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  Privatizing Railroad Retirement

  Steven A. Sass
  2014

  Sass discusses the evolution of the U.S. Railroad Retirement System and whether its ability to invest its assets in private equities offers any lessons for Social Security.

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  Social Security and Pension Reform: International Perspectives

  Marek Szczepański and John A. Turner
  2014

  Countries around the world are reforming their social security and pension systems. International studies often focus on social security reforms in Europe and North America, and may include Latin America. Reforms, however, are also occurring in Asia and Africa, and include reforms of voluntary and employer-provided pensions as well as social security programs. This book discusses both social security and employer-provided pension reforms, as well as reforms in most regions of the world.

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  The New Scarlet Letter? Negotiating the U.S. Labor Market with a Criminal Record

  Steven Raphael
  2014

  This book explores the difficulties facing ex-offenders as they try to enter and remain in the U.S. labor market.

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  The Road through the Rust Belt: From Preeminence to Decline to Prosperity

  William M. Bowen
  2014

  The chapters in this book explore reasons for the decline of "Rust Belt" cities and the often innovative responses of local leaders and entrepreneurs that are helping to revive these areas.

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  What Does the Minimum Wage Do?

  Dale Belman and Paul J. Wolfson
  2014

  This book attempts to make sense of the research on the minimum wage that began in the early 1990s. The authors look at who is affected by the minimum wage, both directly and indirectly; which observable, measurable variables (e.g., wages, employment, school enrollment) the minimum wage influences; how long it takes for the variables to respond to the minimum wage and the size and desirability of the effect; why the minimum wage has the results it does (and not others); and the workers most likely to be affected by changes to the minimum wage.

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  Occupational Labor Shortages : Concepts, Causes, Consequences, and Cures

  Burt S. Barnow, John Trutko, and Jaclyn Schede Piatak
  2013

  There has long been concern that shortages sometimes develop and persist in specific occupations, leading to inefficiencies in the U.S. economy. This book will help readers understand why occupational shortages arise, how to know a shortage when it is present, and to assess strategies to alleviate the shortage. As the authors show, many economists, including several U.S. Nobel Prize winners, have studied occupational shortages, and this volume builds on their work.

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  Stages of Occupational Regulation: Analysis of Case Studies

  Morris M. Kleiner
  2013

  Kleiner examines occupations that are at various stages of regulation to determine to what extent regulation has influenced the individuals in the occupations, consumers, and related occupational practitioners.

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  Tackling Unemployment: The Legislative Dynamics of the Employment Act of 1946

  Ruth Ellen Wasem
  2013

  Wasem examines the impacts and implications of the Employment Act of 1946 and discusses how provisions of the Act might be useful for today's policymakers.

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  The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act: The Role of Workforce Programs

  Burt S. Barnow and Richard A. Hobbie
  2013

  This book examines the nature of the workforce development and UI policy decisions made nationwide in response to the recession, state and local administrators’ perspectives on the policy developments and economic challenges, and implementation of key Recovery Act provisions, with a particular focus on workforce development initiatives in the Recovery Act.

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  Dragon versus Eagle: The Chinese Economy and U.S.-China Relations

  Wei-Chiao Huang and Huizhong Zhou
  2012

  This book contains a group of papers that examine the complex and evolving economic relationship between China and the United States.

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  Education Reform and the Limits of Policy: Lessons from Michigan

  Michael F. Addonizio and C. Philip Kearney
  2012

  By examining a major set of education policy reforms undertaken in Michigan and across the country over the past 20-plus years, Addonizio and Kearney are able to reveal the varying success of innovations such as finance reform, state assessment of student performance, school accountability measures, charter schools, and schools of choice.

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  Employment Growth from Public Support of Innovation in Small Firms

  Albert N. Link and John T. Scott
  2012

  Link and Scott provide a statistical assessment of the employment growth associated with public support of R&D in small, entrepreneurial firms through the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program.

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  Reconnecting to Work: Policies to Mitigate Long-Term Unemployment and Its Consequences

  Lauren D. Appelbaum
  2012

  The goal of this book is to enable a better understanding of the consequences of long-term unemployment and the policies that are needed to address it. The contributors present research that examines the psychological as well as economic consequences of experiencing a prolonged spell of joblessness. Included are discussions of policies to increase job creation and to get the long-term unemployed back into jobs.

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  The Health and Wealth of a Nation: Employer-Based Health Insurance and the Affordable Care Act

  Nan L. Maxwell
  2012

  This research examines the behaviors of firms with respect to their provision of health care prior to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) deliberations and uses those behaviors to assess changes in employer-sponsored health insurance that might occur once the ACA is fully implemented.

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  Advances in Economic Forecasting

  Matthew L. Higgins
  2011

  This book's contributors assess the performance of economic forecasting methods, argue that data can be better exploited through model and forecast combination, and advocate for models that are adaptive and perform well in the presence of nonlinearity and structural change. The contributors are: Michael D. Bradley, Dean Croshure, Dennis W. Jansen, Kajal Lahiri, Tae-Hwy Lee, David E. Rapach, and H.O. Stekler

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  Imagining the Ideal Pension System: International Perspectives

  Dana M. Muir and John A. Turner
  2011

  Muir and Turner gather an international roster of pension experts who present what they think would be the ideal pension systems for their countries and why. Those countries include the United States, the UK, Ireland, Denmark, Germany, Belgium, France, Switzerland, Poland, and Japan.

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  Investing in Kids: Early Childhood Programs and Local Economic Development

  Timothy J. Bartik
  2011

  Early childhood programs, if designed correctly, pay big economic dividends down the road because they increase the skills of their participants. And since many of those participants will remain in the same state or local area as adults, the local economy benefits: more persons with better skills attract business, which provides more and better jobs for the local economy. Bartik measures ratios of local economic development benefits to costs for both early childhood education and business incentives. He shows that early childhood programs and the best-designed business incentives can provide local benefits that significantly exceed costs. Given this, states and municipalities would do well to adopt economic development strategies that balance high-quality business incentives with early childhood programs.

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  Longevity Policy: Facing Up to Longevity Issues Affecting Social Security, Pensions, and Older Workers

  John A. Turner
  2011

  Turner argues that public policy should recognize longevity policy as a distinct policy area. Rather than separately treating issues raised by life expectancy (e.g., Social Security, pensions, older workers), a unified approach should be developed that recognizes their interrelationship.

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  The Performance of Performance Standards

  James J. Heckman, Carolyn J. Heinrich, Pascal Courty, Gerald Marschke, and Jeffrey Smith
  2011

  Using a variety of data sources, the contributors explore how performance standards and incentives affect the behavior of public managers and agency employees, their approaches to service delivery, and ultimately, the outcomes for participants.

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  The Transformation of the American Pension System: Was it Beneficial for Workers?

  Edward N. Wolff
  2011

  The share of Americans with defined contribution pension plans now exceeds the share of those with defined benefit plans. Wolff refers to this as the "great transformation" and it leads him to examine recent evidence to see whether there are winners and losers resulting from this switch away from traditional pension plans.

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  The Workforce Investment Act: Implementation Experiences and Evaluation Findings

  Douglas J. Besharov and Phoebe H. Cottingham
  2011

  This volume examines WIA’s objectives and the evidence on program performance and impact. The chapters are organized into five general areas: 1) understanding WIA, 2) program implementation, 3) performance management, 4) impact evaluations, and 5) future evaluation choices.

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  What Works in Work-First Welfare: Designing and Managing Employment Programs in New York City

  Andrew R. Feldman
  2011

  This book is a case study of how New York City's welfare-to-work programs were managed and implemented in the mid 2000s. Feldman also analyzes the unique characteristics that differentiate it from other programs in place across the country.

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  Globalization and International Development: Critical Issues of the 21st Century

  Sisay Asefa
  2010

  These papers address globalization issues with a special emphasis on its impact on poverty. Advances in transportation and telecommunications with instantaneous information and communication flows requires new approaches given the wide differences in cultures, political systems, languages, and ethnicities. Extreme variation in the international distributions of wealth, income, and poverty remain as enormous social problems to be addressed. In general, the contributors recommend expanding the flows between countries to accelerate growth and reduce inequalities. These flows include international trade and capital, migration, remittances, and foreign aid. But in addition to these hard commodities and dollars, there are flows of ideas, knowledge, and technical assistance which require enforcement of appropriate intellectual property rights.

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  Human Resource Economics and Public Policy: Essays in Honor of Vernon M. Briggs Jr.

  Charles J. Whalen
  2010

  This book pays tribute to Vernon Briggs and his enduring mark on the study of human resources. The chapters, by his students and colleagues, explore and extend Briggs’s work on employment, education and training, immigration, and local labor markets. His unwavering emphasis on institutional reality, public policy, and economic dynamics animates the entire collection.

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  Mothers' Work and Children's Lives: Low-Income Families after Welfare Reform

  Rucker C. Johnson, Ariel Kalil, and Rachel E. Dunifon
  2010

  This book examines the effects of work requirements imposed by welfare reform on low-income women and their families. The authors pay particular attention to the nature of work—whether it is stable or unstable, the number of hours worked in a week and the regularity and flexibility of work schedules. They also show how these factors make it more difficult for low-income women to balance their work and family requirements.