Better Boulevard Analytics

69A3551747111The study analyzes existing conditions, reports findings, and makes preliminary recommendations for how the boulevard, a streetcar suburb era Main Street, can become safer, and more equitable. The team\u2019s approach included urban design and planning tools of literature review, engagement with community partners, and mapping, analysis, and design concept iteration, together with the techniques of camera installation and computer vision data analysis. Together, this information and analysis provided the basis for prioritized recommendations for improved opportunities for making more trips by walking, rolling, biking, and transit. Shaler\u2019s pattern of a long, historic main street in a suburban residential context\u2014often with a constricted roadway with limited space dominated by vehicular travel lanes and roadway shoulders\u2013is a mobility and urban design case study relevant to numerous communities in Southwestern Pennsylvania and nationally

Property and Contract Rights in Autocracies and Democracies

We present and test empirically a new theory of property and contract rights. Any incentive an autocrat has to respect such rights comes from his interest in future tax collections and national income and increases with his planning horizon. We find a compelling empirical relationship between property and contract rights and an autocrat's time in power. In lasting -- but not in new -- democracies, the same rule of law and individual rights that ensure continued free elections entail extensive property and contract rights. We show that the age of a democratic system is strongly correlated with property and contract rights

Democracy Does Not Cause Growth:The Importance of Endogeneity Arguments

This article challenges recent findings that democracy has sizable effects on economic growth. As extensive political science research indicates that economic turmoil is responsible for causing or facilitating many democratic transitions, the paper focuses on this endogeneity concern. Using a worldwide survey of 165 country-specific democracy experts conducted for this study, the paper separates democratic transitions into those occurring for reasons related to economic turmoil, here called endogenous, and those grounded in reasons more exogenous to economic growth. The behavior of economic growth following these more exogenous democratizations strongly indicates that democracy does not cause growth. Consequently, the common positive association between democracy and economic growth is driven by endogenous democratization episodes (i.e., due to faulty identification)

Social humanities

xvi, 314 p.; 23 cm