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    The Growing Influence of the Courts over the Fate of Refugees

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    A number of migration scholars suggest that domestic courts have become the key protective institution for refugees. How can we explain this claim? One prominent explanation identifies group litigation as the key source of the increasing influence of the courts. How well does this explanation travel empirically? The article evaluates this explanation by examining the puzzling behaviour of German refugee NGOs. They have not entered the legal arena directly (either as parties or as interveners), nor have they concentrated on developing extensive litigation campaigns. Still, they are remarkably ‘judicialized’: their frequent engagement with the law in other respects has heightened their legal consciousness. Why have German refugee NGOs made such different choices than their North American counterparts and what do these choices tell us about the expanding influence of the courts over the fate of refugees in Germany and North America? To make sense of the different choices that these organizations have made, we need to understand the role that institutional norms and procedures, in particular policy legacies, have played in directing the behaviour and identity of these groups. For a number of reasons, German refugee NGOs historically have been discouraged from directly accessing the courts in favour of indirect participation. Since Canadian and American refugee organizations follow a pattern closer to the expectations of the (largely North American) literature on the subject, we need to be more careful in thinking through our presuppositions when constructing a theory of the worldwide expansion of judicial power

    Income-Driven Repayment and the Public Financing of Higher Education

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    This article provides the first comprehensive analysis in the legal literature of the federal government’s new income-driven student loan repayment programs, known as Income-Based Repayment and Pay As You Earn. In a set of gradual and little-noticed statutory and regulatory moves, the federal government, through these programs, has dramatically reshaped higher education finance in ways that schools, students, and even the government itself are only beginning to understand. Under IBR and PAYE, a student borrower pays no more than 10% of her discretionary income in loan service payments, and after a maximum of 20 years, the remaining debt is forgiven—for any borrower, regardless of degree, career, or debt load. This article argues that such an income-driven system is analogous to the federal government paying the up-front costs of higher education, but raising that money from a 10% “surtax” on the incomes of graduates. This is a huge change from the current mixture of debt-financed tuition, need-based grants, and moderate state subsidies. This framing raises important questions. Is this income-driven repayment structure appropriate? How tax-like and progressive are IBR and PAYE in fact, and can they be made more (or less) so? What are the risks and downsides of such a structure? This article claims that using a tax-like instrument such as income-driven repayment is well suited for higher education, given its economics, financial characteristics, and social benefits. In particular, the key difference between income-driven repayment and up-front need-based grants, such as Pell Grants, is that income-driven repayment makes a judgment of need based on ex post graduate income, rather than ex ante parental income. Based on this analysis, this article concludes with some novel suggestions for reform to PAYE

    American history textbooks for the senior high school

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    Given Credit Management Behavior, what effect does educational debt have on mortgage approval timetables?

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    Educational debt in the United States is a major concern as many young people enroll in undergraduate institutions beyond their financial means and the gap between the cost of an education and family income widens. Research suggests that an individual’s level of educational debt will have an effect on their financial future, but measuring the extent of damage incurred is much more difficult and needs further examination. This paper analyzes the relationship between the level of educational debt at graduation and time between graduation and home mortgage approval. This paper also examines the relationship between credit management behavior and mortgage approval. This study finds that educational debt does not have a significant effect on mortgage approval timetables. This paper also reports that credit management behavior has a significant effect on a person’s approval timetable and that bad credit management behavior increases the period between graduation and mortgage approval

    On Estimating the Effects of Increased Aid to Education

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    [Excerpt] The 1983 report, A Nation at Risk, of the National Commission on Excellence in Education decried the state of public education in the United States and suggested a number of reforms. Among their recommendations was increased federal aid for education. The view was that this would lead to desirable outcomes such as reduced class sizes and higher teacher salaries, with the latter aiding in the recruitment and retention of high-quality teachers. Somewhat surprisingly, previous research on the economics of education provides us with very few insights about what the effects of such proposals might be. For example, while there is an extensive literature on the determinants of cross-section variations in teachers\u27 salaries and teacher/student ratios, virtually nothing has been written on how changes in aid levels influence changes in salaries, teacher/student ratios, other expenditure levels, and local tax rates. Similarly, while there are many studies of how grants-in-aid affect overall expenditure levels and some studies of the determinants of cross-section variations in the share of expenditures spent on various categories (e.g., instructional and administrative), virtually nothing has been written on how changes in aid affect the various expenditure shares. To provide answers to some of these questions, our paper examines data from a panel of approximately 700 school districts in New York State over a five-year period (1978-79 to 1982-83) and tries to infer how school districts will respond to future changes in aid from how they responded to changes in state aid during the period. We focus on how past aid changes have influenced teacher salaries, tax rates, teacher/student ratios, and other staff/student ratios. The analyses exploit the fact that although school aid formulas change frequently in New York State, each district is usually guaranteed at least the same aid level as the previous year ( save harmless provisions). As a result, over any given two-year period, the percentage increase in aid varies widely across districts. This provides a convenient form of natural experiment

    Should easier access to international credit replace foreign aid?

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    We examine the interaction between foreign aid and binding borrowing constraint for a recipient country. We also analyze how these two instruments affect economic growth via non-linear relationships. First of all, we develop a two-country, two-period trade-theoretic model to develop testable hypotheses and then we use dynamic panel analysis to test those hypotheses empirically. Our main findings are that: (i) better access to international credit for a recipient country reduces the amount of foreign aid it receives, and (ii) there is a critical level of international financial transfer, and the marginal effect of foreign aid is larger than that of loans if and only if the transfer (loans or foreign aid) is below this critical level.Foreign aid program

    Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF): Issues for the 110th Congress

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    Enactment of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 (DRA, P.L. 109-171) ended more than four years of congressional debate on “reauthorizing” the block grant of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). The DRA extended funding for most TANF grants through FY2010, except TANF supplemental grants which expire after FY2008. Supplemental grants go to 17 states that have high population growth or low historic funding in TANF’s predecessor programs per poor person. TANF is best known as the funding source for welfare benefits for low-income families with children. In 2005, about two million families per month received TANF cash welfare, down from the historical high of five million families receiving cash welfare in the mid-1990s. In 2005, about three in ten poor children were in families that received TANF cash welfare. However, TANF funds a wide range of “nonwelfare” benefits and services for needy families with children. In FY2005, spending on activities related to traditional cash welfare accounted for a little more than half of total TANF funding, while other “nonwelfare” activities accounted for the remainder. Still, most issues that Congress has debated in the past, and will potentially consider in the 110th Congress, relate to TANF cash welfare. The DRA revised the rules relating to TANF work participation standards for families receiving welfare, by requiring states to either increase participation in activities or reduce their welfare caseloads to meet these numerical performance standards. Many states had to act quickly to avoid failing these standards, which were effective in FY2007. Further, states must engage 90% of their two-parent welfare caseload in activities — a fairly high standard that President Bush’s FY2008 budget seeks to eliminate. The DRA also required the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to issue regulations defining the specific activities that may be counted toward the participation standards. The regulations, published June 29, 2006, clarified that the participation standards focus on work or short-term job preparation. This raises old issues of whether a “work-first” orientation is best for those who have barriers to employment, such as very low levels of educational attainment or disabilities. Congress might consider proposals left over from TANF reauthorization proposals, but not included in DRA, to loosen some rules for nonwelfare spending, such as allowing carry-over funds to be used for nonwelfare benefits and services and to consider any TANF child care or transportation benefits “nonwelfare” and not subject to the rules associated with welfare benefits. Congress might also consider improving the information available on how TANF funds are used for nonwelfare benefits. Additionally, legislation that affects foster care, child welfare services for abused and neglected children, and child care funding would have an effect on TANF, since large amounts of TANF “nonwelfare” dollars are used to supplement dedicated federal and state funding for these programs. This report will be updated as legislative events warrant

    Special Libraries, May-June 1948

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    Volume 39, Issue 5https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sla_sl_1948/1004/thumbnail.jp

    Book Reviews

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