Retiring in debt? An update on the 2007 near-retiree cohort

This research note uses 2007 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) data to update the authors' work reported in a prior article, which used earlier data to assess debt levels among households approaching retirement in 1995 and 2004. The authors assess whether there have been changes in the debt holdings of near-retirees in 2007, a point in time reflecting the start of the recent financial and economic crisis. Results show that debt levels of near-retirees were modestly higher in 2007 than in 2004, overall and across several subgroups. The results reinforce a general finding of the original article that current near-retirees, primarily baby boomers, are approaching retirement with more debt compared with their counterparts in the mid-1990s. Because the 2007 SCF data captures only the beginning of the current recession, the authors expect future trends to differ from the results presented here.     

A replication of “Contracting out: For What? With Whom?”

In the 1980s, governments around the world adopted New Public Management ideas about inserting competition into government as a way to improve the performance of public organizations. In many nations, contracting out was one method of making governments more businesslike. Yet, there have been few studies of how government contracting behaviors have changed since the early 1980s. We replicate Ferris and Graddy's classic 1986 study of local government production and sector choice to assess how public procurement has changed over the past 35 years. Our findings show that today, contracting out is more commonly used across 25 local government service areas. In contrast to the original study, much of the growth has been in government-to-government contracts. For profit firms are also winning more contracts for high transaction cost work, while nonprofits are receiving fewer government contracts in nearly every service area. Our analysis suggests that contracting out remains of the highest importance in 21st-century governance and that additional research is needed on how to manage contracts to achieve the best value.     

Renewable Portfolio Standards and Policy Stringency: An Assessment of Implementation and Outcomes

This research examines the impact of increasing the stringency of renewable portfolio standards (RPS) on the consumption of energy produced from renewable sources. Putting prior findings in the context of policy learning, first we focus on technological innovation, factor endowments, and economic energy dependence of American states to track how RPS have proliferated and strengthened. Next, we look at the net effect of this RPS evolution on state fossil fuel energy divestment. To evaluate the interplay between: a) the political desire to lower fossil fuel use, b) technological feasibility to do so, and c) the economic trade‐offs and risks, we focus on the industrial sector dependence on energy security and affordability. Our results indicate that energy security is a priority and even in light of increasing RPS stringency, states with relatively weak but mandatory RPS are leaders in aggregate renewable energy consumption. This fact is due to favoring biofuel and hydro generation rather than solar and wind because of lower deployment costs.