Government Contracting with Faith-Based Providers: An Economic Perspective

This article analyses the policy debate surrounding the possible expansion of government contracting with faith-based providers of social services, from the perspective of recent developments in the economics of contracts. It presents a non-technical introduction to the economic tools used in the study of contracts, in particular the decision faced by governments of whether to provide services in-house or to contract out to a private nonprofit organization. In particular the paper looks at the problems of monitoring the quality of service provision and ensuring fairness in the procurement process. When the analysis is applied to the question of faith-based provision, the conclusion is that monitoring the terms of the contract is less of an issue than the debates that will arise over the distribution of contracts across different faith-based organizations. Working Paper 06-2

Sustainable Funding for the Arts: What Can Atlanta Learn from the Detroit Experience?

In 2003 Atlantans began a conversation about sustainable funding for the arts, and whether there should be some kind of earmarked tax revenues for the arts in the Metro area. A Research Atlanta study looked at some of the options, the experience of other US cities, and the tough questions advocates of sustainable funding would need to address to secure broad public support for such a measure.The 2003 study noted that in November 2002, voters in Metropolitan Detroit rejected, in a close vote, a proposed increase in property taxes that would have been directed to the arts and other cultural institutions. In this paper we ask what Atlanta can learn from the Detroit vote. In particular, we will use the precinct-level results of the Detroit referendum, matched with Census Tract data, to get some of idea of which voters supported the arts funding and which did not. To our knowledge this is the first detailed empirical examination of voting for arts funding in the US. We will then consider how Atlanta is like, and unlike, Detroit, and what conclusions we might draw from the Detroit experience

Mentoring in the Lifelong Learning Sector: a critical heuristic account

This paper explores a heuristic (‘allowing people to learn for themselves’ [Allen, 2004: p. 654]) mentoring case involving an Advanced Practitioner (AP) tasked with the role of mentoring a trainee PGCE teacher who had received a grade 4 (unsatisfactory) decision of his teaching by the college quality assurance system. The paper outlines the relevant theories and frameworks of mentoring which were considered at the time, those which seemed to emerge quite naturally, albeit in skeletal form, and the way in which reflective practice was found to be the key to unlocking the mentor/mentee relationship in profound and critical ways

Welsh Basin

The Cambrian rocks of Wales mostly lie within the Avalon composite terrane, apart from a small area of Cambrian rocks of the Monian composite terrane that is discussed in Chapter 9. The Cambrian rocks of the Welsh basin form the greater part of the Dyfed Supergroup of Woodcock (1990), the base of which overlies a widespread early Cambrian unconformity and the top of which extends to the late Tremadocian (Ordovician). The Dyfed Supergroup extends onto the Midland microcraton in attenuated form, with substantial gaps in the successions locally. The correlation of the basal parts of the Dyfed Supergroup is uncertain because of the lack of suitable evidence, but Woodcock was able to interpret the supergroup as a megasequence composed of five sequences, labelled in ascending order Ia to Ie, each separated by eustatic, tectonic or volcanic events, or a combination of these (Woodcock 1990, fig. 6). Sequence Ib includes strata assigned to the later Terreneuvian and all of Series 2; the strata of Sequence Ic are those of Stage 5 and the Drumian. The bases of sequences Id and Ie are particularly strongly marked, mainly by eustatic regressions, the former in the Guzhangian and the latter near the top of the Furongian, so that Ie is essentially composed of Tremadocian strata. Based principally on his extensive work in the eastern North American sector of Avalonia, Landing (1996) divided the Cambrian to Tremadocian successions in Avalonia into ten epeirogenic sequences (Landing 1996, figs. 2, 5). He recognized equivalents of some of these sequences in selected Welsh and English successions (Landing 1996, p. 51, fig. 7), for example the base of his Sequence 6 (which corresponds to Woodcock’s Ic) and Sequence 9 (part of Woodcock’s Id). Although some correlations are doubtful, the presence in Britain of a hiatus at the level of his Sequence 5, as suggested by Landing’s analysis (1996, fig. 7), is a possibility that merits further investigation. On the other hand, the downward extension of the Arvon ‘Slate Belt’ succession to the base of the Terreneuvian appears speculative

Understanding State Government Appropriations For the Arts: 1976-1999

Using panel data analysis, we examine the relative importance of citizen and government characteristics on a highly discretionary and volatile budget item: state appropriations to arts agencies. Despite the unimportance of arts spending to most citizens, changes in arts spending appear to reflect citizen desires. Spending rises with per capita income, state revenues, and citizen political and social liberalism, but characteristics of state legislatures do not significantly affect spending.Department of Economics and W.T. Beebe Institute of Personnel and Employment Relations Working Paper 07-0