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This research analyzes over 60,000 awarded highway contracts from 18 states throughout the United States. Analysis was performed on the state and aggregate level. The contracts were awarded from the years 2008 through 2018. Statistical analysis utilizing Pearson's Correlation and Ordinary Least Squares regression for each sample was performed to identify each variables relationship between the budget and awarded values.The research examined effects of economic indicators, contractor descriptors and yearly/seasonal adjustments These variables included DBE Participation Goal, Number of Bidders, Project Dollar Value, Project Duration, Unemployment Rate, S&P 500 Index, Volatility Index, quarter, and year of project award. The results were examined by using a combination of simple statistical summaries and econometric coefficients called a cost vector. Summary statistics observed Bid Difference at 8.5% below the Engineer's Estimate. The study observed DBE Participation Goals averaged 3.74% of the value of contracts, with an observed average of 4.5 bidders per contract. The research determined that 55% of observed states had a positive significant correlation with DBE Participation Goal and Bid Difference. This correlation translated to nearly $80 million in additional cost. In addition, the research determined that all 19 groups in this study had a negative significant correlation with the Number of Bidders. The correlation translated to a savings of nearly $500 million.

Fault Lines Exposed intends to understand inequality across Australian cities and towns. Social and economic change in Australia has resulted in the emergence of disparities in advantage and disadvantage between metropolitan communities and regional localities, towns and cities. In 1999 the book Community Opportunity and Vulnerability (Baum et al.) considered the disparities that existed between communities using 1996 census data. This new book, available both online and in print, uses up-to-date data to reanalyse the patterns and consider the important policy issues that arise from the patterns identified. Fault Lines Exposed provides insight into advantage and disadvantage at an aggregate community or locality level. Such insight is necessary if we are to better understand what is happening in society. It helps us plan effective solutions to problems that impact not only on individuals and families but also on communities. Each of the chapters outlines the main findings from the typology of advantage and disadvantage. The book concludes with a strong policy orientation, addressing possible options and raising more policy questions. Fault Lines Exposed will be essential reading for academics, researchers, students, policy makers and other professionals working in the areas of geography, sociology, economics and social work. “We had escaped our societies. Nobody was watching us. We could be free, we could behave as we liked. We had found the meaning of our existence. The real meaning of existence was there all the time of course, in the simple pattern of the island which we had annexed as our own primitive milieu, but after a time we could not see it for the mired footprints of our own excesses.” George Johnston, Clean Straw for Nothing “They had a larger-than-life, a mythical quality. They drank more than other people, they wrote more, they got sick more, they got well more, they cursed more and they blessed more, and they helped a great deal more. They were an inspiration. They had guts. They were real, tough, honest. They were the kind of people you meet less and less.” Leonard Cohen, on George Johnston and Charmian Clift