Policy Today Research Articles

Dynamics of Policymaking: Stepping Back to Leap Forward, Stepping Forward to Keep Back

AbstractWe study dynamic policymaking when today's policy agreement becomes tomorrow's status quo, agents account for the consequences of today's policies for future policy outcomes, and there is uncertainty about who will hold future political power to propose and veto future policy changes. Today's agenda setter holds back from fully exploiting present opportunities to move policy toward her ideal point whenever future proposer and veto players are likely to be alignedeitherin favor of reform or against it. Otherwise, agenda setters advance their short‐run interests. Optimal proposals can vary discontinuously and nonmonotonically with political fundamentals.

Robust portfolio optimization for electricity planning: An application based on the Brazilian electricity mix

One of the major challenges of today's policy makers and industry strategists is to achieve an electricity mix that presents a high level of energy security within a range of affordable costs and environmental constraints. Bearing in mind the planning of a more reliable electricity mix, the main contribution of this paper is to consider parameter uncertainties on the electricity portfolio optimization problem. We assume that the expected and the covariance matrix of the costs for the different energy technologies, such as gas, coal, nuclear, oil, biomass, wind, large and small hydropower, are not exactly known. We consider that these parameters belong to some uncertainty sets (box, ellipsoidal, lower and upper bounds, and convex polytopic). Three problems are analyzed: (i) finding a energy portfolio of minimum worst case volatility with guaranteed fixed maximum expected energy cost; (ii) finding an energy portfolio of minimum worst case expected cost with guaranteed fixed maximum volatility of the energy cost; (iii) finding a combination of the expected and variance of the cost, weighted by a risk aversion parameter. These problems are written as quadratic, second order cone programming (SOCP), and semidefinite programming (SDP), so that robust optimization tools can be applied. These results are illustrated by analyzing the efficient Brazilian electricity energy mix considered in Losekann et al. (2013) assuming possible uncertainties in the vector of expected costs and covariance matrix. The results suggest that the robust approach, being by nature more conservative, can be useful in providing a reasonable electricity energy mix conciliating CO2 emission, risk and costs under uncertainties on the parameters of the model.

Don't Wait: Create Dismissal Policy Today

Don't Wait: Create Dismissal Policy Today

ЕВОЛЮЦІЯ РЕГІОНАЛЬНОЇ ПОЛІТИКИ В ЕВРОПЕЙСЬКОМУ СОЮЗІ

Urgency of the research. The European Community has considerable experience in conducting regional policies, therefore its analyzing is relevant, likewise is the search for possibilities for the implementation of European experience in Ukraine. Target setting. In the EU, regional policies are implemented at four levels. Most interesting appears the analysis of characteristics of its conducting at the supra-national level, since: it is most often implemented in the EU at the regional level directly from the supra-national level; this practice is very common of the new EU Member States. Actual scientific researches and issues analysis. The research on the experience of regional policy in the EU was based on scientific works of: D. Bederak, A. Huseynov, A. Kuznetsov, B. Lavrovskyi, S. Leonov, O. Sidorenko, T. Stroiko, S. Fedoriuk, V. Chuzhykov, E. Sidorova and others. Uninvestigated parts of general matters defining. In the context of the substantial enlargement of the EU framework, further consideration should be aimed at the pro-cessing of the accumulated experiences of implementation of regional policy in the EU, its analyzing and assessing, as well as defining the directions of improving regional policies, in view of the current challenges. The research objective. The purpose of this article is an analysis of evolution of regional policies in the EU, which is being implemented at the supra-national level, together with identification of the possibilities and directions for the implementation of the European experiences in Ukraine. The statement of basic materials. The article studied the types and kinds of regional policies in the EU, considering two major stages in its development, their objectives and priorities, the tools for implementation, the characteristics of conducting, and the financing both by the objectives of the implemented policy and by the EU Member States. The purposes and features of functioning of the EU structural funds have been analyzed. Conclusions. On the basis of the carried out analysis, it is concluded that there has been a significant evolution of regional policy during the period of the EU’s existence. It is proved that the European Union’s regional policy today is increasingly permeated by the ideology of «unification» of its Member States. The successes of the EU policies have been identified, also it has been shown that most of the results achieved are concentrated in the backward regions of the EU. It is specified that the question of leveling the imbalances in the level of economic development of the EU territories remains open, as well as a number of other issues related to migration, unemployment, and ecology.

Comments at the Panel “Responders of First or Last Resort: Central Bank Strategies in an Era of Ultra-Low Interest Rates”

There is an emerging consensus among economists that the trend rate of economic growth in the U.S. is much lower now than in the past. In a lower-trend-growth regime, short-term equilibrium real interest rates are lower, all else being equal. In these circumstances monetary policymakers have less room to cut policy rates before hitting the zero lower bound and relying on unconventional policy tools to provide additional accommodation. Moreover, preserving the Fed’s credibility for providing sufficient accommodation to achieve our symmetric inflation objective and maximum employment remains an important consideration. Therefore, risk-management policies favor skewing policy today to lower the chances of facing more difficult zero-lower-bound outcomes in the future.

The Great Depression in the Eyes of Bulgaria's Inter-War Economists

This paper reconstructs the economic policy debates in Bulgaria during the Great Depression. The goal is twofold. First, it depicts the development of Bulgarian economic thought in the inter-war period and analyzes its intellectual relationships to the evolution of European (especially German-language) political economy. Second, due to significant analogies between the processes during the Great Depression and during the Great Recession, it tentatively derives recommendations from the economists' debates in the 1930s for handling the current crisis and for the post-crisis development of today's Bulgaria. The quantitative economic history of the 1930s is only of secondary interest to the paper: instead, its primary objective is to show in what ways history of economics as a discipline with its focus on past theoretical discourses can be inspiring for conducting economic policy today, so that hindsight on earlier economic thought in the context of its time presents both recommendations and warnings for crisis management today.

Paket Kebijakan Ekonomi untuk Mengerakan UKM di Tingkat Desa

The government has announced tujuanya Economic Policy Package is to facilitate the business sector in obtaining capital loans and expedite matters pembankkan issuance of land certificates. This is the strategy most perfect economic policy today. All policies certainly have weaknesses and strengths of each. The benefits of these regulations can be viewed from two sides, from the government side as regulators and from the community or in this case SMEs. For the government, which has disbursed KUR loan through Community or SMEs provide protection to the wider community through processes that are easy and quick. SMEs should provide social and economic benefits after the receiving credit business loans or called KUR. Once a policy or regulation is not in line with expectations, the policy must be evaluated for their evaluation will be obtained feedback related to policy mismatch with the expected performance results. Thus, the evaluation helps policy makers at the stage of assessment of policies against the policy making process. Evaluation policy does not only produce conclusions about how far the problem has been resolved, but give input on the clarification and critique of the values ​​underlying the policy, assist in the adjustment and re-formulation of the problem.

The Online Transportation Network in Indonesia: A Pendulum between the Sharing Economy and Ex Ante Regulation

The prominent role of innovation in the emerging digital market in Indonesia presents new challenges for current competition law and policy. Traditionally reliant on market definition for the analysis, the present competition law may not yet have sufficiently taken innovation into consideration. In the competition policy area, while innovation has not taken a clear role in tailoring suitable regulations or approaches, markets have attempted to adapt themselves to the new changes in order to meet rising demand. The present state of policy is illustrated by the development oj online transportation networks like those provided by Uber and GrabCar, services similar to those that have been traditionally offered by taxi companies. While regulation asymmetry has been accused of not allowing a level playing field for conventional taxis versus online transportation networks, the concept of the sharing economy seems to address today's policy approach in Indonesia, which favors ex ante regulation on public transportation service provision in the country. This paper examines the applicable regulations in the transportation network industry and discusses how competition policy might cope with this issue and in what cases competition law might deal with innovation brought by online transportation network in the public transportation industry in Indonesia.

Reflecting on the South African Long-Term Mitigation Scenario Process a Decade Later

The 2006–2007 Long Term Mitigation Scenario planning process (LTMS) was a seminal South African climate mitigation policy initiative that continues to underpin the country’s climate mitigation policy today. Whilst acknowledging the LTMS’s significant contributions, the article explores how the particular conceptualization of the policy problem under the LTMS as linear, sectoral, technical and environmental might be contributing to inadequate progress on implementation a decade on. Additional constraining factors are identified as being a lack of attention to policy process after the LTMS, and a lack of engagement with the political economy realities of climate mitigation in South Africa.

Should e-cigarette use be permitted in smoke-free public places? No

While some early examples of smoke-free policy were introduced because of community preferences for clean indoor air and fire safety, smoke-free policy today is predicated on a large body of...

Political economy challenges in nutrition.

BackgroundHistorically, implementing nutrition policy has confronted persistent obstacles, with many of these obstacles arising from political economy sources. While there has been increased global policy attention to improving nutrition in recent years, the difficulty of translating this policy momentum into results remains.DiscussionWe present key political economy themes emanating from the political economy of nutrition literature. Together, these interrelated themes create a complex web of obstacles to moving nutrition policy forward. From these themes, we frame six political economy challenges facing the implementation of nutrition policy today. Building awareness of the broader political and economic issues that shape nutrition actions and adopting a more systematic approach to political economy analysis may help to mitigate these challenges.ConclusionImproving nutrition will require managing the political economy challenges that persist in the nutrition field at global, national and subnational levels. We argue that a “mindshift” is required to build greater awareness of the broader political economy factors shaping the global nutrition landscape; and to embed systematic political economy analysis into the work of stakeholders navigating this field. This mindshift may help to improve the political feasibility of efforts to reform nutrition policy and implementation—and ensure that historical legacies do not continue to shape the future.

Promoting Access through Segregation: The Emergence of the “Prioritized Curriculum” Class

The continuously evolving standards-based reform (SBR) movement is one of the most prominent features of today's educational policy landscape. As SBR has continued to drive educational policy, local schools and districts have adopted many approaches to comply with legal mandates. This article critically examines one particular resultant phenomenon of the SBR movement—the emergence of a new track of self-contained classes called Prioritized Curriculum classes, designed to provide students with disabilities access to standards-based general education curriculum, but in a segregated class. In this article we document the emergence of such courses and critically analyze the rationales and policy loopholes that have led to their creation.

Personal assistance in Sweden – Support and service for persons with certain functional impairments

The political goal and the aim of Swedish disability policy today is to give persons with disabilities the same opportunities as others to participate in society and to live together with others – the principles of normalisation and integration. Two particular acts came into force on the 1st of January 1994, the Act concerning Support and Service for Persons with Certain Functional Impairments (LSS) and the Act concerning Assistance Compensation (LASS). LSS gives persons with severe functional disabilities, either physical or mental, the legal right to 10 different kinds of support and services. One of the most important elements in LSS is the right to personal assistance. The idea of personal assistance is to provide support that is tailor-made to the individual as far as possible and to optimise the person’s influence over how the support is arranged. The aim of this article is to describe and analyse the right personal assistance from an administrative perspective. The focus is on the application and decision process and the development of this support during the years.

Do We Understand What the Public Hears? Stakeholders’ Preferred Communication Choices for Discussing River Issues with the Public

AbstractCommunication between stakeholders and the larger public is an increasingly important issue in today's policy world. This communication often takes the form of policy narratives; however, few studies have empirically examined what type of communication style stakeholders prefer for communication with the public. This study uses a survey of 87 river stakeholders to determine the preferred communication choices of stakeholders. The study finds that 39% of the stakeholders chose a duty‐based narrative, 28% choose a science statement, 23% choose an engaged citizen narrative, and 10% choose a do nothing statement. Some of these preferences were related to issues of trust, other policy preferences, and demographic background. Based on previous research, the findings demonstrate that stakeholders can make decisions about how to communicate with the public that are not necessarily reflective of the own values.

“Better to be a pessimist”: A narrative inquiry into mathematics teachers' experience of the transition to the Common Core

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are a focus of state education policy today influencing curriculum implementation and assessment in public schools. The purpose of this narrative inquiry is to understand how high school mathematics teachers experience the transition period. Based on interviews with mathematics teachers in a high school in the Midwest, we aim at bringing teachers' voices to the forefront. Through teachers' stories, we find that: a) Teachers live in the different zones of enactment; and b) Teachers' ecological view of agency should be used as a link to a transition to the CCSS for creating a genuine dialogue. This article is significant in two ways. First, it informs the administrators and policy makers of how there will be inconsistencies across states, districts, schools and classrooms in the implementation and assessment, and second, it helps to explain the need for new professional development approaches.

Gendering the European Digital Agenda: The Challenge of Gender Mainstreaming Twenty Years after the Beijing World Conference on Women

AbstractThe goals set out in the 1995 Platform for Action of the Beijing World Conference on Women—to achieve gender equality in and through the media—interrogate today's digital policies: To what extent have internationally agreed-upon norms of gender equality and gender mainstreaming been recognized and implemented? To what extent has the knowledge produced by feminist scholarship informed media policy developments? What kind of new knowledge, and analytical frameworks, may contribute to unmask gender-unequal power relations in contemporary media environments? The article addresses these questions with a focus on European discourses and institutional practices for the Digital Agenda.

Gendering the European Digital Agenda: The Challenge of Gender Mainstreaming Twenty Years after the Beijing World Conference on Women

AbstractThe goals set out in the 1995 Platform for Action of the Beijing World Conference on Women—to achieve gender equality in and through the media—interrogate today's digital policies: To what extent have internationally agreed-upon norms of gender equality and gender mainstreaming been recognized and implemented? To what extent has the knowledge produced by feminist scholarship informed media policy developments? What kind of new knowledge, and analytical frameworks, may contribute to unmask gender-unequal power relations in contemporary media environments? The article addresses these questions with a focus on European discourses and institutional practices for the Digital Agenda.

America's founding and the struggle over economic inequality

If, as many allege, attacking the gap between rich and poor is a form of class warfare, then the struggle against income inequality is the longest running war in American history. To defenders of the status quo, who argue that the accumulation of wealth free of government intervention is an essential feature of the American way, this book offers a forceful answer. While many of those who oppose addressing economic inequality through public policy today do so in the name of freedom, Clement Fatovic demonstrates that concerns about freedom informed the Founding Fathers' arguments for public policy that tackled economic disparities. Where contemporary arguments against such government efforts conceptualize freedom in economic terms, however, those supporting public policies conducive to greater economic equality invoked a more participatory, republican, conception of freedom. As many of the Founders understood it, economic independence, which requires a wide if imperfect distribution of property, is a precondition of the political independence they so profoundly valued. Fatovic reveals a deep concern among the Founders--including Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and Noah Webster--about the impact of economic inequality on political freedom. America's Founding and the Struggle over Economic Inequality traces this concern through many important political debates in Congress and the broader polity that shaped the early Republic--debates over tax policies, public works, public welfare, and the debt from the Revolution. We see how Alexander Hamilton, so often characterized as a cold-hearted apologist for plutocrats, actually favored a more progressive system of taxation, along with various policies aimed at easing the economic hardship of specific groups. In Thomas Paine, frequently portrayed as an advocate of laissez-faire government, we find a champion of a comprehensive welfare state that would provide old-age pensions, public housing, and a host of other benefits as a matter of right, not charity. Contrary to the picture drawn by so many of today's pundits and politicians, this book shows us how, for the first American statesmen, preventing or minimizing economic disparities was essential to the preservation of the new nation's freedom and practice of self-government.

Holistic valuation of urban ecosystem services in New York City's Central Park

Central Park is iconic Green Infrastructure that provides myriad ecosystem services to New York City that have significant economic value. We used the market value of Central Park as developable real estate as a proxy measure of the minimum value of the ecosystem services provided by Central Park. We present $500 billion as a reasonable estimate of the market value of Central Park as developable real estate. We assume this $500 billion of natural capital converted to money could earn a 5% annual return ($25 Billion per year). This return is an estimate of the value of annual ecosystem services provided by the 341 ha that constitute Central Park. This is over $70 million per hectare per year which is orders of magnitude higher than the estimated value of ecosystem services provided by the most valuable biomes of previous estimates. The very high value of the ecosystem services provided by Central Park result from an interaction of social, natural, human, and built capital. These interactions are poorly addressed from the dominant economic worldview that governs social and environmental policy today. These findings also suggest that the ‘up vs. out’ questions associated with sustainable urban development do not have simple answers.

Learning by sharing and integration of second-generation: the Italian case

The aim of the paper is to show how - apart from rhetoric about interculturalism and good integration practices - today's second generations in Italy are still facing stereotypes or outright discrimination. Comparison with historical minorities and with internal migration has left little trace in the memory of many Italians of knowledge of, and ability to manage, relations with otherness in the daily practices of many institutions (from schools to social-health services). It is a situation of “suspension of memory” delaying or negatively influencing insertion processes: in other words, the assumption that people learn from history and successfully repeat today policies which have been implemented in the past is contradicted in everyday practice. And second generations are the living proof of this lack of knowledge transfer. The academic, socialisation and identity problems facing the children of immigration today could have been reduced if teachers, educators and social workers had benefitted from experience of the past.