Credibility begins with a clear commitment to price stability

An argument that the central bank should adopt a policy of price stability based on an explicit objective for the Consumer Price Index, which the Cleveland Fed President believes would provide a nominal anchor for the dollar as well as a clear standard by which to measure the success of monetary policy.Consumer price indexes ; Inflation (Finance) ; Monetary policy

Systemic banking crises

Systemic banking crises can have devastating effects on the economies of developing or industrialized countries. This Policy Discussion Paper reviews the factors that weaken banking systems and make them more susceptible to crises.Financial crises ; Bank failures

Do capital controls influence the volume and composition of capital flows? Evidence from the 1990s

In the early 1990s capital flows to the Asian economies were dominated by FDI. By contrast, Latin America was attracting little FDI and a large share of its inflows were either short-term or portfolio and viewed as “hot money.” These differences gave rise to the view that Latin America was more vulnerable to a reversal of capital flows than Asia. Yet, scant attention was given to the fact that as the capital inflows persisted those regional differences were eroding–it took the crises of 1997 to reveal that Asia’s exposure to the vagaries of short-term capital was vast. Here we present cross-country evidence that capital controls influence the composition of flows, if not their volume while policies of sterilized intervention influence both volume and composition, skewing flows to the short end of the maturity spectrum. We conclude that Asia’s increasing reliance on short term flows was, in large part, due to the macroeconomic policy response to the initial surge in capital inflows.capital flows controls exchange rates monetary policy stock prices

Unions and the City: Negotiating Urban Change

[Excerpt] Labor unions remain the largest membership-based organizations in major North American cities, even after years of decline. Labor continues to play a vital role in mobilizing urban residents, shaping urban conflict, and crafting the policies and regulations that are transforming our urban spaces. As unions become more involved in the daily life of the city, they find themselves confronting the familiar dilemma of how to fold union priorities into broader campaigns that address nonunion workers and the lives of union members beyond the workplace. If we are right to believe that the future of the labor movement is an urban one, union activists and staffers, urban policymakers, elected officials, and members of the public alike will require a fuller understanding of what impels unions to become involved in urban policy issues, what dilemmas structure the choices unions make, and what impact unions have on the lives of urban residents, beyond their members.Unions and the City serves as a road map toward both a stronger labor movement and a socially just urbanism. The book presents the findings of a collaborative project in which a team of labor researchers and labor geographers based in New York City and Toronto investigated how and why labor unions were becoming more involved in urban regulation and urban planning. The contributors assess the effectiveness of this involvement in terms of labor goals―such as protecting employment levels, retaining bargaining relationships with employers, and organizing new workforces―as well as broader social consequences of union strategies, such as expanding access to public services, improving employment equity, and making neighborhoods more affordable. Focusing on four key economic sectors (film, hospitality, green energy, and child care), this book reveals that unions can exert a surprising level of influence in various aspects of urban policymaking and that they can have a significant impact on how cities are changing and on the experiences of urban residents

The Brownfield Bargain: Negotiating Site Cleanup Policies in Wisconsin

In this paper, the first part of our three-part study on the development of brownfields policy in Wisconsin, we examine the regulatory history of the brownfields policy. We start with the 1978 Hazardous Substance Spill Law, the antecedent to the brownfields regulatory reform of the 1990s, and examine the interaction of policy entrepreneurs in both the public and the private sectors that has led to innovation. We follow this by exploring the response of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to reform efforts, looking at both how it anticipated and led some of the efforts and how it addressed demands placed on it by the state legislature and executive. We then discuss the central role that the state’s Brownfields Study Group has played in moving brownfields cleanup and redevelopment objectives into legislation and the field. We base our work on interviews with nearly 70 individuals from public, private for-profit, private nonprofit, and tribal organizations.brownfields, policy innovation, regulatory history

Letters and Scientific Communities

We enter the debate about the possibility of collaboration and of rich exchanges among physically distant individuals by offering a literacy perspective on communication to show how the dimensions of writing enable the development of scientific communities. We illustrate this perspective with an analysis of the correspondences of one philosopher and one scientist – Descartes and Emilie du Chatelet, as well as with a description of one of the most prominent communities of scientists and philosophers in Europe, the Republic of Letters. Our findings show that writing is essential for the expression and exchange of ideas, abstractions, complex thoughts, demonstrations, arguments – in sum, for the entire scientific enterprise. We discuss the implications of the literacy perspective and of our findings for the current understanding of online intellectual communities.Orality and Literacy; Scientific Communities; Online Communities; Letters; Organizational Communication

What Do We Know about Apartments and Their Markets?

This paper examines major themes in apartment market research. The intent is to provide an overview of academic studies of the apartment market and to outline directions for future research.

China and the crisis : global power, domestic caution and local initiative

Even though the global crisis had a quick and dramatic impact on Chinese exports, the Chinese government responded with a range of policy responses that have helped maintain high rates of growth. This success has helped propel China to the centre of global politics, accelerating what many perceive to be a power shift from the West to China. But these gains were achieved by reversing policy in previous years designed to make a fundamental shift in China‟s mode of development, and have highlighted the problems associated with making such a transition. At the moment that many are looking at the Chinese "model" as a potential alternative to the Washington Consensus, one of the consequences of the crisis is to further question the long term efficacy of this "model" in China itself

New York City\u27s J-51 Program: Controversy and Revision

New York City administers a real estate tax incentive program, called the J-51 program, for eligible building owners who rehabilitate existing structures. Despite the need for such a program, various problems and abuses arose, emphasizing the need for major reform. Economic conditions changed the housing market and the tax incentives demonstrated several deleterious effects which contravene the original legislative intent of the program. After long negotiations surrounding several competing arguments, reforms were made. The current revisions were necessary to correct the abuses and to return the program to its original purpose of providing adequate housing for moderate and lower income families. This goal may be realized by eliminating the award of financial incentives for rehabilitation work performed in specified geographic areas and for the benefit of economic groups for which this type of assistance cannot be justified by considerations of social policy