Policy Analysis Assignment/ Instructions below..

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timer Asked: Mar 11th, 2016

Question Description

Instructions

POLS 3314 ASSIGNMENT 

  • This is an open book assignment.

  • Follow the specific instructions of data analysis for each question.

  •  There are three questions listed in this assignment. EACH  question needs to be answered with presentation and style.

  • Write your discussion in a concise and precise way. Your discussion should be supported

    by the data analysis and empirical findings.

  • For each question, you are required to generate tables and figures. Tables and figures

    should be self-contained.

o Each table and figure should have a title.

o Each table and figure should have a footnote for data sources.

o If you need to present multiple lines or bars in a figure, the layout for lines and

bars should be differentiable.

o Axes should go with self-contained titles.

o Use legends and labels if they help to clarify your figures.


(FIGURES NEEDED WILL BE PROVIDED + AN EXAMPLE OF THE ASSIGNMENT)
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1. In Chapter 2, Kettl presents a comparative figure (Figure 2.4), ranking government outlays as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). What would the comparison look like if we take a further step to evaluate government outlays based on different spending categories? Finish the following data analysis and provide a short write-up on what you find.

(1)  Go to the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) database,
http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx. Check the category, “Health”. You can find data on health expenditures and financing for OECD countries. Generate a similar figure to Figure 2.4 based on total health spending (as a percentage of GDP) in 2012. Where does the U.S. stand in this cross-country comparison based on total health spending? Discuss what you find. (10 points)

(2)  Now, analyze the health expenditure that is only financed by government. How does the cross-country comparison look if you only compare government health expenditure? Discuss what you find. (10 points)

(3)  Repeat step (2), but assess the finance agent, “private sector”. Do you find different cross-country comparison based on (2) and (3)? Discuss what you find. (10 points)


 2. Government employment is one of the empirical measures to evaluate government size. The size of government employment, moreover, varies substantially across states. The U.S. Census Bureau produces annual national data books, from which we can find data on government employment in each state.

(1) Go to the 2012 U.S. Census Bureau “State Government Employment and Payroll” Data,
http://www.census.gov/govs/apes/historical_data_2012.html. Then, check the category, “State Government Employment and Payroll Data”. Find out, in your home state, what was the total state government full-time equivalent employment in 2012? Make a state-ranking figure based on total state & local government employment (similar to Figure 2.3 in Kettl) and discuss where your home state stands in the cross-state comparison. (10 points)

(2) List all the neighboring states of your home state and list the total state and full- time employment in 2012 in these neighboring states. Make a table of the comparative statistics. Discuss how your home state compares to its neighboring states. Why do they have different sizes of full-time government employment? (10 points)

(3) Now, take a further look at the profile of your home state’s full time-employment (i.e. full-time employment by functions). In which functions do you observe large numbers of full time employment in your home state (report the top 5 functions)? Repeat this step for all the neighboring states and produce a table to compare their government employment profiles to that in your home state.(10 points)

3. Kettl mentions in Chapter 2 that much governmental activity occurs between levels of government. Inter-governmental grants have been used widely to aid state and local governments. Moreover, state government revenues and expenditures vary substantially by functions. Check out the U.S. Census Bureau “Government Finance Statistics”,
http://www.census.gov/govs/financegen/index.html.


(1)  Analyze inter-government revenue in California and Texas in 2013. What are the major sources of inter-government revenue in these two states (i.e. from federal, state and local level). In these two states, how did the inter-governmental revenue compare to the general revenue from states’ own sources in 2013? Which state relies more on inter-governmental revenue? Discuss what you find.(10 Points)

(2)  Now, turn to the expenditure category, “Governmental Administration”, analyze and discuss how these two states compare with each other based on their 2013 expenditures on governmental administration? Which states spent more on governmental administration in 2013? Why? (10 Points). Find out the population size of these two states in 2013, then covert total governmental administration expenditures into per capita expenditures. Would you draw the same comparison between CA and Texas based on per capita expenditure on governmental administration?

(3)  Reconsider the total expenditures and expenditures by functions in California and Texas in 2013. Compare what administrative function(s) drove these two states’ expenditures on governmental administration. Discuss what you find (5 points).

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