Following the Republican victory in the 1994 mid-term elections, the balance of power in the US House of Representatives between committees and central party leader shifted decisively in favour of the latter. The central thrust of the procedural and personnel changes instituted under Newt Gingrich in 1994 and 1995 was to consolidate party government. This article reviews these important changes and analyses their impact on the legislative process. The return to party government is explained as a product of Gingrich's partisan vision of legislative organization, the destabilization of existing institutional relations as a consequence of the shift in partisan control, the unusual conditions of the 1994 elections, and the strong team spirit and high levels of Republican party support. The article speculates that a return to more autonomous, less party-dominated committee system is unlikely given strong Democratic support for robust centralized party leadership, important changes in Congress's policy agenda, high membership turnover, and the probable continuation of split-party government, but the potency of these centralizing forces will probably be mitigated by familiar decentralizing pressures in contemporary American politics.
Financing Decentralized Expenditures presents new original research papers on the structure of intergovernmental fiscal relations in virtually all types of countries and the design and implementation of transfer mechanisms between different levels of government.
Financing Decentralized Expenditures presents new original research papers on the structure of intergovernmental fiscal relations in virtually all types of countries and the design and implementation of transfer mechanisms between different levels of government.
Financing Decentralized Expenditures presents new original research papers on the structure of intergovernmental fiscal relations in virtually all types of countries and the design and implementation of transfer mechanisms between different levels of government.
Financing Decentralized Expenditures presents new original research papers on the structure of intergovernmental fiscal relations in virtually all types of countries and the design and implementation of transfer mechanisms between different levels of government.
Financing Decentralized Expenditures presents new original research papers on the structure of intergovernmental fiscal relations in virtually all types of countries and the design and implementation of transfer mechanisms between different levels of government.
Financing Decentralized Expenditures presents new original research papers on the structure of intergovernmental fiscal relations in virtually all types of countries and the design and implementation of transfer mechanisms between different levels of government.
Financing Decentralized Expenditures presents new original research papers on the structure of intergovernmental fiscal relations in virtually all types of countries and the design and implementation of transfer mechanisms between different levels of government.
Financing Decentralized Expenditures presents new original research papers on the structure of intergovernmental fiscal relations in virtually all types of countries and the design and implementation of transfer mechanisms between different levels of government.
Financing Decentralized Expenditures presents new original research papers on the structure of intergovernmental fiscal relations in virtually all types of countries and the design and implementation of transfer mechanisms between different levels of government.
Financing Decentralized Expenditures presents new original research papers on the structure of intergovernmental fiscal relations in virtually all types of countries and the design and implementation of transfer mechanisms between different levels of government.
Financing Decentralized Expenditures presents new original research papers on the structure of intergovernmental fiscal relations in virtually all types of countries and the design and implementation of transfer mechanisms between different levels of government.
Financing Decentralized Expenditures presents new original research papers on the structure of intergovernmental fiscal relations in virtually all types of countries and the design and implementation of transfer mechanisms between different levels of government.
The death knell is sounding for the National Endowment for the Arts. The agen- cy's federal appropriation last year fell by one-third, from about $150 mil- lion to about $100 million, and its appropriation may be cut again or even eliminated in the current session of Congress. The NEA is not only anathema to cultural conservatives, libertarians, evangelical Christians, and even a good number of artists. It is also likely to lose key political support as Presi- dent Clinton and other Democrats resolve to keep moving toward a balanced fed- eral budget without compromising Medicare, Medicaid, education, or the environment. But the end of the agency's federal funding need not prove cataclysmic for the arts in America. Artists, arts organizations, and their supporters have many strategies at their disposal for maintaining the vitality of the arts in a post-NEA era. And in any case, the importance of federal grantmaking to the arts has been greatly exaggerated. The NEA currently contributes to the arts in two ways: direct funding and less tangible, indirect services. Nowadays direct funding consists almost entirely of cash awards to arts organizations and event sponsors. (As of 1996, grants to individual artists were eliminated, except for creative writers, jazz greats, and masters of folk crafts.) NEA-financed music ensembles, dance festivals, museum exhibitions, and the like undoubtedly face a period of sacrifice and uncertainty, and there will be some casualties. But their prospects are far from hopeless. The NEA also renders indirect, noncash benefits and services through its peer-review panels. Their judgments can stimulate funding from other sources and identify certain artists and organizations as more deserving than others. In this realm of power-by-imprimatur, the judgment process would, in fact, probably work better if it were decentralized and used to spur greater involvement by funders. Making up the Shortfall To understand the reasons for optimism, it is necessary to assess the true nature of NEA spending priorities. The NEA's largesse regularly benefits the great established urban institutions and smaller local organizations of long-standing reputation. The NEA has also funded, less dependably, dozens of marginal artistic groups, some of which claim to depend on NEA funding for their survival. As a rule, the larger institutions will overcome the NEA's decline easily, but the smaller ones need not suffer if they heed certain examples set around the country. One might not know it from the political controversies that have attracted public attention, but the NEA has always favored the most venerable -- and richest -- cultural establishments over the esoteric, the shocking, and the avant-garde. A survey of funding patterns in 1985, 1990, and 1995 clearly reveals this preference. The Metropolitan Opera in New York City has been the single largest recipient of NEA funds, with annual grants between $800,000 and $900,000. Typical grants for other high-profile beneficiaries range from $200,000 to $350,000, awarded year after year and now incorporated into annual budgets. In theater, by far the biggest ongoing grants go to the major presenters and training centers, such as the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts ($305,000, on average, in 1985, 1990, and 1995), the Center Theater Group of Los Angeles ($251,000), the Guthrie Theater in Min- neapolis ($274,000), and the Yale Repertory Theatre ($167,000). In the museum world, the consistent winners are big-city institutions: Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco. In dance as well, the NEA has heavily favored the most established organizations. The Dance Theatre of Harlem, for example, averaged $303,000. Nearly all other troupes with six-figure grants bear the names of modern American legends: Alvin Ailey, Merce Cunningham, Martha Graham, Paul Taylor, Twyla Tharp. This preference for elite establishments should not be surprising, since it is usually the larger, wealthier institutions that have the staff and resources to put together winning grant proposals. …
The cutbacks in Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement, and the Republican takeover of Capitol Hill and the state legislatures as a result of recent elections, suggest that the payer-driven forces of managed care, capitated payment, and the regional networks (alliances) will serve as centerpieces to improve the organization, financing, and delivery of America's health services. These "voluntary" alliances that are now being forged as an amalgam of health providers and insurance underwriters, often foreshadow the powerful, geographically linked regional health networks that are evolving into oligopolies throughout the United States. As the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission are unable to appropriately analyze the efficacy of most prospective mergers, the American health field increasingly can expect monopolistic environments. In this process, the public eventually may demand the formation of state health services commissions. Within this framework, the German decentralized, multipayer, multitier approach, which historically is self-governing and allows for negotiating reimbursement rates between insurers and providers, offers a preferred option to the traditional American public utility model.
While regulatory compliance costs continue to escalate, changes in the needs and practices of customers are creating challenges for the bulk liquid terminals business. Minimum inventory policies have reduced demand for petroleum storage, and surplus private tankage of utilities and oil companies is being thrown onto the public market. Petroleum companies, following the lead of chemical companies, are moving toward more centralized distribution management. Responding to such changes, GATX Terminals Corp. recently realigned the management of its operations. Until this January, terminal functions of the $300 million enterprise were largely managed by highly autonomous business units. Now it has moved to a new flexible structure that combines aspects of centralized and decentralized organizations.
We examined a setting where decision making about financing a given amount of government spending is decentralized. Seigniorage is the residual tax that passively adjusts to meet the budget constraint. We place this budget making process in a repeated game setting and characterize the cooperative tax-seigniorage function. Three main results are (1) Seignioiage and transitory changes in output are positively correlated. This result holds after controlling for changes in government spending. (2) A positive (negative) covariation between current period government spending and transitory output strengthens (weakens) the positive relationship between seigniorage and transitory output. (3) Seigniorage is negatively correlated with trend output growth. Time series empirical tests using annual data for 20 OECD countries support the first two results. A test using cross-section data on 75 countries confirms the third hypothesis. Copyright 1997 by Ohio State University Press.
In the world of business and finance, the old phrase cooking the books implies that manipulating financial ledgers will produce an illicit advantage for someone. Maybe this practice is used more often in movie and TV scripts than in real life, but what happens when the need for financial data outpaces the ability to provide answers? The recent controversy started by a federally appointed commission that suggested the Consumer Price Index has been miscalculated for several decades may be more than just an interesting example. Could there be a parallel in education? Are the traditional regulatory reporting mechanisms using district-level data built around average per-pupil expenditures, average daily attendance, or full-time equivalents flawed? Is there a better way to account for expenditures in education? Can tracing the flow of dollars to building- and program-level decision points create a better financial management tool? Recent reform efforts that have put the emphasis on buildings that use site-based management and other decentralized models have created a need for data that traditional school district accounting departments cannot meet. When building principals, teachers, and parent councils don't know how much money they have to spend or cannot gain control of the funds flowing to their buildings, then real reform is not possible. Out of sheer frustration, a Denver teacher involved in site-based management took her own personal computer and built an understandable version of the school district budget. Tracing the Flow of Dollars A few years back, Bruce Cooper of Fordham University took a new tack when he helped a student, Robert Sarrel, with a dissertation that attempted to answer the question of how much of the total state and local per-pupil allocation actually reaches the classroom in a New York City school building. Someone not familiar with the traditional school finance practices would probably assume that this would be an easy question to answer. But in the traditional green eyeshade back room of school accounting, the data were nowhere to be found. In fact, making new assumptions, asking for new data on personnel, seeking better descriptions of functions, and so on can lead one back up the accounting trail even to the offices of green eyeshade back room state-level accounting. With no solid answer in sight, the efforts of Cooper and Sarrel nevertheless caught the attention of some national education groups. Their early reports that perhaps as little as 30% to 35% of funds could be traced to the classroom fueled interest in the original study. Those who were sure that all the remaining funds went to something called administrative bloat also saw this as a topic worthy of more study. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce became interested, and the Lilly Endowment put up some money to help perfect the questions and the process. The Chamber found eight school districts that were willing to participate in a study tracking the flow of dollars down to the buildings, and the work proceeded with little fanfare. Accepting the idea that funds should be tracked in this way was not always easy, even when a superintendent and board had agreed to work on the new accounting model. The risk that new data could shine a spotlight on district decisions was real. Taxpayers, unions, principals, and parents would have data that could translate very quickly into a public clamor. For the most part, the information gathered from the eight districts did not cause any major problems. Administrative bloat was not as evident as some critics had expected, and usually the new data led not to corruption but to more questions pointing up the need for better information. In one district, for example, two middle schools with nearly the same enrollment had quite different spending patterns - even when faculty age and placement on the salary schedule were set aside. There were no cooked books, but it was evident that a new budget management tool was needed. …
English-- not the language, but the activity that takes place in English departments at American universities--has long ceased to be anything resembling a single discipline, if in fact it ever was. It is a collection of disparate activities with multiple objects of inquiry, vaguely articulated methodologies, and diverse notions of proof. With new essays by Gerald Graff, Paul Lauter, Louie Crew, George Garrett, Thomas Dabbs, Walter L. Reed, Phyllis Frus, Stanley Corkin, Tilly Warnock, and Stanley Fish, this volume does not attempt to define the discipline. Instead, as Graff observes in the opening chapter, it enacts it, sometimes with a passion verging on violence, each essayist defending interests that are threatened by the others. It is English as theater. The essays can be read in any order; the arguments among them will out. The conflicts rage on even after the curtain falls. But the issues are clarified: What's at stake, not just for English but for society at large, is the tenuous boundary between conversation and chaos.
In this paper a competi tive general equilibrium model is used to investigate the welfare and long run allocation impacts of privatization. There are two types of capital in this model economy, one private and the other initially public ('infrastructure'), and a positive extemality due to the latter is assumed. A benevolent governrnent can improve upon decentralized allocation intemalizing the extemality, but it introduces distortions in the economy through the finance of its investments. It is shown that even making the best case for public action - maximization of individuais' welfare, no operation inefficiency and free supply to society of infrastructure services - privatization is welfare improving for a large set of economies. Hence, arguments against privatization based solely on under-investment are incorrect, as this maybe the optimal action when the financing of public investment are considered. When operation inefficiency is introduced in the public sector, gains from privatization are much higher and positive for most reasonable combinations of parameters.
While Washington has been unable to lead the way in significant health care reform, the health care system has begun to transform itself in terms of curbing skyrocketing health care costs, dealing with the more than forty million Americans who lack health care coverage, and the problems plaguing the Medicare and Medicaid systems. The search has begun for a health care model that ensures quality care to a wide population in a cost-efficient manner. This article explores how the U.S. Health care system currently functions, examines several innovative models, and suggests ways in which a decentralized, community-based approach to health care reform can address our nation’s health care crisis. Specifically, Part I examines the current system of health care financing. Part II discusses current efforts to provide community based care. Part III offers suggestions for a community-based approach to health care reform, including ways to stimulate provider volunteerism, financing mechanisms, and methods to overcome potential legal barriers to local reform efforts.
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Health Systems, Economic Evaluations, Quality of Life