The book American Economic Policy in the 1990s, which has a publication date of Spring 2002 from MIT Press, is the outcome of a conference held at the Kennedy School in June 2001. It brought together leading policy-makers and economists, with the goal of providing a preliminary history of U.S....

The multilateral regime to address the problem of global climate change is manifest in the Kyoto Protocol, negotiated in that city in 1997, and likely soon to enter into force. The multilateral regime to address international trade is manifest in the World Trade Organization, established in...

When are decentralized public institutions most likely to succeed in promoting effective public good provision or the emergence of local cooperation? Two influential literatures in political science, those on "empowered participatory governance" and on "market-preserving federalism," both...

In an era of devolution in much social policy, a growing number of initiatives aim to improve the well-being of children, youth, and their families through locally governed, data-driven “partnerships” of various kinds. Broadly stated, the aims of these partnerships are not limited to savvy...

Stereotypes bias person perception, hampering advancement in organizations for targets-often women and members of ethnic minority groups. Traditional stereotyping research adopts an inter-group perspective: comparisons are made between the ways in which targets belonging to different social...

Global environmental change is increasingly understood to have causes, consequences, and responses which span multiple levels, from the local to the global. The multi-level nature of such problems has required a radical shift in the relationship between knowledge and action. This working paper...

Land-use changes involve important economic and environmental effects with implications for international trade, global climate change, wildlife, and other policy issues. We use an econometric model to identify factors driving land-use change in the United States between 1982 and 1997. We...

In this paper we outline two suggestions for making existing democratic institutions in Hong Kong more effective. First, we suggest placing more responsibility for policy-making at the District Council level, so as to provide greater stakes in District Council elections. Second, we suggest...

Unlike what is commonly believed, the last two decades have not witnessed the twilight of industrial policy. Instead, incentives and subsidies have been refocused on exports and direct foreign investment, in the belief that these activities are the source of significant positive spillovers. The...

This paper examines whether trust is an investment decision under uncertainty, based on the expectation of trustworthiness, and whether trustworthiness is reciprocity, conditional on one's counterpart's behavior. In experiments run in Russia, South Africa and the United States, we find that only...