The nation's $200 billion public assistance system is a fragmented array of policies, programs, and organizations that often serves its clients poorly. In this book, experts from universities and think tanks and practitioners from all levels of government analyze serious coordination problems in the system. Cutting through the plethora of agency programs and regulations, these authorities offer practical reforms to make the system more effective, accountable, and efficient. They provide widely sought recommendations that will be useful to managers, students, scholars, experts, policymakers, and activists concerned with welfare reform and the future of public assistance programs. The essays in the book address the coordination problem for all types of public assistance programs for all age groups and types of problems. The book provides specific analyses of the Job Opportunities and Basic Skills program under the Family Support Act, job training and employment programs under the Job Training Partnership Act, programs for youth-at-risk, and particular efforts to integrate the delivery of services to public assistance recipients. The authors provide essential information about institutions, processes, and policies at the federal, state, and local levels. They define critical issues and formulate policy and administrative recommendations to improve such critical features as executive leadership, Congressional decision-making, agency management, state government planning and policy development, and local service delivery operations.

An increasing amount of attention has been focused on the employment effect of governmental regulation. Controversy over the implementation and impacts of governmental rules are now central to current public policy debates relating to employment and labor markets. A new policy framework for regulation is needed to make the regulatory decision-making process more responsive to the requirements for economic growth and to the employment effects of regulation. The President and Congress need to provide effective oversight of the process, from the perspective of both a single regulation and a government-wide approach to regulatory planning. Regulatory agencies need to use state-of-the-art analytical tools so that they can better determine the employment effects of their regulatory actions. This book presents a common-sense, albeit highly sophisticated and technical, approach to improving the technical soundness, credibility, and transparency of the regulatory decision-making process.

One of the key constraints to accelerated economic performance in developing countries is, in the authors' view, the absence of strong, dynamic financial systems. Many, if not most, developing countries suffer from repressed financial systems. Thus the most important step in effecting the development of capital markets is to lay a foundation of sound macroeconomic and regulatory policies conducive to financial sector development. This book presents an approach to financial sector reform composed of financial sector diagnosis, policy and institutional targeting, macroeconomic reforms, bank regulation and supervisory reform, and privatization. The work also presents criteria to help decision-makers apply the approach. The issues and approaches presented are as relevant to the emerging democracies of Eastern Europe and such transitional countries as Brazil and Mexico as they are to developing countries. The authors begin with an introductory discussion of the two-pronged strategy of financial reform and privatization and then, in chapter 2, provide an overview of developing financial systems. Chapter 3 discusses the public/private debate. Chapter 4 is devoted to financial sector liberalization, and chapter 5 goes on to discuss the privatization of financial institutions. A framework for financial reform and privatization is presented in chapter 6, and chapter 7 provides concluding comments. In addition, a series of case studies are presented in the appendix. These case studies demonstrate the methods and strategies used to address financial sector reform in Bangladesh, Chile, Guinea, Jamaica, Mexico, and the Philippines. This book will be useful to financial and development experts and to policy makers in countries amenable to changing their financial systems. It would also be appropriate for courses in international economics, international banking, international monetary issues, international finance, and economic development.