Universities and State Policy Formation: Rationalizing a Nanotechnology Strategy in Pennsylvania

Technology‐based economic development programs have become a salient feature of the state policy landscape since the 1980s. While much research exists on the topic, little attention has been given to the processes of policy formation. State programs have moved towards high technology areas emphasized at the federal level over the past decades, and nanotechnology became one of the latest targets. This paper examines the eight‐year process through which Pennsylvania adopted a “state‐wide strategy,” culminating in the Pennsylvania Initiative for Nanotechnology. In this process, programs that responded to the interests of multiple agents came first, and a state policy was formulated after the fact. This pattern of “rationalized policy formation,” as opposed to rational policy formation, may be more common than suspected. Its strengths and weaknesses in this Pennsylvania case are discussed.     

Battling for the regions: Local government policy networks and the reform of the european structural funds

The recent reform of the European Structural Funds led to a wide‐ranging set of lobbying activities on the part of UK regions which felt their previous allocations were likely to be threatened. Much of this activity took place through existing networks or alliances of networks at a national and transnational level. This paper examines the issues at stake in the reforms, the attitudes of the networks to those issues and the need for networks to have a common focus, adequate resources and effective internal communication structures to be effective.     

The fragile politics of addiction

Suppose the optimizing consumer only has local information, then what? Obviously, there will be a random element of consumption. The link between the frequency distribution of consumption by person and preference surface is worked out. Under convex preferences there will be a unimodal distribution and conversely. A local optimizing theory of addictive behavior is developed from nonconvex preferences. The resulting bimodal distribution of consumption implies a nonrobust outcome for median voter politics. Such a local optimizing model of addiction is compared with globally optimizing models of addiction.     

Risk compensation and the effectiveness of safety belt use laws: a case study of New Jersey

This paper investigates the effectiveness of New Jersey's mandatory belt use law (MUL) by testing specifically for: (1) a safety effect, and (2) a risk-compensation effect that could offset (in part) any safety impact. The main findings are that injury severity declined significantly in the 22 months following implementation of the MUL; but that accident frequency increased significantly. The increase in accidents may be explained only partially by increased driving mileage. These findings suggest that the real safety effect of the law may have been diluted by risk-compensating behavior.This paper is based on a study conducted for the New Jersey Office of Highway Traffic Safety by the Rutgers University Bureau of Economic Research. We are grateful to William Ascher and two referees for useful comments.     

Re-slicing the Big Apple: New Immigrants and African-Americans in the New York Economy

The continuing convergence of immigrants on New York City is a puzzle. On the one hand, the decline of the city's manufacturing sector and the growth of advanced services appear to provide little demand for immigrant labor; on the other hand, the deep penetration of immigrants into the city's economy has been paralleled by a deteriorating employment situation among native blacks. This article, seeks to unravel this puzzk in the light of two conflicting perspectives, the restructuring and the replacement labor hypotheses. The paper assesses each perspective using data from the 1970 and 1980 Censuses of Population and merged sampks of the June 1986 and 1988 Current Population Surveys.