Indigenous social and economic adaptations in northern Alaska as measures of resilience

I explored one aspect of social-ecological change in the context of an Alaskan human-Rangifer system, with the goal of understanding household adaptive responses to perturbations when there are multiple forces of change at play. I focused on households as one element of social resilience. Resilience is in the context of transition theory, in which communities are continually in a process of change, and perturbations are key points in the transition process. This case study of Anaktuvuk Pass, Alaska, USA, contributes to the understanding of cultural continuity and household resilience in times of rapid change by using household survey data from 1978 to 2003 to understand how households adapted to changes in the cash economy that came with oil development at the same time as a crash in the caribou population and state-imposed limits on caribou harvests. The research illustrates that households are resilient in the way they capture opportunities and create a new system so that elements of the old remain while parts change.Ye

An Assessment of the Division of Juvenile Justice's Use of the Youth Level of Services/ Case Management Inventory

In June, 2010, the Alaska Division of Juvenile Justice (Division) invited the Alaska Judicial Council and the Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER) at University of Alaska Anchorage to assist “in understanding how scores on the Division’s assessment instrument for juveniles, the Youth Level of Service/Case Management Inventory (YLS/CMI), reflect the actual recidivism of juveniles who’ve received services from the Division.” Other states had shown that YLS/CMI scores could be helpful in predicting recidivism among the youths they served, but Alaska had not yet done the comparable research. ISER and the Council agreed that the questions proposed would provide valuable information and help the Division to better address the reasons for youth recidivism.The Division of Juvenile Justice.Executive Summary / Introduction / Part 1: Research background and design / Part 2: Findings / Part 3: Summary and Conclusions / Appendice

A preliminary Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) study of magnetite surface microtextures from the Wahianoa moraines, Mt Ruapehu, New Zealand.

Scanning electron microscope (SEM) of quartz micro‐textures has routinely been used to identify the depositional environment of sediments in areas of former ice‐sheet glaciation. On volcanic mountains, where the geomorphic origin of ridge deposits is often poorly understood, quartz is much less abundant, so SEM analysis has not been used as a depositional discriminator. Preliminary research on surface micro‐textures of abundant magnetite grains from the Wahianoa moraines, south‐eastern Mt Ruapehu, suggests that SEM of magnetite may be useful in determining the process‐origin of deposits. We describe micro‐textures and surface characteristics of samples of magnetite, and our study shows that many of the micro‐textures visible on quartz, thought to be diagnostic of glacial transport, are present on magnetite too. However, evaluating whether SEM analysis of magnetite is an applicable technique will require a better understanding of the microtextures occurring on known glacial, fluvioglacial and aeolian deposits on volcanic mountains

Cultural Continuity and Communities and Well-Being

This paper describes a household survey of Inuit in northern Alaska and how the survey data were used to better understand the relative importance of jobs, wild food harvesting, and social ties for life satisfaction. It emphasizes the importance of non-material measures for life satisfaction. It builds on other research showing the importance of harvesting wild food and the persistence of a mixed economy—one that combines cash income and wild food harvests. An empirical model estimates the relationship between people's choices to work, and/or hunt and fish, and individual satisfaction with life. The model includes economic and non-economic measures of well-being as well as community characteristics and shows that what matters most for satisfaction are family ties, social support and opportunities to do things with other people. Jobs, income, housing, and modern amenities—are less important among arctic Inuit. This research addresses the purpose for the original survey project—to give a more realistic picture of life in the Arctic by showing why people who live in remote, isolated, communities, with low incomes, and substandard housing are very satisfied with their lives. It also contributes to public policy in remote regions and efforts to understand how people are adapting in a rapidly changing environment.Abstract / Introduction / Methods / Data / Modeling Subsistence, Jobs, and Well-Being / Conclusions / ReferencesYe

Pension Funding, Share Prices, and National Saving

This paper examines empirically the effect of unfunded pension obligations on corporate share prices and discusses the implications of these estimates for national saving, the decline of the stock market in recent years, and the rationality of corporate financial behavior. The analysis uses the information on inflation-adjusted income and assets that large firms were required to provide for 1976 and subsequent years. The evidence for a sample of nearly 200 manufacturing firms is consistent with the conclusion that share prices fully reflect the value of unfunded pension obligations. Since the conventional accounting measure of the unfunded pension liability has a number of problems (which we examine in the paper), it would be more accurate to say that the data are consistent with the conclusion that shareholders accept the conventional measure as the best available information and reduce share prices by a corresponding amount. The most important implication of the share price response is that the existence of unfunded private pension liabilities does not necessarily entail a reduction in total private saving. Because the pension liability reduces the equity value of the firm, shareholders are given notice of its existence and an incentive to save more themselves. For this reason, unfunded private pensions differ fundamentally from the unfunded Social Security pension and the other unfunded federal government civilian and military pensions.

Anticipated Ramsey Reforms and the Uniform Taxation Principle: the Role of International Financial Markets

This paper studies the role of asset-market completeness for the properties of optimal policy. A suitable framework for this purpose is the small open economy with complete international asset markets. For in this environment changes in policy represent country-specific risk diversifiable in world markets. Our main finding is that the fundamental public finance principle whereby when taxes on all final goods are available, it is optimal to tax final goods uniformly fails to obtain. In general, uniform taxation is optimal because it amounts to a nondistorting tax on fixed factors of production. In the open economy this principle fails because when households can insure against the risk of a policy reform, initial private asset holdings are contingent on actual policy and thus no longer represent an inelastically supplied source of income. Two further differences between optimal policy in the closed and open economies with complete markets are: (a) In the open economy, optimal consumption and income tax rates are unchanged in response to government purchases shocks. By contrast, in the closed economy tax rates do respond to innovations in public spending. (b) In the open economy, the Friedman rule is optimal only if the Ramsey planner has access to consumption taxes. In the absence of consumption taxes, deviations from the Friedman rule are large. On the other hand, in the closed economy, the availability of either consumption or income taxes suffices to render the Friedman rule optimal.

Optimal Inflation Stabilization in a Medium-Scale Macroeconomic Model

This paper characterizes Ramsey-optimal monetary policy in a medium-scale macroeconomic model that has been estimated to fit well postwar U.S.\ business cycles. We find that mild deflation is Ramsey optimal in the long run. However, the optimal inflation rate appears to be highly sensitive to the assumed degree of price stickiness. Within the window of available estimates of price stickiness (between 2 and 5 quarters) the optimal rate of inflation ranges from -4.2 percent per year (close to the Friedman rule) to -0.4 percent per year (close to price stability). This sensitivity disappears when one assumes that lump-sum taxes are unavailable and fiscal instruments take the form of distortionary income taxes. In this case, mild deflation emerges as a robust Ramsey prediction. In light of the finding that the Ramsey-optimal inflation rate is negative, it is puzzling that most inflation-targeting countries pursue positive inflation goals. We show that the zero bound on the nominal interest rate, which is often cited as a rationale for setting positive inflation targets, is of no quantitative relevance in the present model. Finally, the paper characterizes operational interest-rate feedback rules that best implement Ramsey-optimal stabilization policy. We find that the optimal interest-rate rule is active in price and wage inflation, mute in output growth, and moderately inertial. This rule achieves virtually the same level of welfare as the Ramsey optimal policy.

Fuel Costs, Migration, and Community Viability

ISER researchers compiled and reviewed existing studies and data sources relating to the economic and social viability of remote rural Alaska communities. We particularly looked for possible linkages between high fuel costs and migration. Our review indicates the following: (1) migration from smaller places toward larger places is an ongoing phenomenon that is more noticeable when birth rates drop; (2) there is no systematic empirical evidence that fuel prices, by themselves, have been a definitive cause of migration; (3) the pursuit of economic and educational opportunities appears to be a predominant cause of migration; (4) however, currently available survey data are not sufficient to definitively determine other reasons for migration, which could include concerns about public safety and/or alcohol abuse; 5) most of the survey data pre-date the latest rapid increase (2006-2008) in fuel prices. We suggest several ways that better data could be collected on community viability and the reasons for migration.First Alaskans Institute. Alaska Native Policy Center.Introduction / Methods / Findings / Significant data collection opportunities / Conclusions / References / Data Sources Use

Optimal Fiscal and Monetary Policy Under Imperfect Competition

This paper studies optimal fiscal and monetary policy under imperfect competition in a stochastic, flexible-price, production economy without capital. It shows analytically that in this economy the nominal interest rate acts as an indirect tax on monopoly profits. Unless the social planner has access to a direct 100 percent tax on profits, he will always find it optimal to deviate from the Friedman rule by setting a positive and time-varying nominal interest rate. The dynamic properties of the Ramsey allocation are characterized numerically. As in the perfectly competitive case, the labor income tax is remarkably smooth, whereas inflation is highly volatile and serially uncorrelated. An exact numerical solution method to the Ramsey conditions is proposed.

Optimal Simple and Implementable Monetary and Fiscal Rules

The goal of this paper is to compute optimal monetary and fiscal policy rules in a real business cycle model augmented with sticky prices, a demand for money, taxation, and stochastic government consumption. We consider simple policy rules whereby the nominal interest rate is set as a function of output and inflation, and taxes are set as a function of total government liabilities. We require policy to be implementable in the sense that it guarantees uniqueness of equilibrium. We do away with a number of empirically unrealistic assumptions typically maintained in the related literature that are used to justify the computation of welfare using linear methods. Instead, we implement a second-order accurate solution to the model. Our main findings are: First, the size of the inflation coefficient in the interest-rate rule plays a minor role for welfare. It matters only insofar as it affects the determinacy of equilibrium. Second, optimal monetary policy features a muted response to output. More importantly, interest rate rules that feature a positive response of the nominal interest rate to output can lead to significant welfare losses. Third, the optimal fiscal policy is passive. However, the welfare losses associated with the adoption of an active fiscal stance are negligible.