EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY AND THE CARTER ADMINISTRATION: AN ANALYSIS OF REORGANIZATION OPTIONS

Responding to his 1976 campaign pledge, President Carter has reorganized the federal government's enforcement of equal employment opportunity(EEO) laws. He has done so by shifting some EEO responsibilities from the Civil Service Commission and the Department of Labor to create a “Super-EEOC”. This article examines why President Carter chose the EEO reorganization that he did from the standpoint of advantages and disadvantages. Also presented are alternative reform options that the President could have selected that would have involved increasing EEO coordination or reorganization entailing new legislation that would have gone far beyond the creation of a “Super-EEOC.”     

THE POLICY PROCESS AND ORGANIZATIONAL FORM

In this paper the transactions cost approach (TCA) is used to define organizations and to predict their forms under certain conditions. Next, Aaron Wildavsky's approach is used to define the policy process and to predict its form in particular organizations. Two assertions follow: namely, that the most efficient organizational form may be predicted from knowledge of underlying transactions costs, and that the form of the policy process in an organization can be predicted from knowledge of the organization's form (regardless of whether it is the most efficient form). Recent natural gas policy in the U.S.A. is used to illustrate these propositions, and several conclusions are offered about 1) the potential applicability of the TCA to the public sector and to the policy process and 2) about the potential applicability of Wildavsky's version of the policy process to differing organizational forms.     

CARTER AND HUMAN RIGHTS: ADMINISTRATIVE IMPACT OF A SYMBOLIC POLICY

Analyses of foreign policy impact seldom take into account the domestic and symbolic consequences of implementation. This study begins with the assumption that since President Carter's human rights policy is largely an exercise in symbolic politics, the criteria for understanding its impact have more to do with the impression than with substantive improvement in human rights. Implementation to date has been felt primarily in administrative adjustments and revisions, not on concrete achievements in human rights around the world. While in terms of substantive criteria the impact of the policy has been minimal, in terms of increased bureaucratic visibility and other symbolic responses, the policy's implementation can be considered successful.     

FULL EMPLOYMENT AS A POLICY ISSUE

Passage of the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act of 1978 is the most recent step in the development of a national full employment policy. This article traces the origin of the legislative debate over full employment back to the 1940s, the only previous time that Congress gave serious consideration to full employment legislation. It analyzes the conflicting economic and political interests and philosophies that led to the defeat of the Full Employment Bill of 1945 and to passage of weaker legislation, the Employment Act of 1946, which dropped the commitment to full employment. The article then traces the contours of unemployment since World War II: recurrent recessions; significant unemployment between recessions; the unequal distribution of joblessness, hitting hardest at groups such as minorities, women, and youths; and growing urban and regional unemployment. Some of the hidden social, human and economic costs of unemployment are explored. So is the relationship between unemployment and crime, poverty, welfare, the urban crisis and inequality. Full employment reemerged as a major issue in the 1970s because of the impetus from groups whose unemployment problems persist between recessions. Coalitions of these groups pressed for a national policy to secure full employment for all groups. This led to passage of the Humphrey-Hawkins Act. But the controversy over full employment has not ended. Attempts to implement the Act, the article concludes, may heighten underlying controversies over issues such as inflation, wage, price and profit controls, the environment, and job creation and may make full employment one of the leading domestic issues of the 1980s.     

THE IMPACT OF ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY, AMENITIES AND FISCAL FACTORS ON AGE-SPECIFIC MIGRATION RATES

ABSTRACT. Migration models have considered several different categories of determinants, including economic opportunities, amenities, and state and local fiscal factors. Migration has also been shown to depend on the individual's position in the life cycle. This paper represents a first attempt to integrate all three categories of determinants of migration into a life-cycle framework. Empirical findings generated from a countrywide model of white male migration, over the period 1970 to 1980, reveal that all three types of determinants are important. Specifically, economic opportunities are most influential for males during their working years. Amenities are also found to follow a life-cycle pattern with older migrants more attracted to amenable locations than their younger cohorts. Finally, state income and death taxes display life-cycle effects; working males in their peak earning years are detracted by high income taxes while all migrants aged 55 to 69 avoid counties in states with high inheritance and estate taxes.     

ANALYZING POLICY IMPACT: SELECTION OF A LINEAR TREND MODEL

Policy analysts, as well as politicians, have shown great interest in assessing both short-term and long-term consequences of public policies in recent years. Recent time-trend studies have attempted to depict the time dimension of policy consequences through extensions of regression techniques. This study examines three linear trend models which have been used to depict policy impact through time-series analyses, and identifies the relative advantages and disadvantages associated with the use of each model. The three models are applied in a quasi-experimental time-series design to time-series of per capita state expenditures for large cities, in eight states, over a twenty-year period. Differences in degrees of multicollinearity and autocorrelation inherent in the three models are discussed, and the model providing the most conservative coefficient estimates is identified.     

THE BUILD-UP AND DURATION OF SUBSIDY-INDUCED EMPLOYMENT EVIDENCE FROM U.K. REGIONAL POLICY*

ABSTRACT. The paper takes microlevel data on U.K. regional policy instruments and other financial assistance payments to industry to examine the time profile of assisted employment up to five years after the date of assistance. The theoretical analysis indicates factors bearing on the employment effect of industrial assistance and highlights the possibly key role played by the firm's access to private funds. The results from the regression analysis indicate that both the build-up and duration of subsidy-induced jobs vary between assistance form and firm, and that assistance is generally ineffective in large firms. Elsewhere, assisted jobs accumulate over a period of three years, but then are lost to policy at high rates.     

THE IMPACT OF SPECIFIC-SECTOR CHANGES IN EMPLOYMENT ON ECONOMIC GROWTH, LABOR MARKET PERFORMANCE AND MIGRATION

ABSTRACT.  It is common in empirical regional economics to use total employment as an explanatory variable while investigating issues such as the level and distribution of income and migration. This paper argues that sector-specific changes in employment and labor market performance can have different effects on economic growth, the collection of tax revenue, migration, and the level and distribution of household income. As such, it is important to model sectors separately. We find that expansions in employment opportunities for a high-wage sector such as computer manufacturing or bioengineering, a medium-wage sector manufacturing, and the lower-wage sector of retailing have differing economic consequences for a small city. We use a data intensive computable general equilibrium model to obtain these results.     

POLICY COMMUNITIES: THE BRITISH AND EUROPEAN POLICY STYLE

It seems possible to formulate broad characterizations of the British and European policy processes in terms of the relationship between government and interest groups. There is a preferred type of machinery in Britain, reflecting normative values, which is to avoid electoral politics and public conflict in order to reach consensus or “accommodation” in the labyrinth of consultative machinery. This style is aptly labelled “bureaucratic accommodation” and is a system in which the dominant actors are groups and government departments. Departments readily recognize the “relevant” groups in a given policy area and seek to mobilize the community around agreed policies. The predilection for the avoidance of conflict seems equally apparent in other Western European nations.