Investment provisions in trade and investment treaties: the need for reform

This repository item contains a policy brief from the Boston University Global Economic Governance Initiative. The Global Economic Governance Initiative (GEGI) is a research program of the Center for Finance, Law & Policy, the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, and the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies. It was founded in 2008 to advance policy-relevant knowledge about governance for financial stability, human development, and the environment.Nations of the world are currently negotiating a variety of significant trade and investment treaties that cover upwards of eighty percent of the world economy. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) would further integrate a number of Pacific-Rim nations; the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) would be a treaty between the United States and European countries. The United States and others are also negotiating major bilateral investment treaties (BITs) with China and India

Mapping State Cultural Policy: The State of Washington

State-level funding for the arts, humanities, heritage, and allied forms of culture is an important source of financial support, dwarfing the aid provided by the National Endowment for the Arts. This investigation, underwritten by the Pew Charitable Trusts, shows that states support culture through policies and programs scattered across state government and through means that go beyond direct funding

Public Perceptions About Local Option Taxes and Issues Related to Mass Transit

Public opinion surveys indicate that Idaho citizens are supportive of local option taxes when subject to local voter approval for funding mass transportation. Mass transit is viewed favorably where it is feasible, especially in the urban areas. A cohort of citizens currently use mass transit, and at current gasoline prices of $2 -$3 per gallon, 16% of Idaho citizens would consider public transportation

Public Perceptions About Early Childhood Issues

A survey of the Idaho public reveals strong support for funding and programs aimed at enhanced early childhood education and childcare options, particularly for working parents and low-income households

Immigration policy and welfare state design; a qualitative approach to explore the interaction

For the design of an immigration policy, in terms of the number and skills of the entrants and their effect on the host country, it is important to realize that the kind of welfare state matters. This study confronts three possible labour migration regimes - a temporary, an open and a selective regime - with two possible welfare state settings - a highly redistributive and a hardly redistributive welfare state. By comparing the likely outcomes between the different regimes, and by taking possible effects on the self-selection of immigrants into account, the study draws the following conclusions. First, both labour migration policy and the welfare state matter for the skill composition of labour migrants. Second, to be attractive for high-skilled labour migrants a highly distributive welfare state needs to undo its discouraging effect on these migrants. Third, a highly redistributive welfare state is attractive for low-skilled labour migrants. Because these migrants may become costly for such a welfare state once they manage to stay permanently, one should be careful with the introduction of temporary migration policies for the low-skilled.

The New Political Economy of EU State Aid Policy

Despite its importance and singularity, the EU’s state aid policy has attracted less scholarly attention than other elements of EU competition policy. Introducing the themes addressed by the special issue, this article briefly reviews the development of EU policy and highlights why the control of state aid matters. The Commission’s response to the current economic crisis notably in banking and the car industry is a key concern, but the interests of the special issue go far beyond. They include: the role of the European Commission in the development of EU policy, the politics of state aid, and a clash between models of capitalism. The special issue also examines the impact of EU policy. It investigates how EU state aid decisions affect not only industrial policy at the national level (and therefore at the EU level), but the welfare state and territorial relations within federal member states, the external implications of EU action and the strategies pursued by the Commission to limit any potential disadvantage to European firms, and the conflict between the EU’s expanding legal order and national

Entrepreneurship and State Public Policy

Many state and local governments have focused on enacting policies to promote entrepreneurship in an effort to enhance economic growth. This paper will test the relationship between entrepreneurial activity and state economic freedom in a Granger causality framework. We build a panel data set of freedom scores and entrepreneurial activity measures within the fifty US states from 1981 to 2003, and our results show that, as a whole, economic freedom causes entrepreneurship. However, we find evidence that once entrepreneurs are in place, they increase the size of government spending, which is contradictory to economic freedom.entrepreneurship, public Policy, economic freedom

Who Cares About the Budget? The Effect of National and State Fiscal Policy on State Electoral Accountability

Although state government officials have direct power over certain issues like fiscal policy, legislatures and governors can be held accountable for conditions largely outside their control, such as unemployment at the state and national levels. To compound this effect, national fiscal policy and economic conditions have been volatile and highly publicized in recent years, with little research to discover how much these conditions affect elections at the state level. This study finds that although national fiscal policy and economic conditions are highly visible, voters often only hold state representatives accountable for conditions within their control: state fiscal policy decisions. Furthermore, governors are held more accountable than legislators for fiscal policy decisions, while legislatures avoid direct scrutiny and are only affected by partisan association with presidential and gubernatorial representatives. Interestingly, while governors are punished for increasing the size of government, they are rewarded independently for revenue and expenditure increases as well as budget mismanagement. This implies that while voters allocate accountability for fiscal policy conditions to state representatives, voter desire for government program and benefit sustainment outweighs the conventional desire for prudent budget management. Finally, it is observed that while voters desire lavish spending at the state level, they expect more fiscal prudence from federal budget decisions

Federal Law, State Policy, and Indian Gaming

This Article will set forth the legal authorization and the economic success of Indian gaming by asking and answering two rhetorical questions: What makes Indian gaming lawful? and What makes Indian gaming successful? This Article will conclude with the observation that Indian gaming exists almost entirely at the mercy of state governments. It will argue that, while Indian gaming began as a cross-border issue, it no longer has those features. Indeed, it has been transformed into the very antithesis of a cross-border issue, a political issue that is addressed almost entirely in the sphere of state political processes. The issue no longer spans borders, but is an internal state political issue. This Article will then explain the ramifications of this transformation both for federal Indian law and policy and for those who wish to study the development and resolution of cross-border problems