A Matter of Substance, July 2010.

A publication of the IDPH Division of Behavioral Health to find out what's happening with Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment

The Need for International Policy Coordination: What's Old, What's New, What's Yet to Come?

Fifty years ago, the Chicago School argued that flexible exchange rates would insulate employment from foreign economic disturbances: there is no need for policy coordination; flexible exchange rates suffice. Twenty five years later, the Bretton Woods system was gone, and the first generation of policy coordination models was introduced. Chicago School arguments not withstanding, these Old-Keynesian models provided a theoretical rational for policy coordination. Now, a new generation of policy coordination models is emerging. These New-Keynesian models incorporate optimizing households, monopolistic competition and nominal inertia. Here, we examine macroeconomic interdependence and the scope for policy coordination in a tractable second generation model that has received much recent attention. We relate our discussion to the old Chicago School arguments, to earlier analyses of first generation models, to recent empirical work on productivity, and to recent theoretical work on closed economy models. We conclude that second generation models may have more scope for policy coordination than did the first, and we identify the empirical work that is needed to give a serious answer to the question.

What's the matter with realism?

International relations, as an academic discipline, is not known for its strength in the area of theory. It has no immediate equivalent to the rich contrasts of perspective generated in sociology by the legacy of Max Weber, Marx and Durkheim—a lack so felt that Martin Wight once wrote a paper called ‘Why is there no International Theory?’ His own answer was, in part, that there is nothing further to theorize after the discovery of the repetitive mechanisms of the balance of power. This was a sad conclusion for such an acute and creative mind to reach. But it does illustrate a central feature of IR theory. For the balance of power, it can be argued, is the limit of any Realist theory of international relations. And Wight's conclusion was perhaps more an index of the dominance of a Realist orthodoxy than a relection of the inherent properties of ‘the international’

Arts Funding Snapshot: GIA's Annual Research on Support for Arts and Culture, 2011

Includes: Foundation Grants to Arts and Culture, 2009: A One-year Snapshot, Public Funding for the Arts: 2011 Update, State Arts Agencies in the FY2012 Legislative Session: Challenges, Headlines, What's Working, and How Are Private Funders Responding to Cuts in Public Funding

What's the matter with realism?

International relations, as an academic discipline, is not known for its strength in the area of theory. It has no immediate equivalent to the rich contrasts of perspective generated in sociology by the legacy of Max Weber, Marx and Durkheim—a lack so felt that Martin Wight once wrote a paper called ‘Why is there no International Theory?’ His own answer was, in part, that there is nothing further to theorize after the discovery of the repetitive mechanisms of the balance of power. This was a sad conclusion for such an acute and creative mind to reach. But it does illustrate a central feature of IR theory. For the balance of power, it can be argued, is the limit of any Realist theory of international relations. And Wight's conclusion was perhaps more an index of the dominance of a Realist orthodoxy than a relection of the inherent properties of ‘the international’

News and Notes

Moai Sightings What's New in the Pacific What's New in Hanga Roa</p

The part-time pay penalty.

Women working part-time in the UK have hourly earnings that are on average 26 percent less than women working fulltime. Alan Manning and Barbara Petrongolo investigate what's behind this part-time pay penalty.