Noise is an environmental issue uniquely harmful to public welfare but essential to a well-functioning modern economy. Given the prevalence of noise especially in urban soundscapes, noise pollution has been recognized as a negative externality and an environmental stressor and thus has become an issue in public policy. Yet, as...
Scholars posit that the successful consolidation of post-communist Central and Eastern European democracies can be linked to their subsequent accession to the European Union (EU). This led observers to assume that the continued democratization of Hungarian society was assured due to their integration into EU institutions. However, since the 2010...
Due to the current cultural paradigm that incorporates the desire to be environmentally friendly and mitigate rising fuel costs, arguments about the cost of public transit systems, ridership rates, and methods to increase use are frequent topics of public policy concern. In response to these cultural and economic concerns, the...
The negative effects of poverty on childhood academic outcomes are well documented by current research. Children in poverty experience pronounced positive effects of familial involvement on these same academic outcomes. Unfortunately children in poverty experience low levels of familial involvement. Current familial involvement policy is centered in the school environment....
From an organizational perspective, economic incentives are often used as a tool to induce behaviors which align the goals of individuals with the organization. As a fundamental concept, varied types of merit pay have been utilized to keep organizational and individual motives in sync. This can be illustrated in contracts...
Electricity is a vital energy source for modern life, and is used in almost every aspect of daily life. United States electricity consumption totaled nearly 3,886,403 gigawatt hours in 2011. Residential electricity consumption accounts for 37 percent of total electricity consumption in the United States. Between 1990 and 2007, the...
A considerable amount of research and literature exists that attempt to explain the policymaking processes of central banks and, in particular, the Federal Reserve Bank (FRB). As with those studies, the purpose of this study is to explain FRB policymaking in order to understand FRB policy shifts during financial crises....
The Bolivian government is using a portion of the rent generated from its fossil fuel reserves to fund unconditional cash transfers as a means of redistributing resources. Although some countries have enacted conditional cash transfers in the past, these unconditional transfers are unique since they only have been implemented in...
MSME development has emerged at the forefront of economic policy, with the majority of policy mechanisms aimed at creating the regulatory and institutional environments, which have historically proven to augment entrepreneurial activity. In the case of Europe a large portion of entrepreneurial policy resides within the European Community framework, however...
This paper investigates the potential welfare gains resulting from variable parking fees in the presence of heterogeneous agents. We begin by defining a modified linear city model with two lots located at separate distances from a central business district, and two types of agents with heterogeneous values of time. Agents...