Country Analysis Brief: Brazil
Source: Energy Information Administration
Brazil is the 10th largest energy consumer in the world and the 3rd largest in the Western Hemisphere, behind the United States and Canada. Total primary energy consumption in Brazil has increased significantly in recent years, due to sustained economic growth. In addition, Brazil has made great strides in increasing its total energy production, particularly oil, over the past decade. Increasing domestic oil production has been a long-term goal of the Brazilian government, and recent discoveries of large offshore, pre-salt oil deposits could transform Brazil into one of the largest oil producers in the world.
New GAO Reports and Testimonies (PDFs)
Source: Government Accountability Office
30 September 2009
+ Reports
1. Medicaid: Fraud and Abuse Related to Controlled Substances Identified in Selected States
2. Ryan White CARE Act: Health Resources and Services Administration’s Implementation of Certain Provisions Hampered by Lack of Timely and Accurate Information
3. Vocational Rehabilitation Funding Formula: Options for Improving Equity in State Grants and Considerations for Performance Incentives
4. Disaster Housing: FEMA Needs More Detailed Guidance and Performance Measures to Help Ensure Effective Assistance after Major Disasters
5. International Food Assistance: Key Issues for Congressional Oversight
6. International Trade: U.S. Agencies Have Taken Some Steps, but Serious Impediments Remain to Restricting Trade in Burmese Rubies and Jadeite
7. Intellectual Property: Enhanced Planning by U.S. Personnel Overseas Could Strengthen Efforts
8. Nuclear Waste: Uncertainties and Questions about Costs and Risks Persist with DOE’s Tank Waste Cleanup Strategy at Hanford
9. Military Airlift: DOD Should Take Steps to Strengthen Management of the Civil Reserve Air Fleet Program
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+ Testimonies
1. Financial Regulation: Recent Crisis Reaffirms the Need to Overhaul the U.S. Regulatory System, by Richard J. Hillman, managing director, financial markets and community investment, before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs
2. Crime Victims’ Rights Act: Increasing Victim Awareness and Clarifying Applicability to the District of Columbia Will Improve Implementation of the Act, by Eileen Larence, director, homeland security and justice, before the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security, House Committee on the Judiciary
Broadband Task Force Delivers Status Report On Feb. 17 National Broadband Plan (PDF; 156 KB)
Source: Federal Communications Commission
Most broadband applications focus on browsing, communication and entertainment. Increasingly, these uses are evolving to education, job training, business and other productive purposes. Different applications require different broadband speeds, with the most demanding being high-definition streamed video. But actual broadband speeds lag advertised speeds by at least 50% and possibly more during the busy hours. Peak usage hours, typically 7 p.m. to 10 p.m., create network congestion and speed degradation. About 1% of users drive 20% of traffic, while 20% of users drive up to 80% of traffic. A constrained network dictates investment needs in infrastructure.
+ Presentation (PDF; 1.9 MB)
Carbon Disclosure Project Report 2009\
Source: PricewaterhouseCoopers
The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), to which PwC has been appointed global advisor and report writer, and now in its seventh year, aims to provide investors with a unique analysis of how the worlds largest companies are responding to climate change.
In 2009, CDP received the highest response rate to date, the highest level of disclosed emissions and greater detail than ever before on the activities being undertaken by the largest corporations around climate change mitigation and adaptation. Since the first CDP report in 2003, the quantity and quality of data disclosed has advanced significantly. In parallel, CDP data is increasingly being applied as a catalyst for changing business behaviour and is becoming more integrated into mainstream financial analysis.
This year, CDP (backed by 475 institutional investors representing more than US$55 trillion of funds under management) sent questionnaires to more than 3,700 of the world’s largest corporations requesting information on greenhouse gas emissions, the potential risks and opportunities related to climate change and strategies for managing those risks and opportunities.
Majority of Americans not Meeting Recommendations for Fruit and Vegetable Consumption
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
No U.S. state is meeting national objectives for consumption of fruits and vegetables, according to the first report to provide state–by–state data about fruit and vegetable consumption and policies that may help Americans eat more fruits and vegetables.
“State Indicator Report on Fruits and Vegetables, 2009”was released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Healthy People 2010 objectives aim for at least 75 percent of Americans to eat the recommended two or more daily servings of fruit, and for at least 50 percent of Americans to eat the recommended three or more servings of vegetables daily. However, CDC surveys indicate that only 33 percent of adults meet the recommendation for fruit consumption and 27 percent get the recommended servings of vegetables. The statistics are even worse for high school students – 32 percent report eating at least two servings of fruit daily and 13 percent say they eat at least three servings of vegetables each day.
The Use of Mobile Devices by Motorists (PDF; 100 KB)
Source: Council of State Governments
Includes research, statistics, chart of relevant state laws.
Getting Past Denial — The High Cost of Health Care in the United States
Source: New England Journal of Medicine
What seemed to be a golden opportunity to achieve badly needed health care reform now appears to be threatened. Many Americans believe that we simply cannot afford to cover the uninsured, since doing so would require taxes to be raised beyond the level the public can sustain. Others believe that we can slow spending growth only by rationing needed care. Neither option is attractive. Evidence regarding regional variations in spending and growth, however, points to a more hopeful alternative: we should be able to reorganize and improve care to eliminate wasteful and unnecessary services.
But not everyone is convinced. Some physicians, hospital administrators, and legislators appear to have succumbed to a behavioral bias. They know that their patients are sick and that sick patients need more care than relatively healthy ones. They therefore conclude that the reason their hospital or region spends more is that their patients are sicker and poorer than those cared for by institutions in other regions. Given this reverse “Lake Wobegon” effect that renders all U.S. patients below average (in Garrison Keillor’s fictional town of Lake Wobegon “all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average”), they argue that any efforts to rein in costs will cause harm to the people we most want to protect.
And it’s not hard to find examples of places where this explanation might appear to make perfect sense: in Los Angeles, where Medicare spends $10,810 per capita, a somewhat higher percentage of the population (15%) is at or below the poverty line than in Minneapolis (10%), which spends $6,705 per capita.
This is too important a moment to allow physicians or policymakers to be confused by behavioral biases or distracted by one-off examples. Health is indeed the most important determinant of health care spending, but differences in health explain only a small part of the regional variations in spending.
New Report Finds Part-Time Law Partners a Boon to Business and Employees
Source: Sloan Work and Family Research Network, Boston College
While part-time work has been a viable option for many workers attempting to balance work and family lives, it has not, generally or traditionally, been available to most law partners. In fact, historically, working part-time in the law has been seen as professional suicide. However, a new study just released by The Project for Attorney Retention, Reduced Hours, Full Success: Part-Time Partners in U.S. Law Firms, demonstrates that there is evidence that providing part-time partners options to employees can be a “win-win” for employees and firms. More specifically, this report shows that law firms can successfully implement reduced-hour programs and that part-time lawyers and their law firms will prosper because of these programs.
The premise of the report is that part-time partners are “key to the law firms’ long-term financial health” and that providing part-time partnership options affords firms the opportunity to attract and retain excellent lawyers from a larger pool of applicants, including groups that value work-life balance (e.g., mothers and Generation Yers). This report also asserts that providing part-time partnership options helps firms “save recruiting costs by hiring fewer new lawyers, retain a diverse group of lawyers, reduce attrition costs, attract new clients, and increase the satisfaction of current clients.”
+ Full Report (PDF; 380 KB)
Baghdad ER–Revisited
Source: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College
The China Dragons of the 28th Combat Support Hospital deployed in support of Operation IRAQI FREEDOM from September 2006 until November 2007. This combat tour was historic in many regards, with the team challenged by unprecedented casualty numbers and indirect fire attacks. Not only did they save thousands of lives; they helped advanced trauma medicine, as leading hospitals worldwide have benefitted from military initiatives in the areas of bleeding control and hemostatic resuscitation. Their service epitomizes the strides that have been made in military combat medicine, and their challenges highlight the areas in which our medical system can improve further.
+ Full Paper (PDF; 615 KB)
Matchmaking: Enabling Mandatory Public School Choice in New York and Boston
Source: Education Sector
From tuition vouchers for private schools to charter schools to voluntary transfer programs within and between public school systems, school choice has been at the center of the school reform debate for two decades. But with the voucher movement unable to sustain much momentum, charter schools still serving a small percentage of the nation’s students with mixed results, and the public school choice system in the federal No Child Left Behind Act plagued by low participation rates, New York City’s public high school selection system stands out as a model strategy for harnessing the power of the marketplace to better serve students’ diverse educational interests and needs and to stimulate improvement through competition for students.
The school system has sponsored choice on a scale unprecedented in public education by requiring each of its eighth-graders to select schools. And, along with the Boston school system, which has also made choice mandatory, it has adopted computer software that allows it to place students in the schools on their lists far more efficiently and fairly than most public school choice programs.
As a result, the choice systems in New York and Boston, though not without challenges, have stimulated a new entrepreneurialism among many public educators, improved the perception of public education among middle-class families, and served as a catalyst for school reform by providing a rationale for taking action in schools that fail to compete successfully for students. They can be powerful engines of urban school reform and valuable prototypes for other cities working to match more students with schools of choice.
+ Full Report (PDF; 407 KB)
FSU Immigrants in Canada: A Case of Positive Triple Selection? (PDF; 637 KB)
Source: institute for the Study of Labor
This paper investigates the economic performance of immigrants from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) countries in Canada. The contribution of this paper lies in its use of a natural experiment to detect possible differential labour market performances of Soviet immigrants prior to and after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In short, the collapse of the former Soviet Union allows an exogenous supply change in the number and type of FSU immigrants potentially destined to enter Canada. For this purpose, Census microlevel data from the 1986, 1991, 1996 and 2001 Canadian Census are utilized to estimate earnings and employment outcomes for pre- and post-FSU immigrants.
Making Your Nest Egg Last a Lifetime
Source: Center for Retirement Research at Boston College
Media attention on retirement security generally focuses on the need to save enough to enjoy a comfortable retirement. However, accumulating a nest egg is no longer the only significant challenge – the other is managing one’s nest egg in retirement. In contrast to previous birth cohorts who often received a lifetime income from a defined benefit pension plan, in today’s 401(k) world retirees must choose how to convert their accumulated savings into a monthly paycheck.
One straightforward solution to the drawdown challenge is an immediate annuity, which turns a lump sum of income into a lifelong payment stream. However, for various reasons, such annuities have not proven broadly popular. Therefore, this brief examines several alternatives. All such strategies involve a trade-off between maximizing consumption and minimizing the risk of running out of money. Calculating the optimal strategy is really hard – maybe impossible. But, despite the complexity of the problem, some strategies are clearly superior to others…
+ Full Document (PDF; 165 KB)
The Role of Federal Gasoline Excise Taxes in Public Policy (PDF; )
Source: Congressional Research Servicve (via OpenCRS)
American drivers, compared to those in other industrialized nations in Europe, pay relatively low federal, state, and local gasoline and diesel excise taxes. The Federal taxes are used specifically to fund annual highway construction, maintenance, and mass transit. Over the years, proposals have come forth to raise the federal tax as a way to address long-standing national policy concerns, including U.S. dependence on imported oil and various environmental problems related to large volumes of gasoline consumption.
Policy attention on the role of the gasoline tax has also increased recently due to three major developments. First, the 2008 oil and gasoline price run-up and subsequent economic downturn have led to a decline in gasoline tax revenues available for needed highway construction and maintenance. Second, the possibility of enacting some form of binding climate change legislation in the next several years will eventually mean an increase in the relative price of fossil fuels, including oil and gasoline. Third, the volatility of gasoline prices has affected investment planning (e.g. for alternative fuels) and arguably contributed to the troubles facing domestic automobile manufacturers. In the above context, this report outlines some of the macroeconomic and microeconomic pros and cons of using the federal gasoline excise tax for policy purposes in addition to the funding of highway infrastructure.
Whether an increase in the gasoline tax was fixed or variable, advocates argue that increasing the relative price of gasoline would promote beneficial short- and long-term changes in how we use this form of energy. A higher relative price would encourage consumers and manufacturers to move toward more fuel-efficient vehicles, or to switch to alternative fuels, thus reducing oil consumption and imports, reducing air pollution, and possibly encouraging greater use of mass transit. Advocates further argue that such taxes could be recycled back into the economy through changes in the tax structure and/or increased investment in renewable or alternative fuels, among other options.
Opponents of gasoline tax increases point to the effects on consumer and business spending, which affect the short- and long-term performance of the overall U.S. economy, especially in a time of needed economic recovery. Additionally, opponents point out that the gasoline tax has a regressive impact and affects rural areas disproportionately. Opponents also argue that such tax revenues could be better spent if left in the private sector.
Gasoline price increases due to market forces, or earlier tax increases, of course, have been part of the economic environment for almost four decades. Since the mid-1970s, there have been significant spikes in gasoline prices due to world oil market turmoil attributed to political conflict and war in the Middle East and to financial market speculation. Depending on the specified purpose of a new gasoline tax increase, it could be modest, or more significant. Because the demand for gasoline is quite price insensitive (inelastic), significant revenues could be generated with little change in real consumption, even with a relatively low tax increase. A more substantial tax increase would likely be needed to change consumer preferences and business investment decisions. Any debate on modifying the gasoline excise tax will likely revolve around these tensions.
Smart Grid Cyber Security Strategy and Requirements (Draft; PDF, 1.4 MB)
Source: National Institute of Standards and Technology
NIST announces that draft NIST IR 7628, Smart Grid Cyber Security Strategy and Requirements, is now available for public comment. The first draft of the document contains the overall security strategy for the Smart Grid and the products developed from this strategy, for example, development of vulnerability classes, identification of well-understood security problems that need to be addressed, selection and development of security-relevant use cases, identification and analysis of interfaces identified in the six functional priority areas and selection of a suite of security documents that will be used as the base for the selection and tailoring of security requirements. This is the first draft of the NISTIR; the next draft is scheduled to be posted for comment in December 2009.
Underwriting, Mortgage Lending, and House Prices: 1996-2008
Source: Fisher Center for Real Estate & Urban Economics Working Papers
Lowering of underwriting standards may have contributed much to the unprecedented recent rise and subsequent fall of mortgage volumes and house prices. Conventional data don’t satisfactorily measure aggregate underwriting standards over the past decade: The easing and then tightening of underwriting, inside and especially outside of banks, was likely much more extensive than they indicate. Given mortgage market developments since the mid 1990s, the method of principal components produces a superior indicator of mortgage underwriting standards. We show that the resulting indicator better fits the variation over time in the laxity and tightness of underwriting. Based on a VAR, we then show how conditions affected underwriting standards. The results also show that our new indicator of underwriting helps account for the behavior of mortgage volumes, house prices, and GDP during the recent boom in mortgage and housing markets.
+ Full Paper (PDF; 153 KB)
