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54961. The Enlargement Challenge: Can Monetary Union be Made to Work in an EU of 25 Members?

Author:
Barry Eichengreen
Publication Date:
02-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute of European Studies (IES), UC Berkeley
Abstract:
This lecture considers how Europe's monetary union will evolve in the next five to ten years. It concentrates on what is likely to be the most important change in that period, namely, the increasing number and heterogeneity of participating states. By 2006, less than four years from now, it is virtually certain that EMU will be enlarged to include a number of Eastern European countries that have not yet been admitted to the EU itself. These new members will differ sharply from the incumbents in terms of their economic structures, their per capita incomes, and their growth rates. The analysis focuses on the implications of this momentous change for the structure, organization and operation of EMU.
Topic:
Economics and Political Economy
Political Geography:
Europe

54962. Immigrant Well-Being in New York and Los Angeles

Author:
Randy Capps and Michael E. Fix
Publication Date:
08-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Urban Institute
Abstract:
Despite their strong attachment to the labor force, large numbers of immigrants and their families in New York and Los Angeles have low incomes, lack health insurance, and are food insecure. The most powerful predictor of poverty and hardship is their limited English skills. Legal immigrants arriving after welfare reform's enactment in 1996—who have the most restricted access to public benefits—are poorer than immigrants arriving before the law's enactment.
Topic:
Economics, Human Welfare, and Migration
Political Geography:
United States and New York

54963. The Health and Well-Being of Children in Immigrant Families

Author:
Randy Capps, Michael Fix, and Jame Reardon-Anderson
Publication Date:
11-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Urban Institute
Abstract:
Children of immigrants are the fastest growing segment of the U.S. population under age 18 (Van Hook and Fix 2000). One in five children in the United States is the child of an immigrant, evidence of the demographic impact of recent rapid immigration. In addition, one in four low income children is an immigrant's child (Fix, Zimmermann, and Passel 2001). But despite their demographic and policy significance, children of immigrants and their well-being are rarely studied on a national scale. In this brief, we present a number of key indicators—both positive and negative—of child well-being. The measures fall within three areas: (1) family environment, (2) physical and emotional health, and (3) access to needed services.
Topic:
Human Welfare, Migration, and Poverty
Political Geography:
United States

54964. The Dispersal of Immigrants in the 1990s

Author:
Randy Capps, Michael Fix, and Jeffrey Passel
Publication Date:
11-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Urban Institute
Abstract:
The U.S. immigrant population grew rapidly during the 1990s, with growth rates especially high across a wide band of states in the Southeast, Midwest, and Rocky Mountain regions. In many of these states, the foreign-born population more than doubled between 1990 and 2000.
Topic:
Demographics, Human Welfare, and Migration
Political Geography:
United States

54965. The Community Capacity Fund: Understanding its Role in Strengthening the Washington, D.C. Region After 9/11

Author:
Rachel Mosher-Williams
Publication Date:
09-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Urban Institute
Abstract:
The Community Capacity Fund (CCF), a program of Washington Grantmakers, is acknowledged as a new model of national funding for local, collaborative grantmaking. In the face of serious community needs and concerns post–September 11, 2001, as well as many potential ways to address those needs, the Fund developed a framework for strengthening the ability of nonprofits to respond to the terrorist attacks. An investment by the Ford Foundation (and, ultimately, several other funders) in the Washington, D.C., region's recovery enabled a large group of experienced local grant makers and nonprofit leaders to jointly translate that framework into action. Within less than a year, CCF awarded $1,400,055 in grants to organizations advocating for and reemploying workers dislocated by September 11, as well as to organizations developing cross-jurisdictional efforts to respond to future disasters.
Topic:
Economics, Human Welfare, and Non-Governmental Organization
Political Geography:
United States and Washington

54966. Measuring Unemployment Benefit Recipiency in New Zealand

Author:
Wayne Vroman
Publication Date:
07-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Urban Institute
Abstract:
This is a paper about measurement. It originated within a project that is examining the performance of unemployment compensation (UC) programs from a cross-national perspective. At the current time the larger project has assembled data on the UC programs of more than 20 countries along with supporting labor market data. Within the set of OECD countries, the project has singled out for particular attention six English speaking countries: Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. An analysis of the unemployment protection systems in these six countries was recently completed by Brusentsev (2002).
Topic:
Economics, Government, and Human Welfare
Political Geography:
United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Ireland, and New Zealand

54967. Limited English Proficient Students and High-Stakes Accountability Systems

Author:
Michael Fix and Jorge Ruiz-de-Velasco
Publication Date:
04-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Urban Institute
Abstract:
In 1994 Congress required all states to implement comprehensive accountability systems for schools receiving federal funds under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). This new federal requirement responded to civil rights advocates' concerns that schools serving large numbers of poor, minority, and limited English proficient (LEP) students set lower standards for their education and thus ratified lower expectations for their performance. These changes in the ESEA made a dramatic break with past practice by requiring states to replace minimum standards for poor and academically disadvantaged children with challenging standards for all students. New accountability systems were to be based on state-established content standards for reading and math, include assessments aligned with those standards, and would require that states hold all students to the same performance standards.
Topic:
Education, Government, and Migration
Political Geography:
United States

54968. Mortgage Default Insurance in the U.S.: Implications for Russia

Author:
Raymond Struyk and Douglas E. Whiteley
Publication Date:
03-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Urban Institute
Abstract:
The objective of this paper is to introduce the concept of mortgage default insurance as developed in the United States into the context of Russian mortgage lending. The first part of the paper discusses the broad principles and operations of mortgage default insurance offered by private companies as it works in the United States. The pricing of this product and the preconditions for offering such insurance are highlighted. The second section outlines the operation of the U.S. government-supported default insurance offered by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). The final part applies the foregoing information to the situation in Russia today and concludes that the conditions necessary for launching mortgage default insurance do not currently exist in the country. Nevertheless, there are a number of essential actions that can and should be taken over the next several months to put Russia on the road to establishing such insurance in a few years. The paper finishes with a possible action plan for the next two years.
Topic:
Development, Government, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, Europe, and Asia

54969. The Scope and Impact of Welfare Reform's Immigrant Provisions

Author:
Michael Fix and Jeffrey Passel
Publication Date:
01-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Urban Institute
Abstract:
For immigrants, welfare reform went well beyond conditioning access to cash benefits on work. Rather, the law set out a comprehensive scheme for determining immigrant eligibility for a wide range of social benefits that are provided by governments at all levels. Reform represented a major departure from prior policy by making citizenship more central to the receipt of benefits, by granting the states rather than the federal government the power to determine immigrant eligibility for benefits, and by drawing a sharp distinction between immigrants arriving before and after PRWORA's enactment on August 22, 1996.
Topic:
Government, Human Welfare, and Migration
Political Geography:
United States

54970. Regulatory Europeanization, National Autonomy and Regulatory Effectiveness: Marketing Authorization for Pharmaceuticals

Author:
Jürgen Feick
Publication Date:
11-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Abstract:
The EC harmonized market entry regulation for pharmaceuticals from the early sixties on, but it achieved neither its goal of uniform national regulatory decisions nor that of automatic mutual recognition. Subsequent attempts to Europeanize the procedures themselves resulted in two alternatives in 1995: a Centralized Procedure for innovative pharmaceutical products implemented at the EU level, and a Decentralized Procedure which tries to assure mutual recognition. First, the paper analyzes the distinctive modes of Europeanization employed in these regulatory alternatives, examining both their impact on the effectiveness of European governing and the balance they strike between European interventionism, national participation and national autonomy. Second, it tries to assess whether Europeanization furthers the goals of pharmaceutical market entry policy as defined in European regulations – public health protection, creation of a single market and the reduction of regulatory costs to industry. There is little evidence that the public's health is less well protected when regulation is Europeanized. Only the Centralized Procedure contributes significantly to the goal of establishing a single market. Regulatory costs in terms of approval time did go down especially for pharmaceutical firms using the Centralized Procedure, mainly because of efficiency-enhancing legal provisions and institutionally induced regulatory competition between national authorities.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
Europe