Project USA: American competitiveness and what must be done to restore it

The United States today faces a loss of influence as a world power, a reduction in American independence as a policymaker, and a decline in the standard of living on which Americans have come to depend. History teaches that nations weaker and less productive than the United States can rise to become economic powerhouses and rapidly increase their standards of living. History also teaches that nations failing to recognize their fundamental problems will inevitably decline. American politicians must face what is abundantly clear: the United States is losing ground and must act quickly to reverse its course. This White Paper outlines what must be done. Information about the nation's current status must be analyzed and communicated. Incentives to improve the level of competence in government must be provided and maintained. The emphasis of government policy must be changed to reflect broad economic and technological interests as opposed to special interests. Savings must be encouraged and increased. Infrastructure must be improved Tax laws must be modified to help bring these changes about. Economic and technological issues must be elevated to the importance they require. American thinking must reflect the new realities: that the age of leadership through military power is over, that the requirements for success in the world of the 1990s and beyond require a sound and growing economy that is internationally competitive. The US can accomplish these goals only through foundation-shaking, comprehensive, fundamental changealong the lines we propose herein.This paper is the executive summary (with minor editing modifications) of a white paper that is available from Cornell University's Johnson Graduate School of Management.     

Close But Not Close Enough

The authors comment on an earlier aritice in Society by Eugene Goodheart and offer a novel hypothesis about the origins of religion.

How Voluntary Environmental Programs Reduce Pollution

This article investigates the mechanisms that voluntary environmental program (VEP) participants adopt to reduce pollution. The focus of this article is the 33/50 program, a VEP introduced by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 1991 and discontinued in 1995. The program called for emissions reductions for 17 chemicals reported to the Toxics Release Inventory. Using a sample of approximately 12,000 plants, the relationship between 33/50 program participation and adoption of pollution reduction practices is studied for three time periods, 1991–1995 (program life), 1996–2004, and 2005–2013. These practices include source reduction activities (SRAs) and recycling, recovery, and treatment (RRTs). The major findings are that during the program's life, 33/50 participants showed increased adoption of SRAs and RRTs for both targeted and nontargeted chemicals. However, once the program ended, higher adoption rates persisted for RRTs only, with a shift in emphasis toward treatment over recycling and recovery.     

The determinants of the choice between public and private production of a publicly funded service

The public choice literature contains little formal analysis of the bureaucratic choice of production modes — public or private — of publicly funded services. An important question to be addressed is why some governmental bodies choose to provide a publicly funded service with publicly owned and operated production units whereas other governmental bodies contract with private firms to provide the same publicly funded service. This paper is the first formal attempt to remedy this gap in the literature. We develop a theoretical explanation of the government decision maker's choice between public and private production modes based on utility maximizing behavior. We then examine empirically this choice employing logit analysis. The empirical results, which include several tests for robustness, confirm our theoretical explanation. The results are significant and suggest that non-monetary constraints are an important factor affecting this choice of production modes and that monetary constraints are less influential.     

The Institutionalization of the U.S. Supreme Court

In pursuing their goals, members of the U.S. Supreme Court areaffected by their institutional setting. How has that institutionalenvironment changed over time and what have been the politicalconsequences of those changes? Despite considerable analysisof the institutional dynamics of legislatures and executives,political scientists have been slow to bring time series techniquesto the study of the Supreme Court, and as a result much lessis known about its evolutionary path. Measuring a variety oforganizational characteristics, I construct an index of theinstitutionalization of the Supreme Court from 1790 to 1996.This indicator suggests that the integration of the Court intothe system of federal policy making has better enabled the justicesto satisfy their objectives. To demonstrate this empirically,I test a series of error correction models of judicial influence,each of which confirms that the nature of the Supreme Court'scharacter has had considerable implications for the scope ofthe justices' legal and political impact. These results underscorethe need for judicial scholars to examine the Court's policymaking in longitudinal perspective.     

MANAGING IN NETWORK SETTINGS

The focus of this article is on managing networks. A network knowledge base is developed from the authors' studies of city government involvement in economic development, management within rural enterprises and the evaluation of a rural strategic planning project. Other public management network analyses are also incorporated. Management in network settings is not based on central authority and cannot be guided by a single organizational goal as is the case in the classical management approach. Management involves managing flexible structures toward collective efficiency. The ability to manage is related to the internal condition of the manager's primary organization. It involves technical, legal, political and cost dimensions. It requires different capacities, skills and knowledge from that of single organization management. The next steps in the research would include the development of the skills needed, an analysis of the role of organizational power and the operational variables of networks, the issue of network cohesion, and the question of loss of control or difficulty in assessing network accountability.