Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This study concerns the prevalence of public charter schools in school districts across the United States. We combine several publicly available datasets and employ several advanced statistical techniques—in particular hierarchical linear modeling—to estimate the relationship between several state and district-level factors and the availability of charter schools. We find that the most important predictors of the probability that school districts operate charter schools are characteristics of the states within which the districts are located. The nature of state charter laws is perhaps the key predictor of charter presence, as are indicators such as the state's size and poverty rate. At the district level, the size of the student population and the percentage of white students in the student body appear to influence the presence or absence of charter schools. In our most advanced models, teacher unionization also significantly predicts district's charter operation. Taken together, the results of this paper contribute both to current literature on the topic of school choice, and suggest several promising avenues for future research.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Political efficacy has been the subject of much inquiry in politics. This study diverges from the mainstream, because it concerns itself with not only the levels of citizen's efficacy, but also with how these levels differ in a federal system.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The difficulties encountered with sharing and negotiating a common resource, like water, are well known. The growing field of transboundary water governance emphasizes that the process of establishing and implementing international cooperation over trans

Publication Type: Student Paper
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Let P be a set of n points in the plane. Draw all segments joining pairs of points in P. We are interested in the number of segment-intersections, or crossings, in such a drawing. For a fixed n, the problem of minimizing the number of crossings over all sets of n points in the plane is a famous unsolved problem in Combinatorial Geometry. We classify all sets of n points according to the sizes of their convex layers and consider the minimum number of crossings over sets within the same class. We present our best constructions providing general upper bounds for sets with two layers, and exact values for small n.

This research was sponsored by CURM.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The integration of environmental goals into polluting sectors and a long-term oriented governance for ecological sustainable development requires both policy innovations on different levels of policy-making and joint problem solving. As existing approaches to the management of persistent problems show, the sub-national level and intergovernmental cooperation can become more important in the future. The paper will focus on forms of intergovernmental cooperation targeted on the management of persistent problems in the federal systems of Germany and the USA. Regarding Germany interactions with the supranational EU level will be taken into consideration. The driving forces behind the concerted problem-solving will be considered.