Policy Bubbles

We develop the concept of a policy bubble to capture the notion of long‐term overinvestment in a policy. In sketching the relation of policy bubbles to economic bubbles, we describe how these two concepts have similar origins but different trajectories because they are filtered by different institutions. We examine in some detail three likely instances of ongoing policy bubbles: crime policy, school reform (charter schools and private education vouchers), and the contracting and privatization of public services. We show how these cases differ from the housing bubble of 1997–2007, how they differ from each other, and the extent to which they can be considered policy bubbles. Last, we suggest this concept can help unify the policy process literature with the practice of policy evaluation and outline testable hypotheses for future research.     

Rising Second Home Numbers in Rural Ireland: Distribution,Drivers and Implications

This article highlights a marked growth in the number of second homes in Ireland since the mid-1990s, which is concentrated in the rural and coastal parts of the peripheral Border, Midwest, Southeast, Southwest and West regions, together with parallel growth in the number of long-term vacant dwellings in these regions. These phenomena are linked to economic and population growth, the “laissez faire” nature of land use planning in rural Ireland, the generous fiscal treatment of housing, as well as tax incentives to encourage house building in economically marginal areas. The social and economic impacts of these dwelling on individual localities vary, depending on their number, usage patterns and the nature of the local economy and housing market. However, their environmental consequences are largely negative as is their impact on the national economy and on the economies of those regions where vacant dwellings are concentrated. Thus, our research questions the value of housing-led rural development, as they can result in excessive output of vacant and second homes and highlights the importance of adequately resourcing planning authorities if the worst excesses of rural housing overdevelopment are to be avoided.     

Troubadours in Debate: The Breviari d'Amor

Matfre Ermengaud's thirteenth-century Occitan encyclopedia, the Breviari d'Amor, concludes with a treatise on courtly love, the “Perilhos tractat d'amor de donas segon que han tractat li antic trobador en lors cansos.” In this treatise, the chief figures of courtly love—the lovers, ladies, troubadours, and maldizen, with Matfre as narrator and participant—dispute key tenets of love, quoting frequently from numerous troubadour lyrics in order to prove their arguments. In fact, the “Perilhos tractat” presents quotations of troubadour lyric in a disputative manner so as to highlight the troubadours as themselves in debate, although the Breviari purports to be structured by the overarching principle of love dictated by the visual mnemonic metaphor of the Tree of Love. This study examines the quotations of the troubadour lyrics here as dialectical, then, rather than as expressing and confirming a unitary vision of Natural Love. The “Perilhos tractat” is a debate not simply on love but also on the understanding and reception of the troubadours more broadly; that is, Matfre's dialectical use of troubadour lyric generates a broader debate about the meaning of the troubadours’ lyrics and their poetic legacy in the late thirteenth century.     

Regional Wage Rigidity: The European Union and United States Compared

In recent years it has been pointed out that regional unemployment disparities are much more entrenched across member states of the European Union (E.U.) than they are in the U.S. A 'conventional wisdom' has emerged to the effect that this difference is due in part to the greater degree of wage rigidity in E.U. regions. In this paper we explore this issue by estimating short run and long run real wage (in)flexibility for the regions in five core E.U. countries (Germany, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands) and for the U.S. states for the period 1976–1994. We find that real wage (in)flexibility varies across regions both in the E.U. and the U.S., but that, on average, regional wages are no less flexible in E.U. core regions than in U.S. states. The paper also examines some of the possible correlates ofregional variations in wage (in)flexibility.