of considering the nuances of this vision today. Beyond theoretical regulation vs. de-regulation debates, the book highlights challenges for classical liberals by considering how dynamism and creative destruction may disrupt communities, leading to worse outcomes for some groups. This edited volume aims to deepen understanding of this challenge to a free society and partake in and encourage civil intellectual discourse and debate. It will interest students and scholars from various fields, including economics, political science, public health, and environmental studies. Alice Louise Kassens is John S. Shannon Professor of Economics at Roanoke College, a Senior Analyst with the Institute for Policy and Opinion Research, Director of the Center for Economic Freedom, and Research Fellow with the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Institute for Economic Equity. She is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Economic Teaching. Kassens earned her BA in economics and history from the College of William and Mary and her Ph.D. in economics from North Carolina State University. Joshua C. Hall is Milan Puskar Dean and Professor of Economics at the John Chambers College of Business & Economics at West Virginia University. He was the 2019-2020 Benedum Distinguished Scholar in Behavioral and Social Sciences and a 2015-2016 WVU Foundation Outstanding Teaching Award Recipient. He is editor of the Journal of Regional Analysis & Policy. He earned his bachelors and masters degrees in economics from Ohio University and his Ph.D. from West Virginia University in 2007. Before returning to WVU, he was the Elbert H. Neese, Jr. Professor of Economics at Beloit College.

AbstractPrison overcrowding is a major public policy issue with roughly 2.2 million individuals currently incarcerated in the United States. In the absence of reductions in the prison population, the only way to address overcrowding are the expansion of current facilities or the construction of new prisons. Previous research has demonstrated that factors unrelated to the law can affect the decisions made by prosecutors and judges. We investigate the effect of newly constructed prisons in Florida on the probability of defendants being sentenced to prison within 6 months of the prison receiving inmates. The results reveal that these defendants have a greater likelihood of being incarcerated in prison compared to similar defendants whose cases were resolved before the prison became operational. This indicates the potential for a regional‐level substitution between jail and prison incarceration.

AbstractWe use a computational linguistic algorithm to measure the topics covered in teacher contracts. Topic modeling metrics are used to assess a contract's expansiveness. Our topic, diversity measurement, is then related to the prevalence of support staff. If more specialized services are provided, then contracts should be broader as they cover more employment relationships. We confirm a strong, statistically significant relationship and, thus, have a valid measurement of contract breadth.

School districts in Ohio have the option of diversifying their revenue base by adopting income taxes. Using a panel of Ohio school districts that adopted a local income tax from 1990 to 2008, we find that revenues are procyclical and fluctuate only mildly. The estimated short‐ and long‐run income elasticity of school district income tax revenues is 1.05 and 1.04, respectively. We also find that the school district tax base fully adjusts to its long‐run equilibrium within 2 years. Finally, we show that school district income tax adoption does not provide more stability to total school district tax revenues in the short or the long run. (JEL H71, H75)

AbstractHackerspaces are community-operated physical places where individuals get together to build things. While the organization itself is private, the 'space' that is created for individuals to work has elements of a common pool resource (CPR). The previous literature finds technology to be important in effective CPR management. Through an ethnographic study of a hackerspace, we show how technology is crucial for management of the 'space'. In addition, we highlight how technology is used in hackerspaces to satisfy three of Ostrom's design principles for stable CPR management.

AbstractThe literature on racial "peer effects" suggests that diversity improves at least some students' school performance. However, a literature in economic development posits that diversity may negatively affect school performance by undermining the efficient provision of education. This article empirically tests this claim, which we call the "public goods channel," by examining the relationship between racial diversity and student performance in Ohio's school districts. We find that moving from a completely homogenous school district to one in which two racial groups have equal population shares is associated with a 7–17.5 percentage point decline in the passage rate on the state math exam, holding per pupil spending across districts constant. These results suggest that racial diversity is negatively associated with school performance but that the public goods channel is not responsible for this relationship.