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When Is Transition Over?

Annette N. Brown
1999

The transition process in which a country moves from a planned economy to a market economy offers a unique opportunity for economists and policymakers to observe and understand the effects of major institutional, legal, and political changes on economic systems. But one feature of the process that has not been considered until now is when is the process over? When has a transition progressed far enough to ensure that a market system will survive and mature? Are there institutional, economic, and political standards that countries reach that measure the level of transition attained or, indeed, show that they have completed transition?
Growth in Disability Benefits: Explanations and Policy Implications

Kalman Rupp and David C. Stapleton
1998

This collection of original papers reveals why caseloads of the nation's two largest income entitlement programs for disability - Social Security Disability Income (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) - have soared.
Industrial Incentives: Competition Among American States and Cities

Peter S. Fisher and Alan H. Peters
1998

This book is the first significant attempt to quantify the development efforts made by state and local governments. The authors' extensive research focuses on tax and incentive policies across the 24 most industrialized states in the United States and a sample of 112 cities from within those states.
Pensions and Productivity

Stuart Dorsey, Christopher Mark. Cornwell, and David A. Macpherson
1998

Employers typically view their investment in pension plans as a means of providing retirement income for their workers. Economists, on the other hand, view pension programs as a way to increase workplace productivity. Dorsey, Cornwell and Macpherson explore the theoretical and empirical basis for this perspective and, in the process, offer a complete and up-to-date discussion on the productivity theory of pensions.
The Economics of the Great Depression

Mark Wheeler
1998

This book contributes to our understanding of the Great Depression's immediate and long-term impacts on the American economy. Editor Mark Wheeler has gathered six scholars from a range of subdisciplines within economics who, together, offer a diverse look at the Depression's effects on the nation's GDP, workers and labor markets, and monetary policy.
Topics in Unemployment Insurance Financing

Wayne Vroman
1998

Vroman warns that states are more at risk for insolvency in the late 1990s than they were in 1990 and that a repetition of widespread and large-scale borrowing of the past is a distinct possibility. He bases this statement on an empirical study that examines historical levels of states' UI trust fund balances between recessions, and the specific methods used to finance trust fund blanaces. These methods include traditional means of financing, tax-base indexing, state reserve funds, and "flexible" financing such as solvency taxes and legislative response mechanisms. In addition, he addresses the tradeoffs of financing UI debt by either borrowing from the U.S. Treasury or state bond issues.
Lessons for Welfare Reform: An Analysis of the AFDC Caseload and Past Welfare-to-Work Programs

David M. O'Neill and June O'Neill
1997

The authors have compiled and analyzed data that identifies historical trends in the AFDC caseload, the personal characteristics of recipients, and broad patterns of welfare participation. They also offer an evaluative survey on the effectiveness of past education, training and workfare programs in reducing the AFDC caseload.
On-the-Job Training

John M. Barron, Mark C. Berger, and Dan A. Black
1997

Firms in the U.S. invest billions of dollars annually in workforce training. Growing evidence of the effects of this training on worker productivity, wages, hiring and turnover has led researchers to gradually incorporate the role of training into their analyses. Barron, Berger and Black advance this line of research by offering new evidence on the amount of training provided to workers during the first three months on the job, and the characteristics of those workers who received that training.
Teacher Pay and Teacher Quality

Dale Ballou and Michael John Podgursky
1997

Ballou and Podgursky offer solid economic analysis on issues surrounding the debate over whether increasing salaries for teachers leads to a more qualified teaching workforce. The authors find little evidence to support the link between increased salaries and teacher quality, then address two questions: (1) What went wrong? and (2) Which reforms are likely to meet with increased success?
Unemployment Insurance in the United States: Analysis of Policy Issues

Christopher J. O'Leary and Stephen A. Wandner
1997

This book presents 15 original essays that reflect the state of knowledge on policy issues critical to the performance and success of the nation's UI system. The essays are based on program data, enabling the authors to provide analyses on and recommendations for issues at the forefront of the UI policy debate. Topics include coverage, eligibility, adequacy and duration of benefits, labor market attachment, benefit financing, fraud and abuse, the intersection of UI with other income maintenance programs, federal-state relations (including devolution), and more.
Disability, Work and Cash Benefits

Jerry L. Mashaw, Virginia P. Reno, Richard V. Burkhauser, and Monroe Berkowitz
1996

This book examines the economic consequences of work disabilities, and public and private interventions that might enable disabled individuals to enter the work force for the first time, remain at work, or return to work. Three groups of papers are presented. The first group examines ways that labor market changes, policy interventions and individual choices shape the work force. The next analyzes both public and private return to work policies for the work disabled and for those with a severely disabling condition. The final group focuses on the specific needs of the disabled that affect their work force participation, including access to health care, personal assistance and assistive technologies.
Exploring the Underground Economy: Studies of Illegal and Unreported Activity

Susan Pozo
1996

Individually, the six contributors to this volume each provides a detailed examination of specific segments of the underground economy including its participants, attempts at measurement, and policy responses. Taken together, the essays offer a thorough overview that emphasizes the importance and magnitude of one of the largest economies in the world.
Labor Law, Industrial Relations and Employee Choice: The State of the Workplace in the 1990s: Hearings of the Commission on the Future of Worker-Management Relations, 1993-94

Richard N. Block, John Beck, and Daniel H. Kruger
1996

Block, Beck and Kruger present detailed examples from the testimony given during the Commission on the Future of Worker-Management Relations (commonly called the Dunlop Commission) national and regional hearings. The Commission, by hearing from a wide range of stakeholders, sought to define the state of industrial relations and labor law in the U.S. during the 1990s. Because the Commission's final reports were concerned with policy matters, they only briefly summarized the testimony. This volume draws deeply from the testimony, citing many examples that clearly illustrate the wide variety of relationships between workers and management today. In addition, it shows how the interpretation of labor law has changed over the decades.
Of Heart and Mind: Social Policy Essays in Honor of Sar A. Levitan

Garth L. Mangum and Stephen L. Mangum
1996

The essays in this volume, authored by close friends, associates and students of Sar Levitan, pay tribute to the enduring mark he left on the field of social policy. The book is loosely organized around the method of analysis taught and practiced by Levitan: identifying problems through the examination of facts, developing a thorough understanding of institutions, assessing institutional policies, and evaluating policy options.
Poverty and Inequality: The Political Economy of Redistribution

Jon Neill
1996

Despite the nation's significant and prolonged economic growth during the 1990s, the portion of aggregate income going to the poorest 20 percent of the population declined, while that of the richest 20 percent grew. The contributors to this volume examine the extent and reasons behind this distribution.
Workdays, Workhours and Work Schedules: Evidence for the United States and Germany

Daniel S. Hamermesh
1996

Hamermesh presents the first comprehensive evidence explaining how days of work, hours of work, and daily schedules are determined in the U.S. and Germany. Using an instantaneous approach to looking at unique data sets for each country, Hamermesh provides comparative analyses on factors influencing both employees' and employers' work schedules. This technique allows him to offer a new "snapshot" perspective on work scheduling that clarifies the role of fixed costs of getting to work and of adding workdays to plant schedules. He also increases our understanding of the relation between work time and the determination of employment, and presents findings with important implications for several current hot-button workplace issues.
Assisting Workers Displaced by Structural Change: An International Perspective

Duane E. Leigh
1995

Leigh begins by providing a summary of the evolution of labor market programs in seven industrialized countries: Australia, Canada, Germany, Japan, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the U.S. He points out that a number of these nations are dealing with long-term unemployment by linking unemployment insurance benefits to participation in labor market programs, and that this is a requirement U.S. policy makers should examine closely. Leigh also performs informal cross-country evaluations of these countries' programs,focusing on policies he feels merit attention. A three-level active labor market program is then proposed for the U.S.
Causes of Litigation in Workers' Compensation Programs

Evangelos Mariou Falaris, Charles R. Link, and Michael E. Staten
1995

By applying econometric analyses to case data from two states, Falaris, Link and Staten identify the economic incentives influencing the probability of litigation in workers' compensation cases, and the probability that a contested case is pursued to verdict.
Pathways to Change: Case Studies of Strategic Negotiations

Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld, Robert B. McKersie, and Richard E. Walton
1995

The authors identify and analyze the strategies for change and techniques most often used in today's labor negotiations. Nearly gone, they say, is the traditional "arms length" approach used by negotiators in the past. Instead, modern collective bargaining is characterized mainly by divergent strategies the authors characterize as either "forcing" (highly contentious) or "fostering" (highly cooperative). A dozen detailed case studies from a variety of industries are presented that show when, why and how these strategies are used, by whom, and to what result. These cases clearly demonstrate the use of both forcing and fostering strategies, as well as their combined and sequential uses. Cutcher-Gershenfeld, McKersie and Walton also provide analyses which clarify the reasons for the success or failure of approaches used in each case. And there is a highly useful discussion of eight relevant environmental factors that influence how negotiated changes unfold.
Pension Incentives and Job Mobility

Alan L. Gustman and Thomas L. Steinmeier
1995

Using models developed for this study which incorporate an array of behaviors generally omitted from conventional models relating backloading to turnover, Gustman and Steinmeier find that backloading plays only a slight role in explaining mobility differences associated with pension coverage. They propose that higher wages often paid at pension-covered jobs play a greater role in reducing mobility than do pensions.
Permanent Job Loss and the U.S. System of Financing Unemployment Insurance

Frank P.R. Brechling and Louise Laurence
1995

The authors reexamine the experience rating provisions in the U.S. UI system and look at its effects on both temporary layoffs and long-term permanent layoffs. For temporary layoffs, they propose a higher degree of experience rating through a restructuring of the tax code while eliminating administrative time lags between the payment of benefits and the resulting changes in taxes. Brechling and Laurence also propose experience rating as an effective means of internalizing the costs of the growing number of permanent layoffs, making the case that payroll taxes are not the ideal means of implementing experience rating in this situation. In addition, they compare how the reserve and benefit ratio methods of experience rating internalize the costs of permanent layoffs.
Private Pension Policies in Industrialized Countries: A Comparative Analysis

John A. Turner and Noriyasu Watanabe
1995

In this comprehensive review of private pension systems in effect world-wide, Turner and Watanabe discuss the fundamental issues facing nations as they adopt and expand private pension systems. Specific policies in effect in several private pension systems are analyzed including those in nations dominating world pension assets (Japan, Germany, the U.K., and the U.S.), as is the country whose system is widely regarded as the model for developing nations, Chile. Turner and Watanabe also provide a compendium on the worldwide trends influencing pension systems and their implications for pension policy.
Program Applicants as a Comparison Group in Evaluating Training Programs: Theory and a Test

Stephen H. Bell, Larry L. Orr, John D. Blomquist, and Glen George Cain
1995

The authors begin with a thorough assessment of the many nonexperimental employment and training program evaluation techniques based on non-random comparison groups. These techniques typically use econometric methods to estimate the effects of employment and training programs by using comparison groups from non-program "external" sources. Then, recognizing the inherent drawbacks in these methods, Bell, Orr, Blomquist and Cain respond by reintroducing an evaluation method first implemented in the 1960s, the use of "internal" comparison groups consisting of nonparticipating program applicants. These groups include withdrawals, screen-outs and no-shows of the programs being evaluated in order to solve the selection bias problem. By applying to the program, say the authors, nonparticipating applicants reveal themselves to have some of the same difficult-to-measure, personal characteristics that inspire participants to seek help in response to their current economic situation. The methodology of this technique is updated, then tested against the random experimental findings derived from a controlled job training experiment, the AFDC Homemaker-Home Health Aide Demonstrations. Encouraging results are presented along with useful suggestions for designers and implementers of all types of program evaluations.
Human Capital and Economic Development

Sisay Asefa and Wei-Chiao Huang
1994

Six essays are presented that explore human capital and its relationship to issues such as demographics, population growth, families, workplace training and economic progress.
Classrooms in the Workplace: Workplace Literacy Programs in Small- and Medium-Sized Firms

Kevin Hollenbeck
1993

Hollenbeck, using a combined qualitative/quantitative approach, estimates the linkage between workplace literacy programs and the reason for their existence - increased productivity requirements. He utilizes in-depth case studies as well as a large database to look at the costs and benefits of such programs, also the determining factors for why firms choose to implement literacy programs.