Alternative measures of economic success among TANF participants: Avoiding poverty,hardship, and dependence on public assistance

Current debates about the success of TANF reforms have been obscured by the use of inconsistent indicators of success, as well as by measurement difficulties associated with alternative indicators. This paper considers conceptual and measurement issues associated with three different indicators of economic well‐being: independence from public assistance, having income above the poverty threshold, and freedom from material hardship. Survey and administrative data from a sample of TANF participants illustrate the sensitivity of conclusions to alternative ways of measuring each indicator. Also considered is the extent to which dependence, poverty, and hardship coincide, or capture important differences in outcomes. The principles underlying TANF reforms have implications for appropriate measures of economic well‐being, as the empirical importance of these implications demonstrates. © 2004 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Mix-Ups, Mistake and Moral Judgement: Recent Developments in U.K. Law on Assisted Conception

Hard cases make bad law. In a matter of months, two such cases involving assisted reproduction have appeared before the U.K. High Court and legislation has been enacted. The common threads between them are consent and fatherhood. The first case concerns a ‘mistake’ resulting in sperm from the wrong man being used to create an embryo for a couple and the second the revocation of consent by a man to his former partner being allowed to use an embryo they created together. Furthermore, Parliament has intervened, passing legislation which sets out when sperm from a dead man may be used by his former partner to generate an embryo. This note argues that the three developments cannot be reconciled with one another and that the cases in particular, decided on a narrow legal basis, convey contradictory messages, leading in at least one instance to a gross injustice.     

Föderalismus, Dezentralisierung und Performanz. Eine makroquantitative Analyse der Leistungsfähigkeit territorialer Politikorganisation in entwickelten Demokratien

Does federalism matter? We develop a theoretical model on the causal relationships between federalism, decentralization and system performance by merging the two literatures on political and fiscal federalism. The model is then tested in a quantitative analysis, including the OECD countries. We find that, consistent with our model, federalism and decentralization are different dimensions of the territorial organization of politics. Decentralization has positive effects; federalism tends to result in either no or a negative performance effect.     

Institution als symbolische Form

Ernst Cassirers ?Philosophie der symbolischen Formen“ (PSF) dient gegenwärtig in den Institutionentheorien von Gerhard Göhler und Karl-Siegbert Rehberg als Erklärung für die generell konstitutive Bedeutung der symbolischen Dimension von Institutionen. In diesem Beitrag wird überprüft, in welcher Hinsicht und mit welchen Konsequenzen die jeweilige Integration von Cassirers PSF vollzogen wird. Dabei werden drei Thesen entfaltet: (1) Göhlers Integration der Cassirer’schen Kategorien führt zu einer Auflösung der PSF innerhalb dieser Institutionentheorie, während Rehbergs Rückgriff auf Cassirer eine Auflösung seiner Institutionentheorie in der Gesellschaftstheorie bedeutet. (2) Trotz dieses Unterschieds beruhen die Schwierigkeiten beider Ansätze auf demselben Problem: Sie nehmen die PSF immer nur in ihrer Relevanz für die Gegenstände in Anspruch, die sie als Institutionen bezeichnen, aber nicht für den Institutionenbegriff selbst. (3) Abschließend wird noch kurz zur Diskussion gestellt, warum genau dieser Aspekt eine Möglichkeit bietet, Institution selbst als symbolische Form zu begreifen.     

Alternative forms of the Shapley value and the Shapley-Shubik index

We prove the validity of an alternative representation of the Shapley-Shubik (1954) index of voting power, based on the following model. Voting in an assembly consisting of n voters is conducted by roll-call. Every voter is assumed to vote "yea" or "nay" with equal probability, and all n! possible orders in which the voters may be called are also assumed to be equiprobable. Thus there are altogether 2 ⁿ n! distinct roll-call patterns. Given a simple voting game (a decision rule), the pivotal voter in a roll-call is the one whose vote finally decides the outcome, so that the votes of all those called subsequently no longer make any difference. The main result, stated without proof by Mann and Shapley (1964), is that the Shapley-Shubik index of voter a in a simple voting game is equal to the probability of a being pivotal. We believe this representation of the index is much less artificial than the original one, which considers only the n! roll-calls in which all voters say "yea" (or all say "nay"). The proof of this result proceeds by generalizing the representation so that one obtains a value for each player in any coalitional game, which is easily seen to satisfy Shapley's (1953) three axioms. Thus the generalization turns out to be an alternative representation of the Shapley value. This result implies a non-trivial combinatorial theorem.     

Technology assessment and technology policy in Europe: New concepts,new goals,new infrastructures

Starting from the observation that the technological potentials are underutilized in economic and in social tems, this article raises the question of what role technology assessment (TA) can play in technology policy to address this problem. The causes of the problem of underutilization are analyzed and discussed in relation to developments in technology policy and TA. Against this background, the actual state of TA in Europe at national and supranational levels is described, gaps and flaws in the European TA Infrastructure (ETAI) are identified, and suggestions for improvement are made. It is concluded that TA can play an important role in increasing the social and economic returns on investments in the development of new technology. Growing interest in, and budgets for, TA at European level — together with the shift from a supply side toward a more demand oriented technology policy — create a favorable environment for this. However, attempts to strengthen TA will only be successful if the TA community recognizes this role and is not satisfied with the marginal position it still has.     

An Italian Perspective on U.S. Federal Credit Reform

The experiences of the U.S. and of Italy in government credit programs are compared by their forms of assistance as well as in budgetary and accounting aspects. Public consensus and political implications in the two countries underly the different paths and foci, offering other perspectives for consideration of the current U.S. federal credit reform efforts.