New Books in Public Policy

Graduate students and newly-minted economists often find that while their time in graduate school taught them a lot about great research of the past and the methods needed to do their own research, they didn't learn that much about the other aspects of the job. How do you submit a paper to a journal? How do you respond to reviewer comments? How do you write referee reports for other people? How do you present you findings in clear and compelling way, whether in a paper or in a talk? Academic advisors and other mentors can help fill the gap, but may not even realize they need to communicate things that they know implicitly. The existence of this hidden curriculum also perpetuates the insider bias and lack of diversity in economics, making it harder for the best ideas to rise to the top.Marc Bellemare's new book Doing Economics: What You Should Have Learned in Grad School--But Didn't (MIT, 2022), helps fill the gap. This book is essential reading for economists and other quantitative social scientists trying to succeed in academia and adjacent fields. Graduate students and junior faculty should read it cover to cover. Senior faculty can also benefit from having a copy around to help make sure their own advice is comprehensive and up-to-date.Author Marc Bellemare is the Distinguished McKnight University Professor, Distinguished University Teaching Professor, and Northrop Professor in the Department of Applied Economics at the University of Minnesota, where he also directs the Center for International Food and Agricultural Policy. He is also currently a co-editor of the American Journal of Agricultural Economics. He also blogs regularly and can be found on Twitter.Host Peter Lorentzen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of San Francisco, where he leads a new Master's program in Applied Economics focused on the digital economy. His own research focus is the political economy of governance in China. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

I can point you to mountains of research about prisons. I can also recommend at least a dozen Netflix documentaries, and highlight a handful of radical activists and scholars. There’s a lot of intellectual work done about prison. But what about intellectual work done in prison?As part of this week’s “ideas in strange places” theme, we want to play you this episode from right near when we started Darts and Letters, where we ask what kind of radical thought can come from the extreme oppression prisoners endure.We’ll be back with brand new episodes on September 18th, until then we’re replaying the best of our catalogue with a different theme each week.In Prison Notebooks… First, in the opening essay, host Gordon Katic discusses the long history of radical prison writing. From Thoreau to Gramsci, MLK, Oscar Wilde, Eugene Debs, Emma Goldman, and even Wittgenstein. Next (@5:36), Chandra Bozelko served 6 years, three months, and 11 days in a women’s prison in Connecticut. While inside, she started an award-winning newspaper column. She tells us what writing did for her while inside, and what everyday prison intellectualism really looks like. Then (@42:30), Justin Piché edits one of the most amazing academic journals you will ever come across. It’s called the Journal of Prisoners on Prisons. It has been around for over thirty years. In each and every edition, you will see brilliant scholarly work—it just so happens that this work is written by prisoners themselves. —————————-SUPPORT THE SHOW—————————-You can support the show for free by following or subscribing on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or whichever app you use. This is the best way to help us out and it costs nothing so we’d really appreciate you clicking that button.If you want to do a little more we would love if you chip in. You can find us on patreon.com/dartsandletters. Patrons get content early, and occasionally there’s bonus material on there too.—————————-CONTACT US————————-To stay up to date, follow us on Twitter and Instagram. If you’d like to write us, email darts@citedmedia.ca or tweet Gordon directly.—————————-CREDITS—————————-This episode of Darts and Letters was produced by Jay Cockburn. Research and support from David Moscrop and Addye Susnick. Our theme song and music was created by Mike Barber, and our graphic design was created by Dakota Koop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

For decades, immigration has been one of the most divisive, contentious topics in American politics. And for decades, urgent calls for its policy reform have gone mostly unanswered. As the discord surrounding the modern immigration debate has intensified, border enforcement has tightened. Crossing harsher, less porous borders makes unauthorized entry to the United States a permanent, costly undertaking. And the challenges don't end on the other side.At once enlightening and devastating, The Border Within: The Economics of Immigration in an Age of Fear (U Chicago Press, 2021) examines the costs and ends of America's interior enforcement--the policies and agencies, including ICE, aimed at removing immigrants already living in the country. Economist Tara Watson and journalist Kalee Thompson pair rigorous analysis with deeply personal stories from immigrants and their families to assess immigration's effects on every aspect of American life, from the labor force to social welfare programs to tax revenue. What emerges is a critical, utterly complete examination of what non-native Americans bring to the country, including immigration's tendency to elevate the wages and skills of those who are native-born.dNews coverage has prompted many to question the humanity of American immigration policies; The Border Within opens a conversation of whether it is effective. The United States spends billions each year on detention and deportation, all without economic gain and at a great human cost. With depth and discipline, the authors dissect the shock-and-awe policies that make up a broken, often cruel system, while illuminating the lives caught in the chaos. It is an essential work with far-reaching implications for immigrants and non-immigrants alike. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Educating the Enemy: Teaching Nazis and Mexicans in the Cold War Borderlands (U Chicago Press, 2022) begins with the 144 children of Nazi scientists who moved to El Paso, Texas, in 1946 as part of the military program called Operation Paperclip. These German children were bused daily from a military outpost to four El Paso public schools. Though born into a fascist enemy nation, the German children were quickly integrated into the schools and, by proxy, American society. Their rapid assimilation offered evidence that American public schools played a vital role in ensuring the victory of democracy over fascism.Jonna Perrillo not only tells this fascinating story of Cold War educational policy, but she draws an important contrast with another, much more numerous population of children in the El Paso public schools: Mexican Americans. Like everywhere else in the Southwest, Mexican American children in El Paso were segregated into "Mexican" schools, where the children received a vastly different educational experience. Not only were they penalized for speaking Spanish--the only language all but a few spoke due to segregation--they were tracked for low-wage and low-prestige careers, with limited opportunities for economic success. Educating the Enemy charts what two groups of children--one that might have been considered the enemy, the other that was treated as such--reveal about the ways political assimilation has been treated by schools as an easier, more viable project than racial or ethnic assimilation.Listen to an interview with the author here and read an interview in Time and a piece based on the book in the Boston Review. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

In times of heightened national security, scholars and activists from the communities under suspicion often attempt to alert the public to the more complex stories behind the headlines. But when they raise questions about the government, military and police policy, these individuals are routinely shut down and accused of being terrorist sympathizers or apologists. In such environments, there is immense pressure to condemn what society at large fears. I Refuse to Condemn: Resisting Racism in Times of National Security (Manchester University Press, 2021) explains how the expectation to condemn has emerged, tracking it against the normalization of racism, and explores how writers manage to subvert expectations as part of their commitment to anti-racism. In my conversation with the collection’s editor, Asim Qureshi, Research Director of CAGE, an independent advocacy organization, we discuss the culture of condemnation and the presumption of guilt, its psychological and physiological impacts, issues of trauma, white supremacy and racism as a system of power, structural racism’s relationship to national security, Prevent and countering violent extremism programs, cultural representation, the role of artists and performers, the afterlife of one’s work or art, and advocacy to dismantle anti-Muslim racism.Kristian Petersen is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy & Religious Studies at Old Dominion University. You can find out more about his work on his website, follow him on Twitter @BabaKristian, or email him at kpeterse@odu.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Contrary to intuition, many countries have found that having abundant natural resources such as petroleum or diamonds may be a curse as much as a blessing. Broad-based economic development may be stunted as resource extraction dominates the economy, and politics may be corrupted as different interest groups focus on controlling and redistributing resource rents instead of on governing well. In the worst cases, the fight for control over this wealth breaks into armed conflict. China is not usually considered in this light, since at the national level it has become a manufacturing powerhouse with natural resources only playing a minor economics role. However, the picture is different at the local level. China's Contained Resource Curse: How Minerals Shape State Capital Labor Relations (Cambridge UP, 2022), by Jing Vivian Zhan, explores how mineral booms have affected business, the state, and ordinary people in China’s mineral-rich regions. Her book combines econometric analysis with an in-depth understanding developed over ten years of fieldwork and interviewing with key players.Zhan finds that many of the classic resource-curse pathologies occur at the local level in China. Businesspeople collude with or pressure the government to gain mining rights and avoid close inspection of labor standards. Local people see little benefit from the economic development as few jobs are created and other forms of development are largely crowded out. If they benefit from any revenue windfalls it is in the form of short-term government handouts aimed to keep the peace, rather than long-term investments in healthcare, education, and other social services. Meanwhile, the central government in Beijing is only slowly putting together a national regulatory framework that might enable a more sustainable and equitable development path, and has limited capacity to ensure that its policies are carried out at the local level.Vivian Zhan is an Associate Professor of the Department of Government and Public Administration at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She received her BA in English and International Studies from Foreign Affairs College of China, and her PhD in political science from University of California, Los Angeles. Her research interests span comparative political economy, contemporary Chinese politics, and research methodology, with a focus on post-Mao reforms, intergovernmental relations and local governance. She is also interested in informal institutions and their impact on political and economic behaviours.Host Peter Lorentzen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of San Francisco, where he leads a new Master's program in Applied Economics focused on the digital economy. His own research focus is the political economy of governance in China. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

In Defence of Councillors (Manchester UP, 2021) is an unashamed defence of local representative democracy and of those elected to serve as councillors from the often ill-informed, ill-judged and inaccurate criticism made by the media, government and public, of councillors' personal, political and professional roles.By using qualitative research from a number of related projects, the book examines the roles, functions and responsibilities of councillors and the expectations placed upon them by citizens, communities and government. It also examines the impact council membership has on other facets of the councillor's life. The book examines how councillors develop strategies to overcome the constraints and restrictions on their office so as to be able to govern their communities, balance their political and public life and democratise and hold to account a vast array of unelected bodies that spend public money and develop public policy without the electoral mandate and legitimacy held by our councillors.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

From one of the leading intellectuals of the digital age, The Digital Republic: On Freedom and Democracy in the 21st Century (Pegasus Books, 2022) is the definitive guide to the great political question of our time: how can freedom and democracy survive in a world of powerful digital technologies? A Financial Times “Book to Read” in 2022. Not long ago, the tech industry was widely admired, and the internet was regarded as a tonic for freedom and democracy. Not anymore. Every day, the headlines blaze with reports of racist algorithms, data leaks, and social media platforms festering with falsehood and hate. In The Digital Republic, acclaimed author Jamie Susskind argues that these problems are not the fault of a few bad apples at the top of the industry. They are the result of our failure to govern technology properly. The Digital Republic charts a new course. It offers a plan for the digital age: new legal standards, new public bodies and institutions, new duties on platforms, new rights and regulators, new codes of conduct for people in the tech industry. Inspired by the great political essays of the past, and steeped in the traditions of republican thought, it offers a vision of a different type of society: a digital republic in which human and technological flourishing go hand in hand.Jamie Susskind is a barrister and the author of the award-winning bestseller Future Politics: Living Together in a World Transformed by Tech (Oxford University Press, 2018), which received the Estoril Global Issues Distinguished Book Prize 2019, and was an Evening Standard and Prospect Book of the Year. He has fellowships at Harvard and Cambridge and currently lives in London.Austin Clyde is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Chicago Department of Computer Science. He researches artificial intelligence and high-performance computing for developing new scientific methods. He is also a visiting research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Science, Technology, and Society program, where my research addresses the intersection of artificial intelligence, human rights, and democracy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Formal mathematical models have provided tremendous insights into politics in recent decades. Formal Models of Domestic Politics (Cambridge UP, 2021) is the leading graduate textbook covering the crucial models that underpin current theoretical and empirical research on politics by both economists and political scientists. This textbook was recently updated to reflect the wealth of new theory-building around the functioning of authoritarian regimes, as well as to include recent developments in the theory of electoral competition, delegation, legislative bargaining, and collective action.Author Scott Gehlbach is a professor at the University of Chicago, where he is the director of their new PhD program in Political Economy. He is a widely published political economist, with influential articles published in both economics and political science journal as well as two other books. Scott also has a regional specialty in the politics of Russia, Ukraine, and other postcommunist countries.In our interview, we discuss what formal models are, how they work, and illustrates their usefulness with several examples. We also speak briefly at the end about current Russian politics and the ideas he outlined in his February Washington Post Monkey Cage blog piece on the implications of the invasion of Ukraine.Host Peter Lorentzen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of San Francisco, where he leads a new Master's program in Applied Economics focused on the digital economy. His own research focus is the political economy of governance in China. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

A close look at stories of maternal death in Malawi that considers their implications in the broader arena of medical knowledge.By the early twenty-first century, about one woman in twelve could expect to die of a pregnancy or childbirth complication in Malawi. Specific deaths became object lessons. Explanatory stories circulated through hospitals and villages, proliferating among a range of practitioners: nurse-midwives, traditional birth attendants, doctors, epidemiologists, herbalists. Was biology to blame? Economic underdevelopment? Immoral behavior? Tradition? Were the dead themselves at fault?In Partial Stories: Maternal Death from Six Angles (U Chicago Press, 2022), Claire L. Wendland considers these explanations for maternal death, showing how they reflect competing visions of the past and shared concerns about social change. Drawing on extended fieldwork, Wendland reveals how efforts to legitimate a single story as the authoritative version can render care more dangerous than it might otherwise be. Historical, biological, technological, ethical, statistical, and political perspectives on death usually circulate in different expert communities and different bodies of literature. Here, Wendland considers them together, illuminating dilemmas of maternity care in contexts of acute change, chronic scarcity, and endemic inequity within Malawi and beyond.Rachel Pagones is an acupuncturist, educator, and author based in Cambridge, England. Her book, Acupuncture as Revolution: Suffering, Liberation, and Love (Brevis Press) was published in 2021. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy