Change.gov represents President-elect Obama’s efforts to involve everyone in his efforts to change government. Can this approach work?
{Note to self — study this}
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Increasing Access — Enhancing Public Values to Increase Market Value
Filed under Government, Uncategorized
Recession – Market Failure?
a search using the terms “is recession market failure” referred someone to this site.
It is a question to study — and to discuss whether public values failure contributed to the market failure.
Filed under Economies, Uncategorized
Market Failure — Lack of Public Information
Websites that dig for news as watchdogs
As newspapers fade away, their business model is no longer viable, a new model is appearing to provide news about your governments. The article mentions several websites that display the work of these “watchdogs” :
There is one in Atlanta, not mentioned, voic.us.
The article does frame the market failure surrounding the demise of traditional news organizations. I call it a market failure because the market has yet to provide a substitute mechanism to keep citizens informed. Thought, I could be persuaded to say this is also a public value failure as the public does not seem inclined to invest time (to read and contemplate information on their government and society) nor resources (money to pay for subscriptions). I guess this is similar to the argument over who is to blame for the demise of American auto companies — the companies for failing to adapt to new types of autos or the public for not demanding American automakers make more fuel efficient and compact vehicles.
From the article:
Mr. Woolley says he has become convinced that the nonprofit model has the best chance of survival. “Information is now a public service as much as it’s a commodity,” he said. “It should be thought of the same way as education, health care. It’s one of the things you need to operate a civil society, and the market isn’t doing it very well.”
Interestingly, Rupert Murdoch says that the news of the death of newspapers is premature:
“The newspaper, or a very close electronic cousin, will always be around,” he said. “It may not be thrown on your front doorstep the way it is today. But the thud it makes as it lands will continue to echo around society and the world.”
So, will the newspaper morph to an electronic cousin?
Filed under Uncategorized
When Past meets Present — Or, how prices fall up quicker than they fall down!
Aug. 8, 2005 — Oil hit a record high of $64. Gasoline hit a record high as well at $1.86 per gallon.
Oct. 27, 2008 — Oil falls below $64. Gasoline is currently priced at national average pf $2.66.
Remember when the price at the pump reacted to the mere news of an increase in spot prices? (Yeah, just last month). That kind of responsiveness is missing today… wonder why? 
[Source of data is AAA]
Filed under Uncategorized
Market Failure – Theory vs. Reality
Greenspan admits he has found a flaw in the theory many believe to be immutable law:
“I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such as that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms,” Mr. Greenspan said.
Referring to his free-market ideology, Mr. Greenspan added: “I have found a flaw. I don’t know how significant or permanent it is. But I have been very distressed by that fact.”
Mr. Waxman pressed the former Fed chair to clarify his words. “In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right, it was not working,” Mr. Waxman said.
“Absolutely, precisely,” Mr. Greenspan replied. “You know, that’s precisely the reason I was shocked, because I have been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well.”
When evidence (fact) is presented that contradicts one’s belief system, one ignores the evidence.
Filed under Uncategorized
Great quote
From the category of “don’t take your discipline so seriously”:
- The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.
[Taken from QuotationsPage.Com]
Filed under Uncategorized
Market Failure — applications of principal agent theory
Just some thoughts that need expanding:
The collapse of the financial systems provides demonstrations of how the assymetry of information can undermine the foundation of a sound, efficient market system. Evidence of adverse selection (principal lacks sufficient information to select the best agent) and moral hazard (principal lacks information necessary to understand whether the agent is performing as contracted). Self-regulation clearly struggles to meet these two challenges, and that is where public interest, and public value, justify public intervention into market regulation.
Washington Post analysis on the possibel demise of American style Capitalism describes the failures:
Given that the United States has held itself up as a global economic model, the change could shift the balance of how governments around the globe conduct free enterprise. Over the past three decades, the United States led the crusade to persuade much of the world, especially developing countries, to lift the heavy hand of government from finance and industry.
But the hands-off brand of capitalism in the United States is now being blamed for the easy credit that sickened the housing market and allowed a freewheeling Wall Street to create a pool of toxic investments that has infected the global financial system. Heavy intervention by the government, critics say, is further robbing Washington of the moral authority to spread the gospel of laissez-faire capitalism.
Filed under Uncategorized
Market Failure – a recession
WSJ economists have now uttered the R word:
This is the first time that survey forecasts for those periods have turned negative. If those predictions bear out, it would mark the first time U.S. GDP—the total value of goods and services produced—has contracted for three consecutive quarters in more than a half century. Economists put the odds of recession in the next 12 months at 89%, up from 60% in last month’s survey.
Filed under Uncategorized
Lots of dust around here
A blog just waits patiently til the muse appears.
Filed under Uncategorized
STEM Question Jan 15 V1 Jt
Research Question
Ravtosh Bal
Jim Flowers
Fang Xiao
Rough Draft
In the past 5 years, two separate efforts to improve the performance of Georgia students in STEM subjects have been executed by the Georgia Department of Education and the University System of Georgia with minimal cooperation or collaboration. This apparent conflict between two separately administered programs attempting to improve performance of k12 students in stem subjects gives rise to the question: can national STEM goals be realized at the local school system level? In other words, does STEM policy matter at the local level? If not, can the policy ever be successful?
Procedures
Our data sources regarding the USG project would include interviews of the primary investigator, k12 participants, students, and data from educational outcome measures such as educational scorecards. Data regarding the State DOE effort would include interviews of the state school superintendent, program managers for math and science curriculum reform, members of the state school board association, and sample of teachers and students. Performance data is available from the State DOE on normal scorecard measures.
Cases focusing on two counties: one which participated in the NSF funded USG project and one that did not will be conducted as part of a comparative strategy.
Further description of programs to be analyzed
Units of the University System of Georgia have been engaged in a multi-year, multi-disciplinary, multi-million dollar NSF funded initiative designed to improve STEM outcomes in K12 students. One goal was to increase the responsiveness of higher education to K12 needs including, but not limited to, appropriate education and support of teachers and teacher candidates, reform of science and math curricula, promotion of STEM subjects among parents and students, and so forth. The program is now nearing the end of its funding (6 years) so now is the time to ask the question by analyzing data from the perspective of the higher ed institutions, the k12 systems, k12 teachers, and k12 students. However, K12 administrators were busy reforming science and math curricula without direct participation of higher education institutions. Circumstances in Georgia offer an opportunity to assess this intervention as a natural experiment given that not all k12 systems were chosen to participate in the NSF funded intervention. Thus state effects will be constant between the systems that participated in the program and those that did not.
Filed under Uncategorized
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