Reinvention and retrenchment: Lessons from the application of the New Zealand model to Alberta,Canada

Is New Zealand a model for “reinventing” government and cutting spending? The government of Alberta, Canada, consciously replicated significant elements of the New Zealand model to attain fiscal balance and public sector reorganization, including the core element of restructuring institutions to change individual behavior. Despite broad similarities in policy content and outcome, differences in the specific content of policy and the politics of policy implementation led to differences in the sustainability of reform and the location of budget cuts. Alberta's Progressive Conservative party emphasized expenditure cuts where both the New Zealand Labour and National parties emphasized government reorganization and the introduction of market mechanisms. Contrasting these efforts to balance budgets and reinvent government suggests that there is considerable variation in the “model,” and that left governments in general are probably more likely to pursue and succeed at the reinvention of government, while stinting fiscal balance. Right governments, on the other hand, are more likely to achieve short-run fiscal balance at the expense of successful reinvention. In turn this suggests that while the partisan orientation of the reforming party matters, neither has an ideal policy mix for long-term fiscal stability. Alternation of governments may provide the best policy mix.     

A 21st Century Developmentally Appropriate Juvenile Probation Approach

Principles of adolescent development have accelerated positive changes to the juvenile justice system. These changes have been most pronounced in reducing reliance on incarceration and in approaches to sentencing of youth tried as adults. While juvenile probation has made some developmentally friendly adjustments, it remains an area that is fertile for reform. Many of the principles and goals in this paper have been endorsed by the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ), which “supports and is committed to juvenile probation systems that conform to the latest knowledge of adolescent development and adolescent brain science,” and which “recommends that courts cease imposing ‘conditions of probation’ and instead support probation departments’ developing, with families and youth, individualized case plans that set expectations and goals.” 1 NCJFCJ's July, 2017 resolution in support of developmentally appropriate juvenile probation services built on earlier NCJFCJ policies. From the time NCJFCJ adopted Juvenile Delinquency Guidelines in 2005, those policies have grown increasingly robust. 2     

Star Struck in Beijing

正It was in Beijing that I was bitten by the acting bug,with my serious,intellectual look inviting offers to play researchers,scientists and even a doctor in a commercial for a weight loss product.I love acting gigs because they are a wonderful opportunity to engage in creative projects,practice one’s Chinese and make new friends.My most recent gig involved playing a     

Doing Only One Thing

正Call me a calligraphy and Chinese painting junkie.While other women spend their money on designer clothes and shoes,I spend mine on a painting with avantgarde plum blossoms,a faux Qi Baishi or a misty Yel ow Mountain scene in autumn.So,naturally,when a Chinese calligraphy master invited me to his studio,I was excited.What a treat!My limited exposure to calligraphy up to that point consisted of strolling through the National Art Museum     

New York city and subsidized housing: Impacts and lessons of the city's $5 billion capital budget housing plan

Abstract

New York City has devoted far more resources to the development and rehabilitation of affordable housing than any other U.S. city, investing more than $4 billion from 1986 to 1997. This article surveys the impact, status, and implications of New York's housing programs. It looks at correlations between publicly funded housing starts and changes in the housing stock, welfare rolls, and crime and at the economic impact of the city's housing investments within low‐income neighborhoods.

New York's housing programs have transformed neighborhoods, replacing large swaths of abandoned shells and vacant land with new housing and preserving thousands of buildings at risk of abandonment. While these housing investments correlate most strongly with reductions in vacant units and vacant lots, they also show significant correlations with reductions in welfare rolls and violent crime, but uneven economic impacts as well. New York's housing programs are important nationally less for the specifics of particular programs than for the institutional collaborations on which they are founded.     

Revitalizing inner‐city neighborhoods: New York city's Ten‐Year Plan

Abstract

This article examines the impact of New York City's Ten‐Year Plan on the sale prices of homes in surrounding neighborhoods. Beginning in the mid‐1980s, New York City invested $5.1 billion in constructing or rehabilitating over 180,000 units of housing in many of the city's most distressed neighborhoods. One of the main purposes was to spur neighborhood revitalization.

In this article, we describe the origins of the Ten‐Year Plan, as well as the various programs the city used to implement it, and estimate whether housing built or rehabilitated under the Ten‐Year Plan affected the prices of nearby homes. The prices of homes within 500 feet of Ten‐Year Plan units rose relative to those located beyond 500 feet, but still within the same census tract. These findings are consistent with the proposition that well‐planned project‐based housing programs can generate positive spillover effects and contribute to efforts to revitalize inner‐city neighborhoods.     

Second‐hand machinery in development,or how to recognize a bargain

In the literature on economic development and planning, much is made of the problem of ‘choice of technique'—choosing either capital or labour intensive techniques. In this paper the focus is on another aspect of this problem—the choice among capital inputs, the selection of new or second‐hand equipment. As much of the investment in the less developed countries depends on imported machinery, the problem becomes that of making the most efficient use of foreign exchange. The question is relevant as a number of developing countries have imposed prohibitions on the importation of used machinery.

First we examine the theoretical implications of the availability of both new and used machines for the production possibilities and the effects of various trade policies on the selection of production technique. Integrating this question of new versus used machines with investment criteria, we then examine situations in which used machinery might be preferable to new.     

Terrorism: An Identity Theory Perspective

The present article outlines the role of personal, social, and cultural identity in religiously and ethnically motivated terrorism. It is proposed that terrorism represents the confluence of a cultural identity strongly based in collectivism and in fundamentalist adherence to religious or cultural principles, a social identity based in sharp contrasts between one's own group and groups perceived as threats, and a foreclosed and authoritarian sense of personal identity or, less often, a diffused and aimless personal identity. Examples from religious-extremist and ethnic conflicts in which terrorism has been employed are used to illustrate the tenets advanced here. Recommendations for addressing and preventing the threat of terrorism are discussed.     

A control group study of incubators’ impact to promote firm survival

It is widely unclear as to whether start-up firms supported by publicly-initiated incubator initiatives have higher survival rates than comparable start-up firms that have not received support by such initiatives. This paper contributes to the underlying discussion by performing a large-scale matched-pairs analysis of the long-term survival of 371 incubator firms (after their graduation) from five German incubators and a control group of 371 comparable non-incubated firms. The analysis covers a 10-year time span. To account for the problem of selection bias, a non-parametric matching approach is applied to identify an appropriate control group. For neither of the five incubator locations, we find statistically significant higher survival probabilities for firms located in incubators compared to firms located outside those incubator organizations. For three incubator locations the analysis reveals statistically significant lower chances of survival for those start-ups receiving support by an incubator. The empirical results, therefore, raise some doubts regarding the impacts of incubation on long-term firm survival.