Bøger udgivet af Brookings Institution Press

"To consider the problems of high litigation costs and delay that burden both plaintiffs and defendants, average citizens and large corporations, Senator Joseph R. Biden, Jr., Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, suggested in August 1988 the formation of a working conference of natural competitors in the legal system. In response, the Brookings Institution and the Foundation for Change invited leading litigators from the plaintiffs' and defense bar; civil and women's rights, consumer, and environmental lawyers; representatives of the insurance industry; general counsels of major corporations; former judges; and law professors from throughout the United States to analyze these issues and develop a set of concrete recommendations for procedural reform.The 36 members of the working group, together with the Rand Corporation's Institute for Civil Justice, which served as a technical consultant, met at Brookings six times between September 1988 and June 1989. In conjunction with the conference, the Foundation for Change commissioned Louis Harris and Associates to conduct a major survey of over 1,000 federal trial judges and litigators on their views about procedural reform.The recommendations in this report are significant not only because they are comprehensive in scope but also because of the diverse group of individuals who stand united behind them. The report reflects a consensus that a comprehensive program for civil justice reform can be successfully implemented and that such reform can significantly reduce litigation costs and delay."

The momentous changes in the Soviet Union brought about by glasnost' and perestroyka have far-reaching implications that continue to grip the attention of the international community. This volume and its companion volume, The Economy, feature research and analysis of the significant events in the development of the revolutionary reforms in the Soviet Union-from the beginning stage, through the period of great euphoria, to the recent troubled times. Ed A. Hewitt, founding editor of Soviet Economy and formerly a senior fellow at Brookings, is now Special Assistant to the President on National Security Affairs and Senior Director of Soviet Affairs at the National Security Council. Victor H. Winston is an adjunct professor of international affairs at George Mason University and coeditor of Soviet Economy.

"In this book, Ed A. Hewett provides a detailed, scholarly guide that analyzes Soviet economic reforms."

Each year, millions of American families struggle with the expense of higher education. For the past fifty years, the U.S. government has helped students and families pay for college; but with the entire domestic policy agenda in flux, federal aid to education hangs in the balance. This book analyzes government policies for helping students pay for education beyond high school. It is being published at a time when aid to education is a prominent issue in battles over the federal budget and policymakers are debating the need for and effectiveness of federal student assistance programs. Starting with the post-World War II GI Bill, the book reviews the 50-year history of federal student aid legislation, assesses the results, and identifies trends and problems that cloud the future of this critically important national effort. The authors draw on the thinking of the country's top experts in examining the rationale and structure of the student aid system and how it might more effectively expand college opportunities while ensuring educational quality. Their analysis encourages policymakers to consider the multiple objectives of government aid-not just getting more students into college, but promoting student success and degree completion. The book offers a framework for future policy debates aimed at improving a system vital to America's economic future and its continued promise of opportunity. Copublished with the College Board / Dialogue on Public Policy

"Oil stands alone among primary commodities in its potential for sending economic shock waves across the world. The value of oil production is one and a half times the world's total production of food grains; demand is unresponsive to price in the short run; and the world's oil resources are heavily concentrated in the Middle East, where political disturbances have been chronic and oil supply is subject to sudden interruption. Together, these factors have made oil a virtual rogue elephant in the world economy since 1973.This book discusses the oil shocks of 1973-74, 1979-80, and the ""minishock"" of 1990-91, and examines the possibility of oil shocks over the next twenty years. The authors assess the world market outlook on the basis of underlying trends on world oil supply and demand. They take into account prospects for investment in oil production in the Persian Gulf states, the former Soviet republics, and Latin America; environmental factors and policies; and political uncertainties in the Middle East."

"This volume is the record of a conference held in March 1989 that centered on a departure from the basic U.S. policy toward the long-standing problem of third world debt.Secretary of the Treasury Nicholas Brady took the occasion of the conference to announce that officially sponsored reduction of debt principal and debt interest should henceforth be an integral part of debt strategy. Promptly labeled the Brady Plan, the secretary's statement has since been the subject of extensive debate at home and abroad. Now that it has been given official sanction, debt service reduction has become an inescapable feature of the ongoing effort to manage and resolve the debt problem.This volume considers the implications of introducing debt and debt service reduction into the preexisting menu of policies and, more specifically, to suggest the conditions under which it can be expected to hasten the removal of the third world debt problem from the international economic agenda."

"Nearly everyone agrees that the nation's health care system needs to be reformed. By mid-1994 over a half-dozen major reform plans were under consideration in Congress. But beyond the political challenge of passing a reform package lies an even bigger challenge-how to make health reform work!Critics of the Clinton plan have charged that it's too complex and doomed to administrative failure. Are they right? The nation's health care finance and delivery systems are already immensely complex and problem-ridden. Is it possible to achieve meaningful reforms without adopting new administrative strategies and structures that are equally complex? What role do the states now play in administering the nation's health care system? Is it possible to design administrative success into national health reform plans from the start?Produced in close consultation with state health care officials from all around the country, this important volume offers practical and timely recommendations for how to make health reform work. It addresses the central implementation, management, and federalism dimensions of reform. Chapters by some of the country's leading health policy and public management experts explore the administrative challenges of reform as they relate to health alliances, cost containment, quality of care, medical education and training, and other key issues. They discuss various working principles for developing an administratively sound health reform policy.The contributors are Lawrence D. Brown and Michael Sparer, Columbia University; Gerald Garvey, Princeton University; Donald F. Kettl, University of Wisconsin-Madison; James R. Tallon, United Hospital Fund; James W. Fossett and Frank J. Thompson, State University of New York, Albany."

"An estimated 25 million people worldwide are internally displaced-a significantly larger population than the 18 million refugees. Victims of civil wars, forced relocation, communal violence, natural and ecological disasters, and gross violations of human rights, they lack such human necessities as food, shelter, clothing, safety, basic health, and education. But because they remain inside their countries, they don't receive the same protection and assistance from the international community as those who cross borders and become refugees. Their plight, however, is drawing increasing international attention.In March 1992, Francis Deng was appointed Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General to study this harrowing situation. In this book, a substantially revised version of his report to the UN, Deng examines the causes and consequences of internal displacement, the legal standards for protection and assistance, enforcement mechanisms, the prevailing conditions in the affected countries, and the urgent need for an international response.In a compelling first-person narrative, Protecting the Dispossessed follows Deng's investigation and is based on interviews and information from governments, international organizations, individuals, and visits to several countries in Europe, Africa, and Latin America.Deng argues that sovereignty entails a responsibility to ensure the safety and welfare of the citizens and to protect fundamental human rights; the international community must uphold this standard and make violators accountable. While he acknowledges that steps are being taken in the right direction, he maintains that there is still much to be done. He presents a bold proposal, one that requires substantial changes in the international system, in the politics of major governments, and in the relations between states. He proposes a three-phase strategy aimed at monitoring conditions worldwide: to detect impending crises, ale"

"For nearly a decade, international efforts to combat famine and food shortages around the globe have concentrated on the critical situations in sub-Saharan Africa. In the Sudan, the largest country in Africa, prolonged drought, complicated by civil strife and debilitating economic problems, has caused widespread human suffering. The Sudan illustrates the proverbial worst-case scenario in which urgent food needs have been denied, food has been used as a weapon, and outside assistance has been obstructed.The Challenges of Famine Relief focuses on the two famine emergencies in the Sudan in the 1980s-the great African drought-related famine of 1984-86 and the conflict-related famine that afflicted the southern Sudan in 1988-91. Francis Deng and Larry Minear analyze the historical and political setting and the response by Sudan authorities and the international community.The book outlines four problem areas exemplified in the response to each crisis: the external nature of famine relief, the relationship between relief activities and endemic problems, the coordination of such activities, and the ambivalence of the results.The authors identify the many difficulties inherent in providing emergency relief to populations caught in circumstances of life-threatening famine. They show how such famine emergencies reflect the most extreme breakdown of social order and present the most compelling imperatives for international action. Deng and Minear also discuss how the international community, alerted by the media and mobilized by the Ethiopian famine, moved to fill the moral void left by the government and how outside organizations worked together to pressure Sudan's political authorities to be more responsive to these tragedies.Looking ahead, the authors highlight the implications for future involvement in humanitarian initiatives in a new world order. As recent developments in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union demonstrate, s"

"The rapid pace of technological change is placing the world's telephone companies in a very difficult position. Fiber optics cables, wireless telephones, digital signal compression, and sophisticated new switching equipment are lowering the cost of providing service and opening the gates to new competition. At the same time, these new technologies are providing the telephone companies with a wide array of new market opportunities. Unfortunately, their status as regulated carriers makes it difficult to exploit these new opportunities and to fend off competitive assaults on their traditional telephone business. As long as they are regulated, they can be accused of using their monopoly services to cross-subsidize new competitive ventures. But partial deregulation and open entry would be a catastrophe for them unless they were allowed to revise their rate structure.There is a widespread misconception that the U.S. telecommunications industry has been ""deregulated"" and that Canadian authorities are following the U.S. lead. In fact, most services remain regulated, even though some markets, such as long-distance services, equipment sales and rentals, and local services, have been opened up. This book reviews the recent changes in the structure of U.S. and Canadian telecommunications industries and the changes in regulatory policy on both sides of the border. The authors analyze the effects of these changes in regulation on telephone rates in both the local and long-distance markets with particular emphasis on the impacts of regulatory reforms and competition on long-distance rates. They use their results to suggest how regulation should be structured to allow competition to replace monopoly on the road to the information superhighway.The authors contend that for decades misguided regulation of the telephone sector in both Canada and the U.S. denied consumers the benefits of competition, distorted local and long-distance telephone rates, and blocked en"

"The U.S. telecommunications industry has undergone dramatic changes in recent years that have touched almost every American home and business. The average American can dial almost anywhere in the world directly, store and forward a message, or transmit a fax in less than a minute; often for less than the real cost of a 500-mile telephone call tweny-five years ago. The combination of telecommunications breakthroughs, competition among new and old carriers, and the AT&T breakup has transformed the telephone industry and provided customers with a new array of equipment and services.Robert W. Crandall examines the effects of the AT&T breakup and weighs the costs and benefits to the residential and business consumer. On balance, he finds that the efficiency gains from opening up the telephone industry have more than offset the possible efficiency losses, which may be caused by the sacrifice of economies of scale and scope or the absence of fully compatible equipment and services. The replacement of regulation with competition has led to greater productivity in the telephone industry, a more efficient rate structure, and lower equipment prices.Crandall traces the telecommunications evolution from its early beginnings as pairs of copper wires up through the historic 1982 decision to divest. He investigates the impact of technological changes, competition, and the advent of divestiture on the quality of service, local and interexchange service rates, productive efficiency, and income distribution. He also focuses on problems that linger after the breakup in the increasingly competitive but highly regulated sector."

"Now, in this firsthand look at school reform in Great Britain, John E. Chubb and Terry M. Moe show how the landmark Education Reform Act of 1988 imposed a radically new framework on British education-a framework built on the same types of reforms that American activists have been proposing for years: school-based management, choice, and accountability. The authors assess the sucess of the British experience with school choice and contends that it can well serve as a model for American school reform."

"Politicians, journalists, and the public have expressed rising concern about the decline-or percieved decline-in middle-class jobs. The U.S. work force is viewed as increasingly divided between a prosperous minority that enjoys ever-rising wages and a less affluent majority that struggles harder each year to make ends meet.To determine whether and why this view of the job market is accurate, labor market economists anaylze trends in the distribution of jobs and wages over the past two decades and attempt to forecast the future course of American earnings inequality.McKinley L. Blackburn, David E. Bloom, and Richard B. Freeman assess the reasons behind the deterioration of earnings and job opportunities among less skilled men. They consider the impact of changes in industrial structure, declines in unionization, and trends in the level and quality of schooling for men who have limited skills and education. Gary Burtless examines the effect of the business cycle, within and across different regions of the United States, on earnings inequality and analyzes the effects of demographic change on inequality over the past twenty years. Rebecca M. Blank studies the rise of part-time employment and its impact on wages, fringe benefits, and the quality of jobs.Linda Dachter Loury focuses on the effect of the baby boom and baby bust on demand for schooling among new labor market entrants. If young entrants are discouraged from seeking college training by the high cost or low payoff of schooling, the long-term impact will be a gradual decline in the skills of the U.S. work force.Robert Mofitt analyzes the effect of welfare state programs on the growth of low-wage jobs, and the extent to which the welfare reforms of the eighties have affected low-income workers."

"With the increasing integration of the major economies of the world, trade frictions have also increased. The Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations, once scheduled for completion in December 1990, has been slowed over the issue of agricultural subsidies. The U.S.-Japanese trade relations have continued to be a source of friction between the two countries. At issue in all these disputes is whether the United States and other countries are playing ""fairly"" in the international trade arena.The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) outlines a variety of rules designed to ensure fairness. The United States, like other GATT signatories, has enacted statutes designed, for the most part, to be consistent with the GATT requirements.In this book, Richard Boltuck and Robert E. Litan, joined by a team of attorneys and economists with direct experience in ""unfair trade"" practice investigations, provide the first study of how one of the U.S. governmental agencies charged with implementing the U.S. laws governing unfair trade-the Department of Commerce-has actually discharged its statutory mission. In particular, the book focuses on the antidumping and countervailing duty statutes, provisions allowing the United States to impose offsetting duties on imports that are sold here at prices below those charged by the producers in their home countries that benefit from subsidies provided by foreign governments to encourage exports. Although these provisions may have once been obscure parts of the U.S. trade laws, they have figured importantly in many recent celebrated trade disputes, including those involving the import of foreign-made semiconductors, steel, lumber, screen displays for laptop computers, word processors, and minivan vehicles.All but one of the authors in the volume are highly critical of the procedures used by the Department of Commerce to calculate margins of dumping and export subsidization. Specifically, they find that a"

"The Uruguay Round trade agreement, recently ratified by Congress, was the eighth in a series of negotiations under the auspices of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Like the ratification proceddings, the negotiations were both contentious and extended. In the end, they substantially changed the structure of the GATT. From its traditional emphasis on reducing formal barriers to trade in goods, the GATT has now moved to a broader agenda of issues that will dominate in a more integrated world economy.The New GATT encompasses a set of agreements governing trade in goods, trade in services, the protection of intellectual property rights, and new procedures for resolving trade disputes. All of these measures are to be unified under a new institutional structure, the World Trade Organization. In this book, the major features of the new GATT are reviewed and assessed in terms of their implications for the United States.The contributors are Alan Deardorff, University of Michigan; Bernard Hoekman, the World Bank; John Jackson, University of Michigan School of Law; and Tim Josling, Food Research Institute, Stanford University.Susan M. Collins is a senior fellow in the Economic Studies program at Brookings and associate professor of economics at Georgetown University. Barry P. Bosworth, a senior fellow at Brookings, is the editor and author of numerous Brookings books, including The Chilean Economy: Policy Lessons and Challenges (Brookings, 1994) and Saving and Investment in a Global Economy (Brookings, 1993)."

"In the nearly two decades since the Nixon administration decided to withdraw U.S. armed forces from Vietnam and to end their dependence on conscription, America's military institution has undergone substantial changes. One of the most pronounced has been the increased reliance on Army reserve components, which today shoulder unprecedented responsibilities for protecting the nations security. Of special importance have been the growing expectations about the capabilities and readiness of the Army National Guard and the Army Reserve. Reserve components would now be among the first to be used in a range of possible conflicts-from limited contingencies involving rapid deployment forces to a major confrontation in Central Europe between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. This shift has been instituted with little public fanfare or debate yet the consequences could be dramatic and far-reaching. It raises the central question Binkin and Kaufmann address: How has greater reliance on Army reserves affected the nation's ability to protect its security?"

"Will higher pay provide an incentive for better work? Can productivity be increased by changing the way workers are compensated? In response to the urgent need to improve productivity performance in American industry, leading economists examine alternative compensation schemes to assess their efficiency in raising productivity.Over the years a number of suggestions have been made for improving labor productivity by changing the manner in which laborers are compensated for their efforts. The ideas presented and analyzed in this volume have all been put into practice, in modified form or on a small scale, in the United States or elsewhere. Some are new; others quite old.David I. Levine and Laura D'Andrea Tyson consider the effects of employee participation in decisionmaking on firm performance, and Martin L. Weitzman and Douglas L. Kruse discuss the implications of profit sharing and related forms of pay for group performance. Michael A. Conte and Jan Svejnar analyze employee stock ownership plans in the United States and other forms of worker ownership in Europe; Masanore Hashimoto uses a transaction-cost perspective to assess Japanese employment and wage systems. Daniel J. B. Mitchell, David Lewin, and Edward E. Lawler III give an overall analysis of traditional and alternative pay systems, their history, development, and curent use, and recommend further experimentation with alternative compensation plans to ensure more adaptability on the part of U.S. firms. Blinder provides an overview of the findings and conclusions."

Bruce Blair examines operational safety hazards for nuclear forces deployed on combat alert in Russia, the United States, and elsewhere. He provides new information on command and control procedures and deficiencies that affect the risks of accidental, unauthorized, or inadvertent use of nuclear weapons, particularly those in the former Soviet Union. Blair proposes changes in nuclear operations that would reduce these risks. Remedies range from eliminating targets from missiles to taking all nuclear forces off alert ("zero alert") so that no weapons are poised for immediate launch. In the "zero alert" scenario, missiles and bombers lack nuclear warheads or other vital components and require extensive preparations for redeployment. Blair assesses the effects of such measures on strategic deterrence and crisis stability in the event of a revival of nuclear confrontation between the United States and Russia. He also describes the burdens of verification that his remedies impose. This book is the first in a series devoted to aspects of operational safety and nuclear weapons. Other topics in the series include joint U.S.-Russian missile attack early warning, ensuring the security of dismantled warheads and bomb materials, and command-control problems in the emerging nuclear states.

With job prospects clouded for even the well-educated, those who leave school with no training beyond high school now face great challenges in making the transition from school to work. Emerging research and experience in other countries have led many to believe that the workplace can play a much larger educational role than it now does. The School-to-Work Opportunity Act of 1994, for example, requires programs funded under the act to include educationally guided work placements as part of the educational strategy. Although there is a growing consensus that employers have much to contribute, significant barriers stand in the way of increasing work-based education.This volume, the result of a Brookings conference on employer participation in education, focuses on such questions as: How can an adequate number of employers be recruited? How can the quality of placements be guaranteed? How can discrimination and inequities in providing access to good placements be avoided? What must educators do to work effectively with employers to develop high quality on-the-job educational experiences? And what policies can encourage participation and monitor and improve the education that takes place on the job?The book includes the perspectives of employers, educators, and policymakers and draws lessons from experience with employer involvement in Europe. It concludes with suggestions for future research and policy designed to increase the quality and quantity of work-based education.Chapters were written by editor Thomas Bailey, as well as Paul Osterman, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; David Stern, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development; and Margaret Vickers, Technical Education Research Centers. Comments are included by George Chambliss, Xavier Del Buono, Harry Featherstone, Jack Jennings, Governor John R. McKernan, Jr., Stuart Rosenfeld, Anthony Sarmiento, Bernd Sohngen, Marc S. Tucker, Cheryl Fields Tyler, Peter van den Dool, Joan Wills, and Robert Yurasits. Brookings Dialogues on Public Policy

"Throughout most of American history, U.S. military forces proved unready for the wars that were thrust upon them and suffered costly reverses in early battles. During the Cold War, for the first time, U.S. defense policy tried to maintain high readiness in peacetime. But now, with the Cold War over and defense budgets falling, what will happen to U.S. military forces? Will they revert to a state of unpreparedness or find a new balance?Politicians and military planners alike have found this crucial issue especially difficult to deal with because they have often misunderstood what readiness really means. In this book, security expert Richard Betts surveys problems in developing and measuring combat readiness before, during, and after the Cold War. He analyzes why attempts to maximize it often have counterproductive effects, and how confusions in technical concepts cause political controversy.The book explores conflicts between two objectives that are both vital but work against each other because they compete for resources: operational readiness to fight immediately, and structural readiness-the number of organized units that increase military power, but require time during a crisis to gear up for combat. Betts also discusses the problem brought on by the Cold War and plunging defense budgets: mobilization readiness-the plans and arrangements needed to shorten the time for recreating a large military if it once again becomes necessary. Betts offers new ideas for understanding the dilemmas and tradeoffs that underlie debates on how readiness should be maintained in peacetime, and he explores the strategic consequences of different choices."

"In recent years, workers earnings have hardly grown, violence and crime have plagued the inner cities, homelessness and public begging have become commonplace, and family life has greatly deteriorated. With governments facing large deficits and slowly growing revenues, and public distrust in the efficiency of government and elected officials at all-time highs, the authors ask, ""What can government do for you?""This book brings together a prominent group of experts to answer this critical question. Edited by Henry Aaron and Charles L. Schultze, two of the nation's most noted and experienced economists, the book focuses on the crucial domestic and social issues confronting America today.Seven vital areas are discussed by the following contributors: Henry Aaron on health care; Gordon L Berlin and William McAllister on homelessness; Linda R Cohen and Roger G. Noll on research and development; John J. DiIulio, Jr., on crime; Frank Levy and Richard J. Murnane on education and training; Isabel V. Sawhill on children and families; and Clifford M. Winston and Barry P. Bosworth on infrastructure. In each problem area, the authors use the results of research and analysis to identify existing or proposed governmental interventions that are likely to work, as well as some that are likely to fail and some that need to be reformed. They then present a budget proposal that not only pays for suggested changes in domestic policy, but brings the budget into virtual balance in ten years."

"The tax system profoundly affects countless aspects of private behavior. It is a powerful policy influence on the distribution of income and it is the one aspect of government that almost every citizen cannot avoid. With tax reform high on the political agenda, this book brings together studies of leading tax economists and lawyers to assess the various reform proposals and examine the effects of tax reform in several distinct areas. Together, these studies and comments on them present a balanced evaluation of professional opinion on the issues that will be critical in the tax reform debate.The book addresses annual and lifetime distributional effects, saving, investment, transitional problems, simplification, home ownership and housing prices, charitable groups, international taxation, financial intermediaries and insurance, labor supply, and health insurance.In addition to Henry Aaron and William Gale, the contributors include Alan Auerbach, University of California, Berkeley; David Bradford, Princeton University; Charles Clotfelter, Duke University; Eric Engen, Federal Reserve; Don Fullerton, University of Texas; Jon Gruber, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Patric Hendershott, Ohio State; David Ling, University of Florida; Ronald Perlman, Covington & Burling; Diane Lim Rogers, Congressional Budget Office; John Karl Scholz, University of Wisconsin; Joel Slemrod, University of Michigan; and Robert Triest, University of California, Davis."