Obama Era Research Articles

Shareholder Activism in the Obama Era

The financial crisis of 2008 and the ascendancy of the Democratic Party in Washington have created an environment in which proponents of expanded shareholder corporate governance rights are making considerable progress. Even before the crisis hit, of course, there had been a number of efforts to extend the shareholder franchise, principally so as to empower institutional investors. The crisis, however, has given them new momentum. The logic behind the shareholder empowerment project is that institutional investors will behave quite differently than dispersed individual investors. Because they own large blocks, and have an incentive to develop specialized expertise in making and monitoring investments, institutional investors could play a far more active role in corporate governance than dispersed individual investors traditionally have done. Institutional investors holding large blocks thus have more power to hold management accountable for actions that do not promote shareholder welfare. Their greater access to firm information, coupled with their concentrated voting power, might enable them to more actively monitor the firm’s performance and to make changes in the board’s composition when performance lagged. In fact, however, institutional investor activism is rare and limited primarily to union and state or local public employee pensions. As a result, institutional investor activism has not - and cannot - prove a panacea for the pathologies of corporate governance. Activist investors pursue agendas not shared by and often in conflict with those of passive investors. Activism by investors undermines the role of the board of directors as a central decision-making body, thereby making corporate governance less effective. Finally, relying on activist institutional investors will not solve the principal-agent problem inherent in corporate governance but rather will merely shift the locus of that problem.

Reclaiming Our Freedom to Teach: Education Reform in the Obama Era

High school teacher Megan Behrent reflects on the impact of Obama's election on the students in her high school classroom. Obliged to temper her students' joyful exuberance on the morning of November 5, 2008, Behrent found that the election fervor highlighted for her the ways that schooling under NCLB has constrained both educators and students, taking away teachers' freedom to teach and students' freedom to learn. In this essay, she examines the many ways in which the high-stakes testing industry punishes public school students and teachers, continually disenfranchising those who struggle to learn without adequate resources. While Obama's election may bring hope to learners of all ages, Behrent advises skepticism toward the changes education secretary Arne Duncan might bring, and she calls on teachers, families, and unions to collaborate in demanding the freedom to nurture true learning.

Equity and Empathy: Toward Racial and Educational Achievement in the Obama Era

Reflecting on the 2008 election, Prudence Carter challenges the popular notion that President Obama's victory is symbolic of a postracial society in the United States. Citing statistics about the opportunity gap that still exists in our nation's schools—as well as the recent Supreme Court cases that served to halt racial desegregation—Carter argues that we must continue to push for truly integrated schools, where black and Latino students are provided with the resources, high standards, and care to meet their full potential. Although she sees President Obama's victory as a symbol of national potential, Carter calls on all of us to work toward ending the "empathy gap"that exists both in and out of our nation's schools.

The Latino strategic vote in the Obama era: Tough choices ahead

The Latino strategic vote in the Obama era: Tough choices ahead

Profiles in Change: Regional Economic Policy Thus Far in the Obama Era

This paper is the Fellows Address from the 2009 SRSA conference. This address discusses and evaluates regional economic policy in the Obama Era.

Behavioral Dimensions of Tax Reform

These are powerpoint slides from a presentation at a joint UCLA-Tax Policy Center Conference on Tax Policy in the Obama Era. The basic insight is that it will be difficult to raise significant revenue through the current tax system. Behavioral perspectives suggest that a series of small (or large) cuts, aiming towards a flattened rate structure - as we have seen in the Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush Administrations - are likely to be extremely popular. Undoing them with tax increases will be disproportionately psychically hard. Given that President Obama faces the perceived need for short term stimulus, likely meaning more small tax cuts, meeting his ultimate goals of reducing deficits and restoring more progression to the tax system will be difficult, if not impossible. Ultimately, the insights of behavioral economics may be most important in reconsidering the institutional mechanisms that produce tax and spending policy.

Introduction Not Just Change, but Justice: Taking On Policy in the Obama Era

Introduction Not Just Change, but Justice: Taking On Policy in the Obama Era

It’s about Change…Regenerative Medicine in the Obama Era

During his campaign, US President-elect Obama pledged to use an executive order to overturn federal-funding limits on research into human embryos that are created during fertility treatments imposed by President Bush. Robert Klein, Chairman of the Governing Board of California's stem cell funding agency, Governor Jim Doyle, and Bernard Siegel, Executive Director of the Genetics Policy Institute, discuss the implications of the new administration for regenerative medicine research in the USA.

AMBIGUITY AND AMBIVALENCE IN THE VOTING BOOTH AND BEYOND

AbstractThe issue of race has followed Barack Obama since he emerged on the national political scene, continuing unabated throughout his successful 2008 presidential campaign. Although the issue of race is not always explicitly acknowledged or discussed by Obama himself, the implications of his successful candidacy for U.S. politics and the ways people in the United States think about race more generally have been of great interest to media pundits, social scientists, and laypersons alike. Race has been considered a substantial barrier to the electoral success of previous non-White political candidates; therefore Obama's success requires reconsideration of how race can be expected to influence political outcomes in the future. In addition, his biracial identity also raises questions about how his role as a prominent cultural figure will affect existing racial categories in the United States. A review of social psychological evidence highlights the importance of understanding the ambivalence that characterizes contemporary racial attitudes, as well as the ways in which definitions of race and racial categories may be changing, in order to understand the impact that Obama could have on the future of racial politics. We conclude that Obama's victory represents a large step in the direction of increasingly positive racial attitudes and more sophisticated public conceptualizations of race, but steady progress in the coming years is not guaranteed. We consider some of the opportunities and obstacles that may affect the trajectory of future gains in the struggle for racial equality in the Obama era.

The Health Reform Moment: Peril and Possibility in the Obama Era

The Journal of Alternative and Complementary MedicineVol. 15, No. 1 EDITORIALFree AccessThe Health Reform Moment: Peril and Possibility in the Obama EraDaniel RedwoodDaniel RedwoodSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:27 Jan 2009https://doi.org/10.1089/acm.2009.0012AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsPermissionsDownload CitationsTrack CitationsAdd to favorites Back To Publication ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmail FiguresReferencesRelatedDetailsCited byHealth Reform, Prevention and Health Promotion: Milestone Moment on a Long Journey18 May 2010 | The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, Vol. 16, No. 5Increasing Therapeutic Gain and Controlling Radiation-Induced Injuries with Asian Botanicals and Acupuncture18 December 2009The Ongoing Debate: Do Acupuncture Points Have Lower Skin Resistance Than Nonacupuncture Sites?22 October 2009 | The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, Vol. 15, No. 10A Public Health Immunization Resource Web Site for Chiropractors: Discussion of Current Issues and Future Challenges for Evidence-Based Initiatives for the Chiropractic ProfessionJournal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics, Vol. 32, No. 6U.S. Health Care: Perils and Potentials18 May 2009 | The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, Vol. 15, No. 5 Volume 15Issue 1Jan 2009 Information© 2009 Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.To cite this article:Daniel Redwood.The Health Reform Moment: Peril and Possibility in the Obama Era.The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine.Jan 2009.1-3.http://doi.org/10.1089/acm.2009.0012Published in Volume: 15 Issue 1: January 27, 2009Online Ahead of Print:January 18, 2009PDF download

Forestry in the Obama Era

Forestry in the Obama Era

US health policy in the Obama era

US health policy in the Obama era

Unequal democracy: the political economy of the new gilded age

The first edition of Unequal Democracy was an instant classic, shattering illusions about American democracy and spurring scholarly and popular interest in the political causes and consequences of escalating economic inequality. This revised and expanded edition includes two new chapters on the political economy of the Obama era. One presents the Great Recession as a “stress test” of the American political system by analyzing the 2008 election and the impact of Barack Obama’s “New New Deal” on the economic fortunes of the rich, middle class, and poor. The other assesses the politics of inequality in the wake of the Occupy Wall Street movement, the 2012 election, and the partisan gridlock of Obama’s second term. Larry Bartels offers a sobering account of the barriers to change posed by partisan ideologies and the political power of the wealthy. He also provides new analyses of tax policy, partisan differences in economic performance, the struggle to raise the minimum wage, and inequalities in congressional representation. President Obama identified inequality as “the defining challenge of our time.” Unequal Democracy is the definitive account of how and why our political system has failed to rise to that challenge. Now more than ever, this is a book every American needs to read.