Results for PUBLPOL

How academia and business, specifically Stanford and Google, are redefining sustainability. Guest lectures include entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and policy makers, investigating how the Silicon Valley is defining sustainability as more than just a buzzword. Focus on food, material waste, and marketing/finance, as examined through a multidimensional framework of practical economics, politics, business practices, and ethics.

How policies come to be formed. How interests compete within public institutions to turn ideas into policies. Examples of this process from contemporary policy areas, including tax, social welfare, and environmental policy; results evaluated using equity and efficiency criteria.

Analysis of organizational processes emphasizing organizations that operate in a non-market environment. Prerequisite: ECON 1A.

Ethical issues in science- and technology-related public policy conflicts. Focus is on complex, value-laden policy disputes. Topics: the nature of ethics and morality; rationales for liberty, justice, and human rights; and the use and abuse of these concepts in policy disputes. Case studies from biomedicine, environmental affairs, technical professions, communications, and international relations.

Focus is on the ideal of a just society, and the place of liberty and equality in it, in light of contemporary theories of justice and political controversies. Topics include protecting religious liberty, financing schools and elections, regulating markets, assuring access to health care, and providing affirmative action and group rights. Issues of global justice including human rights and global inequality.

Ethical and political questions in public service work, including volunteering, service learning, humanitarian assistance, and public service professions such as medicine and teaching. Motives and outcomes in service work. Connections between service work and justice. Is mandatory service an oxymoron? History of public service in the U.S. Issues in crosscultural service work. Integration with the Haas Center for Public Service to connect service activities and public service aspirations with academic experiences at Stanford.

The relationship between microeconomic analysis and public policy making. How economic policy analysis is done and why political leaders regard it as useful but not definitive in making policy decisions. Economic rationales for policy interventions, methods of policy evaluation and the role of benefit-cost analysis, economic models of politics and their application to policy making, and the relationship of income distribution to policy choice. Theoretical foundations of policy making and analysis, and applications to program adoption and implementation. Prerequisites: ECON 50 and ECON 102B.

Design and consequences of laws, given alternative policy objectives. Welfarist approach to legal policy; deontological perspectives including Kant, Locke, Mill, and Rawls. Economic efficiency and agent rationality, law as mitigation of market and cognitive failures, effects of law on expectations and incentives, balancing costs of type I and type II legal errors. Empirical studies of law's effects. Applications: property, tort, contract, antitrust, discrimination, crime, legal procedure. Examples chiefly from U.S. law, but analytical tools of general applicability. Prerequisite: ECON 50.

What role should and does government play in the economy? What are the effects of government spending, borrowing, and taxation on efficiency, equity and economic growth? The course covers economic analysis, statistical evidence and historical and current fiscal policy debates in the U.S. and around the world. Policy topics: budget surpluses/deficits; tax reform; social security, public goods, and externalities; fiscal federalism; public investment; and cost-benefit analysis. Prerequisites: 51, 52 (can be taken concurrently).

Open to medical, graduate, and undergraduate students. Explores the questions of how well the US and global healthcare systems are prepared to withstand a bioterrorism attack, what the parallels are to withstanding a pandemic, what can be done to prevent an attack. How the medical/healthcare field, government, and the technology sectors are involved in biosecurity and bioterrorism response, how these sectors interface, and the multidisciplinary challenges involved. Focus is on current biosecurity challenges, including global bio-surveillance, making the medical diagnosis, isolation, containment, hospital surge capacity, stockpiling and distribution of countermeasures, food and agriculture biosecurity, new promising technologies for detection of bio-threats and countermeasures. 2 unit option for class participation and short paper. 4 unit option includes a research paper.

How lawyers argue and judges decide cases versus other forms of rhetoric and decision making. Legal reasoning and dispute resolution within Anglo-American common law and in comparative perspective across diverse societies. The relationship between law and public policy on current issues related to culture, technology, race, education, sexuality, abortion, gun control, civil liberties, national security and the environment. Sources include judicial opinions, interdisciplinary legal scholarship, ethnography, literature, and film.

The major actors, institutions, processes, and policies of sub-state government in the U.S., emphasizing city general-purpose governments through a comparative examination of historical and contemporary politics. Issues related to federalism, representation, voting, race, poverty, housing, and finances. Prerequisite: POLISCI 2 or consent of instructor.

Dynamics of regional leadership and decision making in Silicon Valley, a complex region composed of 40 cities and four counties without any overarching framework for governance. Formal and informal institutions shaping outcomes in the region. Case studies include transportation, workforce development, housing and land use, and climate change.

Students collectively lead and drive an actual philanthropic grantmaking process and learn different models and approaches to individual philanthropy. With $10,000 of funding from the Learning by Giving Foundation, students form small groups and source, develop, allocate and evaluate real philanthropic grants to local, student-selected nonprofits. Topics: strategic planning, nonprofit organizational assessment, grant proposal evaluation and selection, nonprofit site visits, collaborative giving models, web-based giving opportunities and individual philanthropy practices. Must attend first class; limited enrollment.

State politics and policy making, including the role of the legislature, legislative leadership, the governor, special interests, campaign finance, the public, ballot initiatives, the state constitution, the media, and the role of research organizations. Case studies include pension reform, health care, term limits and other political reform measures, open primaries, infrastructure improvements, and the budget. Changes in constitutional and in state statutes that can improve policy making in California.

Competing health care reform proposals at the state and local levels. Focus is on California including proposals for expanding coverage for children, a single payer system, employer and individual mandates. Recent proposals in other states including Massachusetts, Maine, and Vermont; their relation to national efforts. Attention to local reform efforts, including in San Francisco. Prospects for future policy.

Analytical tools derived from the social sciences to analyze global organizations and projects, and applied to the tradeoffs between different designs of teams and organizations. Focus is on tribal mentality and how to design effective organizations and projects for policy implementation within and across institutional settings. Recommended: PUBLPOL 102, MS&E 180, or SOC 160.

Philanthropy's role in modern society and the translation of its vision and capital into social action. Topics: individual giving; philanthropic landscape and models; foundation mission and infrastructure; philanthropic strategy and grantmaking; accountability and knowledge management; global and corporate philanthropy; and public policy engagement. Readings: business school cases and industry articles. Guest speakers include individual donors and foundation presidents. Mandatory discussion section. Must attend first class; limited enrollment.

Economic models of growth and poverty, differences in growth rates among countries, and the persistence of poverty. Models of physical and human capital accumulation, and recent theories of the importance of institutions, social capital, and political factors. The effectiveness of social policies in developing countries, emphasizing India, in the light of theories of growth and poverty, and in terms of immediate goals and long-term consequences. Policies include schooling and health, anti-poverty, banking, and political decentralization. Prerequisites: ECON 1A,B, and ECON 50.

How the U.S. federal government promotes, uses, and regulates new technologies; how it decides technology policies; and debates over how to use technology to advance national goals. Topics: American attitudes towards technology; technologies for defense, homeland security, energy, health, and economic competitiveness; and when and how to regulate nanotechnology, ¿medical enhancements¿, ¿government surveillance, and Internet privacy.¿ Recommended: POLISCI 2.

Primarily for students who expect to write an honors thesis. Weekly sessions discuss writing an honors thesis proposal (prospectus), submitting grant applications, and completing the honors thesis. Readings focus on writing skills and research design. Students select an adviser, outline a program of study for their senior year, and complete a prospectus by the end of the quarter. Enrollment limited to 25.

May be repeated for credit.

Students conduct original research for oral presentations and a paper on a policy-related topic. Topic and methods of analysis determined by student in consultation with instructor. Goal is to improve analytical, research, writing, and communication skills. Prerequisites: core courses in Public Policy or consent of instructor.

Small student teams conduct policy analyses requested by local policymakers. With guidance from the instructor and policymaker, each team researches a real-world problem and devises implementable policy recommendations to help address it. The project culminates in a professional report and presentation to the policymaker. Prerequisites: core courses in Public Policy or consent of instructor.

Small student teams conduct policy analyses requested by local policymakers. With guidance from the instructor and policymaker, each team researches a real-world problem and devises implementable policy recommendations to help address it. The project culminates in a professional report and presentation to the policymaker. Prerequisites: core courses in Public Policy or consent of instructor.

How policies come to be formed. How interests compete within public institutions to turn ideas into policies. Examples of this process from contemporary policy areas, including tax, social welfare, and environmental policy; results evaluated using equity and efficiency criteria.

Analysis of organizational processes emphasizing organizations that operate in a non-market environment. Prerequisite: ECON 1A.

The relationship between microeconomic analysis and public policy making. How economic policy analysis is done and why political leaders regard it as useful but not definitive in making policy decisions. Economic rationales for policy interventions, methods of policy evaluation and the role of benefit-cost analysis, economic models of politics and their application to policy making, and the relationship of income distribution to policy choice. Theoretical foundations of policy making and analysis, and applications to program adoption and implementation. Prerequisites: ECON 50 and ECON 102B.

Design and consequences of laws, given alternative policy objectives. Welfarist approach to legal policy; deontological perspectives including Kant, Locke, Mill, and Rawls. Economic efficiency and agent rationality, law as mitigation of market and cognitive failures, effects of law on expectations and incentives, balancing costs of type I and type II legal errors. Empirical studies of law's effects. Applications: property, tort, contract, antitrust, discrimination, crime, legal procedure. Examples chiefly from U.S. law, but analytical tools of general applicability. Prerequisite: ECON 50.

Open to medical, graduate, and undergraduate students. Explores the questions of how well the US and global healthcare systems are prepared to withstand a bioterrorism attack, what the parallels are to withstanding a pandemic, what can be done to prevent an attack. How the medical/healthcare field, government, and the technology sectors are involved in biosecurity and bioterrorism response, how these sectors interface, and the multidisciplinary challenges involved. Focus is on current biosecurity challenges, including global bio-surveillance, making the medical diagnosis, isolation, containment, hospital surge capacity, stockpiling and distribution of countermeasures, food and agriculture biosecurity, new promising technologies for detection of bio-threats and countermeasures. 2 unit option for class participation and short paper. 4 unit option includes a research paper.

(SAME AS LAW 348, MGTECON 331) Provides the legal, institutional, and economic background necessary to understand the financing and production of health services in the U.S. Potential topics include: health reform, health insurance (Medicare and Medicaid, employer-sponsored insurance, the uninsured), medical malpractice and quality regulation, pharmaceuticals, the corporate practice of medicine, regulation of fraud and abuse, and international comparisons.

(Same as LAW 636). This seminar will focus on issues related to achieving successful implementation of the goals of legislation. It is widely recognized that the goals of legislation often are not realized and that the failure frequently rests in breakdowns in the implementation process by the agencies and organizations charged with implementing the legislation. In response to problems in implementation, the institutional context of public policy implementation is changing. One category of innovations, known by names such as "management-based regulation" and "evidence-based" social service delivery, gives broad discretion to street-level service providers but subjects them to intensive monitoring and disciplined performance comparison. Another category applies market concepts to regulation or social services, for example, by creating tradeable rights (e.g., pollution allowances) or vouchers (for schools, housing, or healthcare). These, and other, new approaches are affecting both the contours of public law doctrine and the nature of lawyering in the public sector. Lawyers in the public sector are increasingly drawing on skills of institutional design and monitoring of the kind associated with private sector transactional practice. The seminar will examine some of the emerging general themes of innovative policy implementation and look at a range of case studies. Topics will include the conditions under which financial and other rewards and sanctions are useful in bringing about desired behaviors, the pluses and minuses of the creation of markets as alternatives to government run programs, and efforts at improving implementation by improving management activities. Examples will be taken from both regulation and social services, and are likely to include environmental protection, education, child protective services, healthcare. food and workplace safety, nuclear power safety, and regulation of financial institutions.

How the U.S. federal government promotes, uses, and regulates new technologies; how it decides technology policies; and debates over how to use technology to advance national goals. Topics: American attitudes towards technology; technologies for defense, homeland security, energy, health, and economic competitiveness; and when and how to regulate nanotechnology, ¿medical enhancements¿, ¿government surveillance, and Internet privacy.¿ Recommended: POLISCI 2.

Microeconomic concepts relevant to decision making. Topics include: competitive market clearing, price discrimination; general equilibrium; risk aversion and sharing, capital market theory, Nash equilibrium; welfare analysis; public choice; externalities and public goods; hidden information and market signaling; moral hazard and incentives; auction theory; game theory; oligopoly; reputation and credibility. Prerequisites: ECON 50 and MATH 51 or equiv.

Relationship between microeconomic analysis and public policy making. Economic rationales for policy interventions. Economic models of politics and application to policy making. Relationship of income distribution to policy choice. Welfare evaluation of public and private decisions. Education policy, social security, and health care. Prerequisites: PUBLPOL 301A (for graduate students) or ECON 50, and102B (for undergraduates).

For undergraduates. The structure of the American legal system including the courts; American legal culture; the legal profession and its social role; the scope and reach of the legal system; the background and impact of legal regulation; criminal justice; civil rights and civil liberties; and the relationship between the American legal system and American society in general.

(Same as LAW 528.) This course will provide a broad overview of the scholarly field known as "law and economics." The focus will be on how legal rules and institutions can correct market failures. We will discuss the economic function of contracts and, when contracts fail or are not feasible, the role of legal remedies to resolve disputes. We will also discuss at some length the choice between encouraging private parties to initiate legal actions to correct externalities and governmental actors, such as regulatory authorities. Extensive attention will be given to the economics of litigation, and to how private incentives to bring lawsuits differs from the social value of litigation. The economic motive to commit crimes, and the optimal governmental response to crime, will be studied in depth. Specific topics within the preceding broad themes include: the Coase Theorem; the tradeoff between the certainty and severity of punishment; the choice between ex ante and ex post sanctions; negligence versus strict liability; property rules; remedies for breach of contract; and the American rule versus the English rule for allocating litigation costs. Because this course is part of the core curriculum for the Master in Public Policy degree, intermediate-level training in microeconomics (at the undergraduate level) and some comfort in the use of calculus is required.

Introduction to probability and statistical inference, with applications to political science and public policy. Prerequisite: elementary calculus.

Understanding and using the linear regression model in a social-science context: properties of the least squares estimator; inference and hypothesis testing; assessing model fit; presenting results for publication; consequences and diagnosis of departures from model assumptions; outliers and influential observations, graphical techniques for model fitting and checking; interactions among exploratory variables; pooling data; extensions for binary responses.

(Same as LAW 243.) Linear and nonlinear regression, covariance structures, panel data, qualitative variable models, nonparametric and semiparametric methods, time series, Bayesian model averaging and variable selection. It explores Bayesian methodology including Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods, hierarchical models, model checking, mixture models, empirical Bayes approaches, approximations, and computational issues and gives some attention to foundations. Prerequisite: graduate-level econometrics or equivalent.

Political economy approaches to key policy outcomes including redistribution, the size of government, fiscal behavior, and pork-barrel politics. Theories related to institutions, interest groups, and geography, focusing on middle- and upper-income countries.

(Same as LAW 333.) Introduction to problem framing and problem solving. Theories and research on heuristics and biases in human inference, judgment, and decision making. Experimental and theoretical work in prospect theory emphasizing loss and risk aversion. Challenges that psychology offers to the rationalist expected utility model; attempts to meet this challenge through integration with modern behavioral economics. Decision making biases and phenomena of special relevance to public policy such as group polarization, group think, and collective action.

The course is intended an exploration of the major ideas, theories, andnfindings of social psychology and their applied status. Special attention will be given to historical issues, classic experiments, and seminal theories, and their implications for topics relevant to education. Contemporary research will also be discussed. Advanced undergraduates and graduate students from other disciplines are welcome.

This course offers hands-on learning of effective writing and presentation techniques for audiences that include policy makers, decision and stake-holders, interest groups, the media, and the public. Class time will be spent learning lessons in rhetoric, reviewing different written genres (op-ed, report, memo), editing and peer review using large screens and laptops, as well as analyzing and practicing presentations (PPT, elevator pitch, radio broadcast, board meeting). Sources include policy briefings, memos, model videos, rhetoric handouts, style manual. Students will write and make oral and multimedia arguments, individually and in teams; students will also be responsible for peer review, introducing speakers, and moderating discussions at the colloquia. Enrollment limited. Prerequisite: consent of instructor.

Focus is on the ideal of a just society, and the place of liberty and equality in it, in light of contemporary theories of justice and political controversies. Topics include protecting religious liberty, financing schools and elections, regulating markets, assuring access to health care, and providing affirmative action and group rights. Issues of global justice including human rights and global inequality.

Applied policy exercises in various fields. Multidisciplinary student teams apply skills to a contemporary problem in a major policy exercise with a public sector client such as a government agency. Problem analysis, interaction with the client and experts, and presentations. Emphasis is on effective written and oral communication to lay audiences of recommendations based on policy analysis.

Supervised research internship. Individual students perform policy research for outside client, applying analytical skills from core curriculum. Requires permission of program director.

Restricted to students writing a master's thesis in Public Policy. May be repeated for credit.

Weekly colloquia speaker series required for M.P.P. and M.A. in Public Policy students. Themes vary each quarter.

For students interested in the nonprofit sector, those in the joint Business and Education program, and for Public Policy MA students. The focus is on the missions, functions, and capabilities of nonprofit, public, and private organizations, and the managerial challenges inherent in the different sectors. Focus is on sectors with significant competition among institutional forms, including health care, social services, the arts, and education. Sources include scholarly articles, cases, and historical materials.

(Same as LAW 621). This introductory course will familiarize students with the history, structure, and performance of America's sentencing and corrections system. Sentencing is the process by which criminal sanctions are imposed in individual cases following criminal convictions. Corrections deals with the implementation and evaluation of criminal sentences after they are handed down. In fact, the two subject areas are inseparable. The course will examine sentencing and corrections from global and historical views, from theoretical and policy perspectives, and with close attention to many problem-specific areas. We will explore sentencing theories and their application, the nature, scope and function of corrections, the impact of mass incarceration on crime and communities, the effectiveness of rehabilitation, the relationship between sanctions and crime, and the consequences of prisoner reentry. These topics will be considered as they play out in current political and policy debates. Guest lectures may include presentations by legal professionals, victims, offenders, and correctional leaders.

U.S. policies for science and technology, political institutions that create and carry out these policies, processes for conducting science and developing technology, international aspects of science and technology, and the roles of scientists, engineers, and physicians in creating and implementing policy. Assignments: analyzing the politics of particular legislative proposals, assessing options for trying to reach a policy objective, and preparing mock memos and testimony.

The modern, knowledge-based economy characterized by: rapid innovation; a dramatic increase in the rate of production of information and decline in the cost of producing it; and pervasive network externalities or increasing returns to scale. Emphasis is on the role of patents and alternative mechanisms for creating incentives for firms to innovate. Topics include: why there may be too much innovative activity; how patent laws may slow rather than help innovation; and the interaction between public and private sector innovation. Prerequisites: 51,102B.

(Same as LAW 564). This is a non-technical course that will focus on a series of case studies each designed to illuminate a serious public policy issue raised by the evolution of modern financial engineering. These will include discussions of Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, sub-prime and Alt-A mortgages and the flaws of AAA CDOs; the spectacular losses by Orange County and the Florida Local Government Investment Pool and the challenges posed by unregulated investment pools; how credit default swaps are likely to change with central clearing using the PIIGS (Portugal/ Ireland/ Iceland/ Greece/ Spain), the monolines, AIG, Lehman and MF Global as examples; views of rogue trading using the similarities and disparities of Askin, Madoff, Barings, Soc Gen and UBS for discussion; and Risk Management 101 : the why/ how/ where/ when firms went wrong plus what to keep and what to throw out in the next phase of risk programs among other case studies. The subject matter, by necessity, is multi-disciplinary and so the course is particularly suited to those students having an interest in public policy and the evolution of modern financial markets. This includes students from the law or business schools, or the public policy, economics, EES, political science, or financial math and engineering programs among others. Several themes will tie the case studies, reading and discussions together:-Is this an example of an innovation that got too far ahead of existing operations, risk management, legal, accounting, regulatory or supervisory oversight?-How might temporary infrastructure be implemented without stifling innovation or growth?-How might losses be avoided by requiring permanent infrastructure sooner? Will Dodd-Frank, Basel III, etc., help to prevent such problems? What are the potential unintended consequences?-Is this an example of improperly viewing exposures that are subject to uncertainty or incorrectly modeling risk or both?nnGuest speakers will be invited to share their experiences. This course will aim to provide a practitioner(s) view of financial engineering over the past 3 ½ decades as well as a broad understanding of what went right and what went wrong plus cutting edge views of the future of financial engineering.

Science and economics, including recent findings. History and evolution of local, state, regional, national, and international policy. California's recent landmark climate change bill. Future policy prospects, emphasizing national and international levels.

Lecture series on significant issues in science and technology policy. Guest speakers will discuss issues including but not limited to: who should make science policy, educational dimension of science policy, manufacturing and science policy, California's stem cell policy, immigration and science policy, and the role of industry in science policy.

The techniques of analysis of engineering systems for risk management decisions involving trade-offs (technical, human, environmental aspects). Elements of decision analysis; probabilistic risk analysis (fault trees, event trees, systems dynamics); economic analysis of failure consequences (human safety and long-term economic discounting); and case studies such as space systems, nuclear power plants, and medical systems. Public and private sectors. Prerequisites: probability, decision analysis, stochastic processes, and convex optimization.