Policy Change and the Politics of Expertise: Economic Ideas and Immigration Control Reforms in Switzerland

This article analyses the varying influence across time of the “epistemic community“ of free‐market economists on immigration policy making in Switzerland. To this end, a framework for the analysis of the impact of economic expertise is provided, and then used in an historical analysis comparing the 1960s with the 1990s. Whereas this influence can be considered to have been weak in the 1960s, it gained significantly in importance in the 1990s, when a period of economic unrest seriously challenged previous immigration policies. It is argued that economic experts played an important role in framing the reforms undertaken during this latter period, notably by providing a “credible causal story“ about the links between the existing immigration policy and the social problems which arose in the country in the 1990s. As compared to the 1960s, economic expertise in the 1990s enjoyed more credibility, more political support and took full advantage of a more uncertain social and economic context.     

Putting the Special Case in Its Place: Switzerland and Small‐N Comparison in Policy Research

This research note presents a set of strategies to conduct small‐N comparisons in policy research including the Swiss case. Even though every country can be considered “special” to some extent, the Swiss political system is often viewed as a particularly difficult case for comparison because of the impact of its idiosyncratic institutional features (most notably direct democracy). In order to deal with this problem, our note sets out two possible strategies ‐ the use of functional equivalents and of counterfactual reasoning ‐ and explains how to implement them empirically through process tracing and the establishment of causal chains. As an illustration, these strategies are used for a comparison of the process of electricity market liberalisation in Switzerland and Belgium.     

State LST Laws: A Comprehensive Analysis of the Laws Governing Local Sales Taxes

Local sales taxes (LSTs) have received growing attention over the past decade, but a fundamental aspect of LSTs has remained largely unexplored: How do state laws governing LSTs differ from one another? The literature acknowledges that state laws vary widely, but leaves the discussion at that. This research seeks to fill that void by presenting a comprehensive set of state LST laws and creating a resource that will enable researchers to consider these differences in their analyses. State LST laws are framed within the lenses of jurisdictional eligibility and discretionary authority.     

Developing Social Marketing Plan for Health Promotion

This article aims to introduce and explain a guideline to plan and perform health campaigns through social marketing. The model is based on the social marketing principles and its objective is to help professionals develop an action plan setting step-by-step the processes to produce health campaigns to achieve the ultimate goal behavior change. Three levels of action 10 have been set: (i) diagnosing the social problem; (ii) designing the benefits of changing behavior; and (iii) setting the marketing mix. This social marketing plan is an option to introduce customer orientation backed by integrated marketing aimed at generating consumer satisfaction as the key to behavior change in the public health policies.     

Trade liberalisation in Brazil: Creating or exporting jobs?

Using the growth accounting and factor content approaches, this article looks at the impact of trade liberalisation on the structure and level of employment in Brazil over the 1990–97 period. The results support the argument that trade liberalisation in developing countries have a negative short‐term impact on employment — relatively small in Brazil's case ‐ which tends to be outweighed, in the long run, by a more labour‐intensive output mix.     

Public sector efficiency: An international comparison

We compute public sector performance (PSP) and public sector efficiency (PSE) indicators, comprising a composite and seven sub-indicators, for 23 industrialised countries. The first four sub-indicators are “opportunity” indicators that take into account administrative, education and health outcomes and the quality of public infrastructure and that support the rule of law and a level playing-field in a market economy. Three other indicators reflect the standard “Musgravian” tasks for government: allocation, distribution and stabilisation. The input and output efficiency of public sectors across countries is then measured via a non-parametric production frontier technique. The study finds significant differences in PSP and PSE, which suggests a large potential for expenditure savings in many countries.     

A new technology in mtDNA sequencing: Success rates vs time

Study of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) control region is a current practice in forensic genetics. In our service, mtDNA analysis is performed in many evidentiary specimens. Evaluation of this methodology is important to improve quality, increase efficiency and decrease artefacts, in order to reduce costs and time consuming.A case with 12 reference samples (bucal swabs) and 190 telogenic hair specimens extracted with DNA IQ™ System Tissue and Hair Extraction Kit (Promega) is reported. HVS-1 and HVS-2 control regions were sequenced with BigDye^® Terminator v1.1 Kit (Applied Biosystems), using BetterBuffer (Microzone Limited), followed by a simple bead purification method (XTerminator) to remove unincorporated terminators. Application of this procedure had success in 180 hair samples within a very short time comparing to dRhodamine/ethanolic precipitation sequencing strategy and also demonstrated that better results are achieved with clean sequence data closer to the primer.The quality of data produced by the BigDye/BetterBuffer/XTerminator (BDX) procedure has been demonstrated to be very high. Besides that the BDX procedure can significantly reduce overall processing time and cost per reaction. This new methodology has additional advantages like fewer reagent transfers and smaller amounts of DNA.     

Revenue Portfolio and Expenditures: An Examination of the Volatility of Tax Revenue and Expenditure Patterns during the Great Recession

ABSTRACT

Local governments in the United States are diversifying their revenue streams and becoming less reliant on the inelastic revenue from property taxes. This article examines both how this affects local governments’ revenue stability in economic downturns as well as their levels of expenditures in key functions: capital and social services. Using data from North Carolina counties from both before the Great Recession and after, this article examines reliance on local sales taxes and stability of revenue. The findings suggest that dependence on local sales taxes do increase volatility and reduce expenditures on social services, all else being equal.