The heart of Asia and the roof of the world

This article concentrates almost entirely on the events of 1971 and the author's involvement in the “sometimes complicated and frustrating negotiations and consultations” which led up to the signing at the end of 1971 of the various Treaties of Friendship as Britain withdrew from the Gulf, leaving behind a number of independent states, including the United Arab Emirates.     

The new constitutions of east Germany

The restoration of the Lander in the former GDR in 1990 and the unification of Berlin called for a round of constitution drafting in the east that resulted in considerable discussion and controversy within the attentive public and, especially, among legal scholars in all of Germany. Controversy focused on two general issues: direct democracy and certain constitutional provisions such as social rights and state goals. Direct democracy is nothing new for the Länder, since most West German Land constitutions provided for referenda long before the Wall collapsed. But the three‐step process adopted in the east, and in particular the relatively low signature requirements for initiatives and petitions, both of which were in fact first introduced by Schleswig‐Holstein in 1990, did not meet with universal approval. Even more controversial were certain provisions in the Land constititions, for example, Brandenburg, that probably violate the Basic Law, and a number of unenforceable social rights and state goals that raise questions about feasibility and false expectations. This leaves us with questions about just how different from their western counterparts the constitutions in the new Lander really are and whether, given the relatively weak position of the Lander in the policy‐making process in the German federal system and the EU, their constitutional provisions matter that much.     

The racial wealth gap,financial aid,and college access

We examine how the racial wealth gap interacts with financial aid in American higher education to generate a disparate impact on college access and outcomes. Retirement savings and home equity are excluded from the formula used to estimate the amount a family can afford to pay. All else equal, omitting those assets mechanically increases the financial aid available to families that hold them. White families are more likely to own those assets and in larger amounts. We document this issue and explore its relationship with observed differences in college attendance, types of institutions attended, degrees attained, and education debt using data from the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF), the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS), and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). We show that this treatment of assets provides an implicit subsidy worth thousands of dollars annually to students from families with above-median incomes. White students receive larger subsidies relative to Black students and Hispanic students with similar family incomes, and this gap in subsidies is associated with disadvantages in educational advancement and student loan levels. It may explain 10 percent to 15 percent of white students’ advantage in these outcomes relative to Black students and Hispanic students.