Suchergebnisse

Debates continue to rage over the merits or flaws of public land and whether or not it should be privatized--or at least, radically reconfigured in some way. In Defense of Public Lands offers a comprehensive refutation of the market-oriented arguments. Steven Davis passionately advocates that public land ought to remain firmly in the public's hands. He reviews empirical data and theoretical arguments from biological, economic, and political perspectives in order to build a case for why our public lands are an invaluable and irreplaceable asset for the American people. In Defense of Public Lands briefly lays out the history and characteristics of public lands at the local, state, and federal levels while examining the numerous policy prescriptions for their privatization or, in the case of federal lands, transfer. He considers the dimensions of environmental health; markets and valuation of public land, the tensions between collective values and individual preferences, the nature and performance of bureaucratic management, and the legitimacy of interest groups and community decision-making. Offering a fair, good faith overview of the privatizers' best arguments before refuting them, this timely book contemplates both the immediate and long-term future of our public lands.

This study offers evidence concerning the efficacy of public participation in influencing the policy outcomes of the United States Forest Service, focusing on the decisions of the Siskiyou National Forest over a nine‐year period. This study examines participants' experiences with the process and compares outcomes in this forest in relation to the level of participation which accompanied each decision. What was found was that: (1) participants tended to be quite skeptical about Forest Service motives and felt inefficacious regarding their own participation, and (2) decisions featuring increased levels of environmentalist input did seem to nudge policy decisions away from the most anti‐environmental, pro‐commodity positions, but only to a point, after which increased input seemed to accomplish little.

Examines the effect of public participation in planning and decision-making on US Forest Service policy; based on decisions related to the Siskiyou National Forest, 1983-93; Oregon.

"This paper is the first to study vacancies, hires, and vacancy yields at the establishment level in the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, a large sample of U.S. employers. To interpret the data, we develop a simple model that identifies the flow of new vacancies and the job-filling rate for vacant positions. The job-filling rate moves counter to aggregate employment but rises steeply with employer growth rates in the cross section. It falls with employer size, rises with worker turnover rates, and varies by a factor of four across major industry groups. We show that (a) employers rely heavily on other instruments, in addition to vacancy numbers, as they vary hires, (b) the hiring technology exhibits strong increasing returns to vacancies at the establishment level, or both. We also develop evidence that effective recruiting intensity per vacancy varies over time, accounting for about 35% of movements in aggregate hires. Our evidence and analysis provide useful inputs for assessing, developing and calibrating theoretical models of search, matching and hiring in the labor market"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site

"We review evidence on the Great Moderation in conjunction with evidence about volatility trends at the micro level. We combine the two types of evidence to develop a tentative story for important components of the aggregate volatility decline and its consequences. The key ingredients are declines in firm-level volatility and aggregate volatility -- most dramatically in the durable goods sector -- but the absence of a decline in household consumption volatility and individual earnings uncertainty. Our explanation for the aggregate volatility decline stresses improved supply-chain management, particularly in the durable goods sector, and, less important, a shift in production and employment from goods to services. We provide evidence that better inventory control made a substantial contribution to declines in firm-level and aggregate volatility. Consistent with this view, if we look past the turbulent 1970s and early 1980s much of the moderation reflects a decline in high frequency (short-term) fluctuations. While these developments represent efficiency gains, they do not imply (nor is there evidence for) a reduction in economic uncertainty faced by individuals and households"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site