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Based on detected correlations between the strategic collaboration of U.S.-based diasporas and their respective ancestral homelands on the one hand and the socioeconomic and technological development of those homelands on the other, this paper, which provides a conceptual foundation of the correlation, attempts to ignite a new area of research on transnationalism and development in the global South. The conceptual foundation suggesting such an important correlation is ensconced in the theoretical contexts of world systems and racial formation theories. The hierarchically ranked status of a nation in some ways reflects the hierarchically ranked status of its diaspora in the United States. Strategic collaboration and brain circulation between the diaspora and the homeland can favorably affect the status of transnational communities, both within the United States and within the wider global system.

Universities in the United States for at least the last century have made positive contributions to the economic weal, whether through their intrinsic mission of teaching and research or through special arrangements for service activities. In recent years there has been heightened awareness of the special role of academic research among policymakers at the state and federal levels and within universities themselves. Especially since 2000, explicit measures have been taken to enhance contributions of university research to economic development for the sake of national, local, or institutional gains. The aim of this paper is to identify and analyze this current trend and particularly how it has affected research universities. The term "economic relevance" is used deliberately here to capture the multiple elements involved--university expertise, human capital formation, and direct participation in commercial markets--as well as their often indirect links to economic activity.

As American educators struggle to meet the unprecedented challenge of preparing all students to master the skills embodied in state learning standards, some wonder whether their efforts make economic sense. After all, the newspapers are full of reports of jobs being outsourced to lower-wage countries and jobs being done by computers. If more and more work is going to be done by computers or by workers in other countries, do current educational reform initiatives make sense? This article presents answers to questions that educators, parents, and youth ask about the educational implications of changes in the American economy. The main message is that there will be good jobs for well-educated Americans. Indeed, the great danger is the continuing decline in earnings opportunities for Americans who lack the skills to do the growing number of jobs requiring expert thinking and complex communication. (Contains 3 figures and 1 note.)

This paper examines the recent history of State-level policies in the United States for knowledge-based economic development, and identifies an emerging model based on technology creation. This new model goes beyond traditional investments in technology transfer and prioritizes cutting-edge scientific research in economically relevant fields. As research-intensive universities are indispensable for technology creation, these policies have yielded substantial new investments in university science.

In the first half of this paper we develop a perspective on the role of "boldness" in explaining gender differences in thinking and attitudes. We apply this analysis to evidence from Australia, the USA and the UK in relation to economics at school and university levels. In the second half we present the results of a study of over 1000 15-17-year-olds in UK secondary schools. On the basis of the gender differences revealed in these data and our preceding analysis we offer some implications for learning and teaching.

This paper presents two competing views on China's growth experience over the past three decades. For the sake of illustrative ease and brevity I label these two opposing views as the Beijing Consensus and the Washington Consensus. The Beijing Consensus interprets China's economic growth as a function of innovations in the state sector, including close financial controls, state ownership of firms, and political controls in favor of economic growth. The Washington Consensus views China's experience much the same as growth experiences elsewhere•that is, as a result of financial liberalization, private entrepreneurship, and political opening. Contrary to the established views among China scholars, this paper argues that the Washington Consensus view fits with the Chinese growth experience better. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Research universities and institutes assume a vital role in domestic economic development. Research universities are assigned the responsibility to train doctoral and post-doctoral students and to form new generations of faculty. Despite their critical role, the effectiveness of institutions regarding research production is rarely studied, particularly in an international, comparative context. Vital information regarding the improvement potential of institutions is generally lacking, as are good criteria by which to judge the relative merit of various types of institutions. The paper presents findings on a performance gradient that separates US and European research universities and submits hypotheses that link productivity and organizational--or structural--aspects of research-oriented institutions.

This paper makes use of interdependence theory to analyse the historical development of the economic relations between the GCC countries and the United States. The focus will be on oil and arms trade between the GCC countries and the United States. The results show that while the military and security dependence of the GCC countries on the United States remains relatively intact, the dependence of the United States on the natural resources of the GCC region has decreased. In light of this, the paper suggests that the historical interdependence between the GCC countries and the United States has recently evolved into a unilateral dependence and that the GCC countries' natural resources are directed towards Asian countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the concept of rurality has been debated in academic and professional literature for decades, less research has been done on a practical typology that can guide localized economic development strategies. This paper adds to the growing body of literature in search of a more nuanced definition of rural by applying unsupervised machine learning (ML) to the abundance of existing county-level data in the United States. The authors illustrate how this method can lead to a new county typology, named after economic development strategies, that accounts for idiosyncrasies in resources, opportunities, and challenges. This research serves as a practical step toward tractable, heterogeneous classifications that can inform the work of federal, state, and local policy makers, economic development practitioners, and many others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A stochastic framework for coordination of macroeconomic policies is introduced in this paper. It is suggested that: (i) measures of policy accountability should allow for the climate of uncertainty that surrounds policy decisions, and (ii) most models of aggregate economic activity impose arbitrary specifications of uncertainty that do not appear to be empirically justifiable. Ambiguities in interpreting the Humphrey-Hawkins reports of policy authorities are sketched in section II; a proposal for maximizing the ex ante prospects of policy objectives is illustrated in section III; finally, nonstationary allocations of uncertainty are discussed in sections IV and V. This paper provides a brief survey of ongoing work by members of the Federal Reserve Board staff on the role of uncertainty in policy forecasts. It suggests that policy discussion could be improved by more explicit consideration of the allocation of uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article comments on a paper published within the issue, "Capital Formation and the Recent Productivity Slowdown," by Peter Clark. The author also discusses results from his own research in "Accounting for United States Economic Growth, 1929-1969," and applies it to Clark's paper. It is suggested that an abrupt rise in energy prices may have affected growth rates during the mid-1970s. The author also looks at a similar analysis made by John Kendrick, who focuses on the U.S. postwar period of 1948-1966.

This special issue of the California Management Review contains a selection of the best papers presented at the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Strategic Management Society, which was held in San Francisco in on October 11-14, 1989. Guest editors Robert Harris and David Mowery provide an overview of the topic of "Strategies for Innovation" (the theme of the conference) and discuss its critical importance to management practice. They provide an introduction to the articles in this special issue and conclude with an exploration of other dimensions of strategy and innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers insights on the industrial symbiosis an the field of ecology in the U.S. It introduces regional studies to industrial symbiosis and the field of ecology to which it belongs, and then summarizes each of the papers contributing to the issue. It presents conclusions about the potential overlapping between industrial symbiosis and regional development which claims that industrial symbiosis (IS) does have potential to generate regional environmental economic benefits. Nevertheless, increasing imperatives for regional sustainable economic development may dictate that IS system-scale approach to resource efficiency receive serious exploration.

The work experience of the African-American woman is often overlooked. In this article, the development/underdevelopment model, usually applied to the depressed situation of the Third World, is used to assess the dynamics of race, class, and gender for African-American females in the labor market. (SLD)

Reviews science and technology policymaking in five countries with free-market economies: the United Kingdom, Germany, France, the Republic of Korea, and the United States. Implications for eastern European and other countries currently reorganizing toward domestic market economies and greater orientation toward world trade are discussed. (61 references) (LRW)

Discusses the roles academic and public libraries can play in the process of economic restructuring and development. A business school library in Hungary is described, and its role in economic restructuring and the education of future managers is discussed; and the role of public libraries in the United States is examined. (four references) (LRW)

This paper provides an alternative approach to penalized regression for model selection in the context of high‐dimensional linear regressions where the number of covariates is large, often much larger than the number of available observations. We consider the statistical significance of individual covariates one at a time, while taking full account of the multiple testing nature of the inferential problem involved. We refer to the proposed method as One Covariate at a Time Multiple Testing (OCMT) procedure, and use ideas from the multiple testing literature to control the probability of selecting the approximating model, the false positive rate, and the false discovery rate. OCMT is easy to interpret, relates to classical statistical analysis, is valid under general assumptions, is faster to compute, and performs well in small samples. The usefulness of OCMT is also illustrated by an empirical application to forecasting U.S. output growth and inflation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regulation is often portrayed as placing a substantial burden on US businesses and the overall US economy. Moreover, policy options of “cutting red tape” and “reducing federal bureaucracy” are often asserted to be a way to stimulate investment and, through this channel, a way to promote economic growth. This paper examines the relationship between growth in regulatory restrictions in the Code of Federal Regulations and manufacturing investment in the United States over the 1970-2009 period. An industry-level dataset is constructed by mapping the novel industry-specific RegData dataset from the Mercatus Center at George Mason University to the comprehensive industry-specific manufacturing data in the NBER-CES Manufacturing Industry Database. In total, the constructed dataset includes 337 manufacturing industries. This approach yields substantial evidence that increased business regulation is associated with decreased business investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the neoliberal consensus about education finance has broken down due to growing economic inequality. First, I use a comparative historical analysis of political alliances to examine patterns of world trade and nations' policies for economic and educational development since World War II. The United States emphasized STEM-collegiate preparation for all students, while most countries continued the dual emphasis on technical-tertiary and higher education. Educational policy in the US and Pacific region also shifted towards a reliance on markets and student loans resulting in worsening economic inequality in access. Nations with dual technical and academic pathways in secondary and postsecondary education systems expand college enrollment rates more rapidly than the US. They also experience class conflict between the working–middle class and the new technological elite. Next, I examine how education policy shifted from national planning aligned with public funding to market-based incentives for institutional development, further exposing gaps in opportunity within nations. Finally, recognizing the variations in systemic causes of inequality, I argue that governments, education agencies, and civic activists can best promote equity by organizing to address barriers to opportunity for groups left behind in the wake of withering neoliberal education policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on infrastructure systems in the U.S. as of September 2002.

This paper provides an example of several modeling and econometric advances used in the panel estimation of energy demand elasticities. The paper models the demand of total, industrial, and transport energy consumption and residential and commercial electricity consumption by analyzing US state-based panel data. The paper employs recently developed dynamic panel methods that address heterogeneity, nonstationarity, and cross-sectional dependence. In addition, the paper (i) considers possible nonlinear relationships between energy consumption and income without employing polynomial transformations of integrated income; and (ii) allows for and calculates possible asymmetric relationships between energy consumption and price. Finally, the paper models energy efficiency improvements by a nonlinear time trend. To our knowledge no other paper has combined all of the econometric and modeling advances that are applied here. Most of the results conformed to expectations; however, limited to no evidence of nonlinearities and asymmetries were uncovered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses Census IPUMS data from 1970 to 2000 and ACS data from 2010 to estimate the impact of oil booms and busts on wages and human capital formation in the USA. The paper finds that the oil boom between 1970 and 1980 was associated with a slower growth in the relative demand for skills in the oil and gas sector and regions where the sector had a large presence. The oil boom led to a sharp rise in real wages and a modest decline in college wage premium in oil-rich regions in the USA. Using a synthetic cohort approach, the paper finds that relative to cohorts who went to high school in the pre-oil boom period, the cohort reaching high school age during the oil boom was about 1-2% points less likely to have a college degree by 2000 and 2010. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article comments on three papers within the issue: "Long-Term Effects of Government Deficits on the U.S. Output Potential," by George von Furstenburg, "Capital Formation and the Recent Productivity Slowdown," by Peter Clark, and "U.S. Productivity Growth Recession: History and Prospects for the Future," by Michael McCarthy. The author discusses each article and criticizes their shortcomings. He looks at von Furstenburg's use of the Phelps-Shell model of dynamic economic growth and notes the usefulness of neoclassical growth theory. The author feels that his discussion on the effects of government deficits on output growth or productivity represent a fruitful economic analysis innovation.

Estimating the contribution of enslaved workers to output and growth in the United States during the first half of the nineteenth century is a crucial building block to better understand the contours of nineteenth‐century US economic history, and more generally, the connection between slavery and capitalism. Existing estimates only present a partial picture and are potentially problematic. In this paper, we use data on enslaved person valuations to calculate the contribution made by enslaved workers to regional and national gross national product (GNP) in 1839 and 1859 and to the growth in per capita output in the 20 years before the Civil War. We find that in the United States, enslaved workers were responsible for somewhere between 12.49 per cent and 18.0 per cent of the increase in output per capita between 1839 and 1859. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The U.S. electricity sector has undergone a series of technological and political economic transformations between 1995 and 2020. Some, but not all, states have moved toward the provision of electricity through wholesale electricity markets, while others have remained traditionally regulated. In addition, electricity is increasingly generated from natural gas and renewable energy, and while total electricity consumption is stagnant in the United States, electric utility revenues have continued to grow. In combination with a growing emphasis on increasing shareholder value, the result of these changes has been the entry of a range of new electricity industry, finance, and regulatory actors, as well as a shift in the ways in which existing actors are seeking to realize surplus value. In light of these changes, in this paper, I outline the contemporary contours and contradictions of the U.S. electricity industry and detail five accumulation strategies being used in the industry. Building on scholarship in energy geography and geographies of finance, and based on the analysis of industry documents and financial analyst reports, I detail how the U.S. electricity has been reshaped by the introduction of new types of technologies, financial risk and investment opportunities, and changing modes of regulation. The resulting accumulation strategies are contested, partial, and incomplete, and are therefore a messy set of overlapping and at times contradictory strategies being deployed in an industry in flux. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regional economies are characterized by networks of interactions between individual elements and are thus quintessential complex systems. Analyzing the relatedness of various aspects of regional economies, such as exports, industries, occupations, and technologies, using methods from complexity science is becoming commonplace. However, current work has focused nearly exclusively on regional economic complexity of more urbanized regions within countries, if not entire countries themselves. Smaller urban areas are typically over-looked and rural regions are almost entirely absent from the dialog. This paper seeks to fill this gap by examining smaller urban areas and rural regions from a complexity economics perspective. Analyzing cross-sectional data provides initial insights into the transformation of regional economic connectedness from rural to urban regions. Using a previously developed metric of economic connectivity based the on co-occurrence of economic activities, called tightness, we examine the skills space and industry space of metropolitan, micropolitan, and rural regions in the United States. We find that the least and the most urbanized regions have the highest tightness, and that this is partially due to the share of specialty skills in a "socio-cognitive" lobe of skills space. However, we also find that the composition of skills in the least and most urbanized regions differs markedly. Findings suggest that planners seeking to increase the share of socio-cognitive skills in the local workforce may be constrained by population size, and that regions of moderate population size may be required to first grow industries that require less cognitive skills. Science Highlights • Regional economic tightness and regional economic output are positively correlated, even when controlling for regional population. • Skills tightness is greatest in the least populous and most populous regions while industry tightness is greatest in the most populous regions. • Higher skills tightness is driven partially by the share of socio-cognitive skills in the regional workforce. • The most rural and most urban counties have the highest share of specialty skills in the socio-cognitive lobe of skills space. Policy and Practice Recommendations • Both skills and industrial tightness should be fostered to increase regional per capita output. • Growing jobs that utilize socio-cognitive skills may increase skills tightness and thus regional productivity. • Moderately-urbanized areas typically have a lower share of workers with socio-cognitive skills, and may experience more difficulty growing knowledge-intensive industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the evolution of intra-financial sector lending in the United States, 1950-2012, constructing estimates from the Federal Reserve's Flow of Funds Accounts. Lending between financial institutions has grown nearly five-fold since the 1950s and currently accounts for roughly half of all financial sector lending. In the run up to the financial crisis of 2007-2008, the growth of intra-financial lending was concentrated in assets highly implicated in the genesis of the crisis, suggesting that this growth may have contributed to the crisis. This growth in intra-financial lending also raises questions about the contribution of the financial sector to the real economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates whether economic development incentives (EDI) crowd out public expenditures in U.S. states. Using EDI data from a new database, this paper employs a two-way fixed effect panel framework and generalized method of moments (GMM) approach to account for dynamic features associated with public expenditures. Potential endogeneity of policy variables and problems with unbalanced panels are also addressed. Results show relatively little effect of incentives spending on most public goods expenditures contemporaneously, with negative repercussions beginning to appear in year one. Findings of this paper carry practical importance for policymakers concerning the efficacy of incentives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article discusses role of the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) to meet job challenges faced by workers in the U.S. It mentions first jobs challenge for stronger macroeconomic performance with more rapid economic growth and employment expansion to alleviate the high cyclical unemployment; and efforts to address longer term secular trends of rising labor market inequality, growing educational wage gaps and labor market polarization. It also mentions challenges regarding training and employment programs.

Since the Asian financial crisis in 1997, Thailand has become highly dependent on exports as the main engine of economic growth. In 2008, the ratio of export to GDP was about 76.5 percent. The global economic crisis triggered by the sub-prime loans debacle in the United States has prompted Thailand to rethink its high dependence on export. This paper examines the options for external and internal economic rebalancing strategies for Thailand. External rebalancing will require Thailand to rely more on regional markets and less on the Western markets for its exports. The paper examines the possibility of promoting greater intra-regional trade and Thailand's regional trade strategies. As for internal rebalancing, the paper emphasizes the need to boost domestic public and private investment in terms of both quantity and quality to narrow the current saving--investment gap, bearing in mind the need to ensure fiscal sustainability. Finally, the paper examines broader rebalancing strategies that will help Thailand to become less dependent on exports. These include the need to (1) improve productivity; (2) increase economic efficiency; (3) deepen the production structure and create new dynamic industries; and (4) generate new growth poles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developing Asia has traditionally relied on exports to the United States and other industrialized countries for demand and growth. As a result, the collapse of exports to the United States and other industrialized countries during the 2008-09 global financial crisis has sharply curtailed GDP growth across the region. The emergence of the People's Republic of China (PRC) as a globally influential economic force is fueling hopes that it can supplement the United States as an additional source of demand and growth. The central objective of this paper is to investigate whether exports to the PRC has a significant and positive effect on the GDP of eight developing Asian countries. Although the study's results indicate that exports to the PRC contributed to developing Asian countries' recovery from the global crisis, it is far too early to make well-informed judgments about the PRC's ability to support Asia's growth in the medium and long term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using quarterly data for all 379 metropolitan statistic areas (MSAs) in the U.S. from 1980:1 to 2008:2, this paper empirically studies the effect of house prices on local Gross Metropolitan Product (GMP). We compare the effects of predictable and unpredictable house price changes, which we use to capture the collateral and wealth effects of house prices respectively. We further analyze the relationship between the effects and household borrowing constraints, as well as the temporal pattern of the effects. Our analysis provides the following findings. First, house price changes have significant effects on GMP growth, and the effect of predictable changes (the collateral effect) is about three times stronger than the effect of unpredictable changes (the wealth effect). Second, the persistent component of predictable changes has a stronger collateral effect than the novel component. Third, when households are more financially constrained, the collateral effect is stronger, the wealth effect is weaker, and the total effect remains unchanged. Finally, the effects last for eight quarters, and peak on the fourth quarter after house price changes take place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The high level of debt among households outside the top end of the income distribution has led many economists to assert that household debt has been an important component of the increase in income inequality in the United States. In addition, the yield spread provides information about the overall condition of the economy and may also be tied into the distribution of income. The paper's results show that increases in the yield spread and household debt correspond with increases in top income shares, resulting in increases in income inequality. However, as household debt and income inequality increase, the yield spread contracts, which suggests future economic contraction. Thus, rising inequality may signal future economic weakness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The accurate forecast of carbon dioxide emissions is critical for policy makers to take proper measures to establish a low carbon society. This paper discusses a hybrid of the mixed data sampling (MIDAS) regression model and BP (back propagation) neural network (MIDAS-BP model) to forecast carbon dioxide emissions. Such analysis uses mixed frequency data to study the effects of quarterly economic growth on annual carbon dioxide emissions. The forecasting ability of MIDAS-BP is remarkably better than MIDAS, ordinary least square (OLS), polynomial distributed lags (PDL), autoregressive distributed lags (ADL), and auto-regressive moving average (ARMA) models. The MIDAS-BP model is suitable for forecasting carbon dioxide emissions for both the short and longer term. This research is expected to influence the methodology for forecasting carbon dioxide emissions by improving the forecast accuracy. Empirical results show that economic growth has both negative and positive effects on carbon dioxide emissions that last 15 quarters. Carbon dioxide emissions are also affected by their own change within 3 years. Therefore, there is a need for policy makers to explore an alternative way to develop the economy, especially applying new energy policies to establish a low carbon society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite economic growth since the recession, the gap between the richest and the poorest segments of the population remains one of the most pressing concerns of contemporary America. This paper uses IR-95/20, IR-80/20, and IR-65/35 ratios to measure the income divides between the richest and the poorest segments in the mid-to-large-sized metropolises of the U.S. Southeast, their variation across ethnicities, and their association with metropolitan level attributes such as diversity, segregation, socio-economic, and other built-environment, and labor characteristics. The income divide ratios serve as the dependent variables whereas principal components along with state-dummy variables serve as the explanatory variables in regressions analyses. The metropolises that are large, diverse, and better educated are the most income-divided whereas those with lower educated people are less divided. Metropolises with larger shares of their labor engaged in primary sectors of economy have higher income divides; this observation also holds true for African Americans and Hispanics. Metropolises that gained in intermixing during 2000-2014 are associated with a lower income divide and vice versa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1957 and 1990, nearly 100 nuclear reactors were constructed throughout the U.S., and nuclear power currently accounts for 20 percent of electricity production nationwide. Nuclear plants are often constructed in small communities for which they constitute a large source of employment and income. To date, 24 nuclear reactors have undergone decommissioning, and more are expected in the future, particularly as nuclear reactors age and face increasingly strict regulations. This paper examines the effects of nuclear decommissioning over time at the county-level on measures of employment, income, and population using difference-in-differences regression and propensity score matching. Panel data are obtained from the U.S. Census Bureau, and cover the years 1975-2014. The analysis finds that nuclear decommissioning is associated with positive and statistically significant increases in employment and per capita income over time. Results suggest that nuclear decommissioning may actually be a positive force in regional economic development, and concludes with limitations of the approach and implications for future research. As an emerging area of research, this paper is meant to build on previous work, as well as to provide a basis for further discussion and debate on the economic future of nuclear host communities and regional economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dunne, Smith, and Willenbockel (2005) argue that the mainstream growth literature has not found military spending to be a significant determinant of economic growth, yet much of the defense economics literature has noted significant effects. This paper revisits this issue by using a DSGE-VAR approach, combining both theoretical and empirical methods. We present that the DSGE approach (estimated with the Bayesian technique) and the Bayesian VAR with the Minnesota Prior both lead to worse in-sample fit than our proposed DSGE-VAR framework. The DSGE-VAR approach reveals that a positive military spending shock boosts the U.S. economy, increasing per capita real GDP growth, consumption, inflation and interest rate. Our results are robust to alternative model specifications. Future investigations such as exploring an optimal military spending policy could adopt the approach in this paper to determine the best model -- empirical, theoretical, or a combination of the two. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the Occupy movement that recently took place on Wall Street and in other parts of the globe, a lot of attention has recently been given to growing income inequality. The 2008 United States financial crisis, the Great Recession, and the subsequent weak recovery have brought about a more serious focus on income inequality and the widening income gap between the top 1 percent and other groups. These events have brought about some social unrest and instability in American society perhaps not seen since the Great Depression. How much has the top 1 percent of households gained in terms of income versus the other 99 percent in the United States over the last 30 years or so? Mainstream economists and other social scientists point to various causes which have been mentioned in many scholarly and popular writings. All of these mainstream factors affecting inequality have been found to be statistically significant in one scholarly study or another. This research paper explores other major concepts to explain income inequality rather than to dispute the findings of other existing research efforts. The empirical findings of this paper support radical arguments that income accumulation of those at the top is not connected to the productivity of capital investment, but rather instead is connected to the declining incomes and exploitation of the rest of the U.S. population despite the rising output per worker of the U.S. workforce over the last 30 to 40 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As public utility owners face increased budget constraints and greater expectations, alternative project delivery methods will increasingly be used to fast track projects, reduce costs, promote innovation, and ensure proper performance for water and wastewater facilities. The goals of public utility owners and U.S. federal tax regulations suggest why design-build-operate (DBO) projects have been selected over other procurement processes. The research reported in this paper contributes to the body of knowledge and benefits industry practitioners, by identifying tax regulations and best practices that when jointly considered improve the project delivery selection process, while enhancing risk-mitigation efforts on DBO water and wastewater projects. A procurement selection process using multiple-criteria decision and financial risk analyses is presented to select the most economically sustainable delivery method given each project's characteristics. A present value analysis establishes a range of values that takes into account variables that will potentially impact lifecycle costs. The selection of the procurement process and the contractor is based on best value where financial risks to the concerned government and contractor are mitigated through dynamic service fee agreements in accordance with current U.S. federal tax regulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose -- The purpose of this paper is to examine the dynamic relationship among immigration rate, GDP per capita, and and real wage rates in the USA. Design/methodology/approach -- The paper implements the Johansen-Juselius (1990, 1992) cointegration technique to test for a long-run relationship; and for short-run dynamics the authors apply Granger causality tests under the vector error-correction model. Findings -- The results show that the long-run causality runs from GDP per capita to immigration, not vice versa. Growing economy attracts immigrants. The authors also find that immigration flow depresses average weekly earnings of the natives in the long-run. Originality/value -- The authors are not aware of any study on the USA addressing the impact of immigrants on labor market using a tripartite approach by explicitly incorporating economic growth. It is therefore important to pursue a theoretically justified empirical model in search of a relation to resolve on apparent immigration debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author examines the state of the fiscal and welfare policy of public debt in the U.S. based on the evidence provided by economist Olivier Blanchard in his presidential address to the American Economic Association in 2019. Topics discussed include the welfare effects of increased debt against realistic increase in risks, views on Blanchard's calibrated approach toward positive welfare effects of increased debt, and the importance of government debt expansion in times of economic growth.

For urban policymaking, inequality in large U.S. metropolitan areas appears as a principal consequence of a trichotomy of motives over resources allocation, consisting of urban economic development, ecological sustainability and socioeconomic equity. In the case of global cities, a greater inequality appears to result, in part, from the propensity for urban economic-development motives to pursue and/or maintain worldwide centrality, connectivity and command over the dynamic forces of globalization. Such global-city development priorities are reflected in the endogenous urban content and institutional makeup distinguishing "global-city status," a characterization attributable to only a handful of places in the U.S. As a cross-sectional comparison of 53 large metropolitan areas (MSA), this paper examines the hypothesis that MSAs having a higher index value for "global-city status" exhibit comparatively greater socioeconomic inequality than MSAs with a lower index value. It produces statistical evidence supporting this thesis, with wide-ranging implications for globalization's imprint on metropolitan areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This paper describes a weekly economic index (WEI) developed to track the rapid economic developments associated with the onset of and policy response to the novel coronavirus in the United States. The WEI is a weekly composite index of real economic activity, with eight of 10 series available the Thursday after the end of the reference week. In addition to being a weekly real activity index, the WEI has strong predictive power for output measures and provided an accurate nowcast of current‐quarter GDP growth in the first half of 2020, with weaker performance in the second half. We document how the WEI responded to key events and data releases during the first 10 months of the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments have a history of intervention in the market to aid small, minority, and women-owned businesses. This research explores women-owned business development programs across the United States. The paper begins with a discussion of programs to serve women-owned businesses, noting barriers that exist for women business owners to access markets and capital. Analysis considers program offerings and how they are communicated to the public and client businesses via government websites. Policy approaches may reinforce patterns of suppression, rather than opening maximum opportunities for women business owners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Arts-based community development practices have received newfound prominence over the past decade under the auspices of "creative placemaking." In 2010, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) published a white paper titled "Creative Placemaking" and launched a new granting program focused on this practice called Our Town. Today, creative placemaking is burgeoning yet its precise definition remains fuzzy. This article uses content analysis to systematically analyze the 569 Our Town grants awarded by the NEA since the program's inception to inductively define creative placemaking based on the values embedded into project proposals, comparing these values with the NEA's stated Our Town goals. I find that creative placemaking, at least as funded in the U.S. through Our Town, can be defined as public or community-based art that includes values of place-specificity, collaboration, and participation, and which results in three forms of community development outcomes: economic development, bolstering social capital and participation, and improved cultural infrastructure. As creative placemaking evolves, equity is increasingly a concern, shifting focus toward the latter two outcomes as more measurable and desirable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Outlines U.S. national initiatives for local governments over the last few decades. Offers a picture of what the implications of these policies would be if carried out fully in Britain. Discusses whether the U.S. system for addressing local economic development concerns offers a better model and what really are the requirements for its implementation. (Author/JOW)

The author argues that collective bargaining procedures and relationships bewteen labor and management must reflect less conflict and more cooperation as the nation's economy struggles to meet international competition and domestic needs. (Author/SSH)