Using Public-Private Partnerships to Develop Local Economies

Throughout the 1980s, states experimented with enterprise zone programs aimed at alleviating fiscal distress in urban areas, by promoting the growth of private business. Together, public and private sectors supposedly function as partners to improve employment opportunities, especially for disadvantaged residents in designated zone areas. Today, however, questions continue to be raised regarding the impact of enterprise zone programs on financially depressed areas. This research provides a detailed investigation of the economic activities undertaken in the Kansas City and Cuba, Missouri enterprise zones to determine if a comparative employment advantage exists, and whether zone businesses fulfill their responsibilities with respect to hiring and training disadvantaged workers. The types of businesses attracted to the Kansas City and Cuba enterprise zones are identified to determine if either community has engaged in smokestack chasing. Finally, an urban-rural comparison is offered to help illuminate various factors affecting enterprise zone functions, including job creation capacity, in different socioeconomic settings.     

The Effects of Mayoral Power on Urban Fiscal Policy

Can mayors of American cities overcome the enormous constraints of environmental forces to exert some control over municipal spending priorities? Despite case study evidence suggesting that mayors can and do influence public policy making, the expectation of this research was that mayoral power in a comparative research design likely would not have a pronounced effect on city spending. Using multiple regression techniques and various socioeconomic, demographic, and political variables, the analysis indeed showed that mayoral strength was not a significant predictor of municipal expenditures for 1987. The findings also revealed only slight differences in the way the mayoral power variable operated when cities were divided by city government form (mayor-council vs. council-manager). The research did demonstrate that mayoral power was most likely to be effective in controlling city spending among localities having partisan ballots.     

Postclassic expansion of Mesoamerican biocultural characteristics into Sonora,Mexico

Recent excavations at the Postclassic period (circa a.d. 1000–1521) mortuary mound of El Cementerio (SON P:10:8), located along the Río Yaqui in central Sonora, Mexico, have documented 105 mortuary features (111 individuals) many of which display elongated intentional cranial modification and several cases of tooth filing. These constitute biocultural traits common across much of Mesoamerica throughout its Prehispanic cultural sequence, which expanded along West Mexico and into northwest Mexico beginning in the late Classic period. The examples from El Cementerio represent the northernmost concentrated expression of these traits and could represent the spread of Mesoamerican/West Mexican identity associated with macro-regional trade and the expansion of the Aztatlán archaeological tradition during the Postclassic period in the region.