Open governance requirements are designed to improve accountability, which implies that transparent governments are more trustworthy stewards of their publicly invested power. However, transparency may also reduce institutional effectiveness and inhibit political compromise, diminishing the capacity to manage resources responsibly. We assess empirical support for these competing perspectives in the context of American state legislatures, many of which have become exempt from state sunshine laws in recent decades. We leverage variation in the timing of these legislative exemptions to identify the effect of removing transparency in a crucial governing institution on investors’ risk perceptions of states’ general obligation bonds. Our analysis of these data during the period 1995–2010 suggests that removing legislative transparency reduces state credit risk. We conclude that while openness in government may be normatively desirable, shielding legislative proceedings from public view may actually be better for states’ debt repayment capacity, improving their overall fiscal health. 相似文献
Using data from the Michigan Panel Study of Income Dynamics, this article estimates the impact of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) on economic risk. Risk is measured through the variance of full income (income holding labor supply constant). The results show that the EITC significantly reduces economic risk, but its effects are weaker dollar for dollar than traditional means-tested programs like Food Stamps. The difference is not statistically significant, however. Moreover, for many middle-class people, the risk-reduction benefits of the EITC exceed the tax burden it imposes. This is less true of means-tested transfers. These results are significant for the politics of antipoverty policy. They show that a real-world antipoverty program can generate enough middle-class economic security to build for itself a solid base of political support. 相似文献
Schools across the country are ending the practice of grouping students based on ability, in part, because of research indicating that tracking hurts low-ability students without helping students of other ability levels. Using a nationally representative survey conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics, (NCES) we reexamine the impact of tracking on high school student achievement through the estimation of a standard education production function. This approach allows us to control for the possibility that track is correlated with factors such as class size and teacher education. In addition, we address the possibility that there are unobserved student or school characteristics that affect both achievement and track placement. Our results indicate that abolishing tracking in America's schools would have a large positive impact on achievement for students currently in the lower tracks, but that this increase in achievement would come at the expense of students in upper-track classes. 相似文献
Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Adolescents are spending considerable time on social media, yet it is unclear whether motivations for social media use drive different forms of social media... 相似文献
Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Little is known about the developmental course of informant discrepancies in adolescent aggressive behavior problems, though whether aggression increases or... 相似文献
World history has known areas of relative isolation and areas of high intensity of cultural interaction. The Mediterranean
Sea, the Silk Road or the Straits of Malacca can be cited as such crucial contact zones. Within these areas, centres sprung
up that served as interfaces between cultures and societies. These “hubs” as we would like to call them, emerged at various
points throughout the contact zones, rose to prominence and submerged into oblivion due to a variety of natural calamities
or political fortunes. This paper assesses the rise and fall of trade and knowledge hubs along the Straits of Malacca from
before colonialisation until today. Historical hubs of maritime trade and religiosity today increasingly establish themselves
as educational and knowledge hubs. This leads us to speak of the Straits of Malacca as a chain of—not pearls—but knowledge
hubs with Singapore as the knowledge hub in the region shining the brightest of all, as the data suggest. We aim to conceptually
grasp this development by suggesting a model or at least a hypothesis about the rise and movement of knowledge hubs in general.
China’s rise as a global power corresponded with a diminution of Taiwanese diplomacy, which has left Central America as the last region to host a continuous bloc of countries that recognize the ROC. In this article, we argue that China’s success in gaining diplomatic recognition from Taiwan’s former allies has largely resulted from China's economic policy, specifically its promises of large-scale infrastructure projects and the integration of Central American economies with Chinese markets. However, there are limits to how far China has advanced in gaining full recognition from the region. The competing political and economic interests of China, Taiwan, the United States, and the Central American countries themselves, continue to influence patterns of diplomatic switching. More specifically, we argue that the threat of punitive measures from the United States combined with a turn in Taiwanese diplomacy toward assistance efforts to combat Covid-19 may deter future switching in the short to medium-term. Our analysis offers case studies of four Central American countries (Costa Rica, Panama, El Salvador and Nicaragua) to illustrate the multi-year processes by which China’s economic strategy leads to diplomatic switching and examine the paths ahead for the remaining holdouts facing the prospect of economic and political penalties by the United States.