Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: We integrate into the study of the diffusion of policy innovations the notions of retrospective and prospective decision-making while focusing on the actions of state supreme courts and state legislatures in the area of education finance reform. Thus, we investigate how the changing information environment in states differently affects key institutional actors within states and subsequently also the likelihood of policy change. In addition, we build on the idea of legislatures and courts as prospective and retrospective decision-makers, by considering how the relevant decision context changes during the process of policy change. We test our hypotheses empirically, using event history analysis. Our results indicate that changes in the policy environment affect state courts and legislatures differently. Courts are influenced by retrospective factors, such as the degree of inequality in the state, while legislatures are influenced by prospective factors, such as the adoption of innovations by neighboring states. We argue, however, that the decision-making of courts cannot simply be characterized as retrospective, since the process by which litigation is brought to the court appears in part to be based on prospective considerations.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: An Examination of New York City's System of Public Financing of Political Campaigns After 15 Years of Operation.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper argues that over the past decade financial market and corporate governance changes reveal the emergence of a new form of international finance capitalism. The rise of international finance capitalism, in contrast to the late 19th and early 20th Century variant described variously by Hilferding and Lenin, entails an emerging political economic paradigm of capitalism built on increasingly market-driven national and international financial systems, an expanding class of private investors, the increasing power financial institutions and investment funds, robust and liquid international securities markets, and sophisticated financial services. These features of the economy have developed within-and in tension with-established national institutional arrangements and practices that defined the post-war industrial economies. The regulatory framework of the new finance capitalism facilitates the development and integration of securities markets and the formation of large pools of private investment capital by addressing the fundamental problems of information and power asymmetries within the capital markets and the corporation itself to protect shareholders from fraud, abuse, manipulation, and other forms of rent seeking by corporate insiders. Accordingly, the corporate form and national corporate governance regimes lie at the structural core of the new finance capitalism. The emergence of finance capitalism, however, presents a double paradox. First, the development of this paradigm of international capitalism is rooted in shifts in the interests, policy preferences, and political alignments of domestic (i.e., national) groups and political actors. Second, the development of financial markets and the increasing prevalence and import of market relations, so often linked to the diminution of state power and authority, have been accompanied by a substantial and ongoing expansion of law and prescriptive regulation. The paper argues that these changes domestic are responses to the post-1973 international economic environment, and, in turn, that the regulatory politics of corporate and securities market reform has fed back into the international system by increasing pressures and incentives for international regulatory harmonization and cooperation in creating a framework for functional international securities markets. Yet the development of finance capitalism is unlikely to erase national economic differences. Just as the broad contours of Fordist mass production admitted numerous varieties of capitalism during the post-war era, securities market and corporate governance reforms indicate the development of nationally distinctive forms of finance capitalism. This new paradigm of finance capitalism is developing in nationally distinctive ways, driven by varying political forces, and embodied in national regulatory structures generated through national political and legal institutions.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The growing plethora of financial instruments and mounting volume of speculative financial transactions is considered separate from the real economy and governments. The changing and dynamic structure of financial markets has become the focal point of analysis. The dominant view of global finance within IPE is of a separate space where financial market activities are elite driven and of a highly technical nature. Typically, the growing prominence of financial markets, whether permitted or resisted by states, is seen as eroding the power of states to act. This ‘states vs. markets’ approach emphasizes the unavoidable nature of financial expansion. Finance is depicted as a process whereby nameless and faceless actors have been able to exert change on the existing conditions of life where states, firms, or households can merely adjust in accordance with the will of market actors. This theoretical framework evaluates finance as a personality imbued with distinct needs or interests, which is able to implement a rigid structure that determines action. The concept of financialisation captures key transformations occurring in financial markets and its influence on other economic sectors. Phenomena ranging from the globalization of financial markets, the shareholder revolution and the rise of incomes from financial investment all represent low-level changes in market activity and agent behaviour resulting from the liberalization of financial services. Financialisation isolates emphasizes the integrated nature of global financial markets and evaluates how social actors located at the privileged sites of financial accumulation accrue new political and economic power.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: My presentation will discuss results from a research project I have developed with the intent to introduce an innovative practical issue in all my mathematics courses: teaching finances to undergraduate students enrolled in pharmacy and health care programs. The research project has two goals: first, to teach students basic financial concepts because, as college graduates, they should be able to understand, analyze and apply their knowledge to the many financial problems that arise in life, especially in the light of the present world financial crisis. Second, the project investigates assessment of student learning when civic issues are integrated in mathematics courses. To this end, incorporating financial literacy concepts into Calculus I and Calculus II courses proves to be very easy and valuable. All students immensely benefit from reading and learning about everyday financial issues.