The Housing Assistance Supply Experiment is designed to test the effects on local housing markets of a full-scale program of housing allowances for low-income households.A test is important because, unlike most housing assistance programs, this one is administered largely by its beneficiaries, operating through normal market channels. Within limits, a program participant is free to choose the type and quality of housing and the form of tenure that suit his preferences and his allowance-augmented budget.The administering agency assists with a monthly payment whose amount does not depend on these decisions, requiring of the recipient only that he occupy housing that meets minimum standards of space and habitability.

In summer 2006, the Commission on Recovery, Rebuilding, and Renewal asked the RAND Gulf States Policy Institute to describe the state of the pre-Hurricane Katrina housing markets in Mississippi1s three coastal counties, to estimate the damage the storm did to their housing markets, to describe the status of the recovery effort, and to identify problems that might inhibit it. This report publishes the findings.

What is the potential for a divergence in views among civilian and military elites (sometimes referred to as the civil-military gap) to undermine military effectiveness? Although a variety of differences were found among the views of military and civilian survey respondents, these differences mostly disappeared when the authors focused on the attitudes that are pertinent to civilian control of the military and military effectiveness.

The nonprofit arts currently face an environment that challenges the way they have grown and raises the prospect of future consolidation. The authors focus on the relationship among the components of local communities' arts ecology and develop a new framework for evaluating systems of support to the arts. They then use this framework to assess the strengths and weaknesses of Philadelphia1s arts sector.

Providing information about developments in the visual arts world, this book promotes analysis of the sector, describing the characteristics of visual arts consumers (collectors and appreciators), artists, finances, and organizations. The third in a series that examines the state of the arts in America, this analysis shows, in addition to lines around the block for special exhibits, well-paid superstar artists, flourishing university visual arts programs, and a global expansion of collectors, developments in the visual arts also tell a story of rapid, even seismic change, systemic imbalances, and dislocation.

This study offers a new framework for understanding how the arts create private and public value, highlights the importance of the arts' intrinsic benefits, and identifies how both instrumental and intrinsic benefits are created. During the past decade, arts advocates have relied on an instrumental approach to the benefits of the arts in arguing for support of the arts. This report evaluates these arguments and asserts that a new approach is needed. This new approach offers a more comprehensive view of how the arts create private and public value, underscores the importance of the arts' intrinsic benefits, and links the creation of benefits to arts involvement.

Examines the political, social, and economic challenges the Cuban government and people will likely face in a post-Castro Cuba; When the end of the Castro era arrives, the successor government and the Cuban people will need to answer certain questions: How is CastroOs more than four-decade rule likely to affect a post-Castro Cuba? What will be the political, social, and economic challenges Cuba will confront? What are the impediments to CubaOs economic development and democratic transition? The authors examine CastroOs political legacies, CubaOs generational and racial divisions, its demographic predicament, the legacy of a centralized economy, and the need for industrial restructuring.

One-liner: An investigation into how individuals decide to become involved in the arts and recommendations for effective strategies that may encourage participation. ABSTRACT: Arts organizations across the country are actively expanding their efforts to increase public participation in their programs. This report presents the findings of a RAND study sponsored by the Wallace-Reader's Digest Funds that looks at the process by which individuals become involved in the arts and attempts to identify ways in which arts institutions can most effectively influence this process. The report presents a behavioral model that identifies the main factors influencing individual decisions about the arts, based on site visits to institutions that have been particularly successful in attracting participants to their programs and in-depth interviews with the directors of more than 100 institutions that have received grants from the Wallace-Reader's Digest Funds and the Knight Foundation to encourage greater involvement in the arts. The model and a set of guidelines to help institutions approach the task of participation building constitute a framework that can assist in devising participation-building approaches that fit with an institution's overall purpose and mission, its available resources, and the community environment in which it operates-in other words, a framework that will enable arts institutions to take an integrative approach to building participation in the arts. (JD)