Affirmative Action and Its Alternatives in Public Universities: What Do We Know?

University administrators have made difficult choices in response to the changing policy context for the use of affirmative action in admissions. This paper synthesizes the empirical literature on affirmative action and evaluates the efficacy of alternative strategies, including top-percent programs, class-based affirmative action, and targeted recruiting. The analyses offer several findings of interest to officials who direct such programs: (1) Affirmative action preferences given by top-tier universities have been large; (2) affirmative action leads minorities to enroll in higher-quality institutions; and (3) affirmative action has mostly positive effects on minority students later in life. The evidence shows a decline in minorities' relative share of enrollment at flagship public universities after affirmative action was eliminated in several states, and the alternative strategies used by these universities have not offset these declines.     

The impact of child SSI enrollment on household outcomes

We use data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) to investigate the impact that child Supplemental Security Income (SSI) enrollment has on household outcomes, including poverty, household earnings, and health insurance coverage. The longitudinal nature of the SIPP allows us to control for unobserved, time‐invariant differences across households by measuring outcomes in the same household in the months leading up to and immediately following the first reporting of child SSI income. Our regression analyses demonstrate that for every $100 increase in household SSI income, total household income increases by roughly $72, reflecting some modest offset of other transfer income and conditional household earnings. Our analyses further demonstrate that child SSI enrollment is associated with a statistically significant and persistent reduction in the probability that a child lives in poverty of roughly 11 percentage points. Additional analyses suggest that program enrollment has virtually no impact on health insurance coverage because most new SSI recipients have health insurance from Medicaid or another source at the time of enrollment. © 2007 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management     

The Development of Competitive Industries: The Role of State Government Actors

Despite widespread adoption of Porter's Industrial Cluster Theory as a policy development framework by federal and state governments over the past decade, Australia remains significantly below the OECD average in terms of its industries' economic contributions to real wealth creation ( Brown 2000 ; OECD 1998 ). The major cause cited for this relatively poor performance has been inability of key government officials to implement effective industry policy that simultaneously avoids de facto protectionism and distortion of competition. This article provides an insight into the key policy decisions undertaken by the Tasmanian state government that coincided with development of an internationally successful shipbuilding industry in that state. As such, this article provides a reflection on policy initiatives that may be valuable for government officials elsewhere.