We are excited to announce our updated JPP Editorial Board! Please join us in welcoming our new members.  Marisa Abrajano, University of California San Diego, USA Frank R. Baumgartner, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Tim Besley, London School of Economics Evelyn Z. Brodkin Daniel Carpenter Joshua Clinton Pepper Culpepper Keith Dowding Fabio Franchino Sean Gailmard Francesca ..read more

By Deepanshu Mohan (@prats1810), O.P. Jindal Global University A United Nations tribunal constituted under Annex VII to the United Nations Convention (UNC) on the Law of the Sea at Hague submitted its verdict recently on a unilateral arbitration instituted by Philippines on June 21st, 2013 questioning the validity of China’s “nine-dash line” claims in the South China Sea ..read more

By Philipp Trein, University of Lausanne The image of smoking changed in recent decades. Instead of a well-deserved pleasure, cigarette consumption is considered to be above all a serious health hazard. In many countries, governments banned smoking in public places, increased cigarette taxes, and prohibited tobacco advertising and sponsoring of events by tobacco corporations. Limiting advertising ..read more

By Rod Hick (@rodhick), Cardiff University  Does measuring poverty multidimensionally make a difference in terms of who we identify as being poor? In recent years, a growing number of analysts have called for poverty measurement to go beyond a focus on income alone, to consider a wider range of deprivations a person may experience. The ..read more

The September issue of JPP is free to download here and for the next two months. This issue includes the following: The political economy of tax enforcement: a look at the Internal Revenue Service from 1978 to 2010 by Sutirtha Bagchi Happy taxation: increasing tax compliance through positive rewards? by Hilke Brockmann, Philipp Genschel and Laura Seelkopf The electoral foundations to noncompliance: addressing ..read more

By Ronald Fraser, PhD Starting in the late 1800s, state and federal legislatures began delegating their sovereign eminent domain police powers to oil and gas pipeline companies. A growing nation needed a dependable supply of fossil fuels. Since then, even now as evidence mounts that burning fossil fuels is a threat to the well-being of the ..read more

    By Colin Woodard Cross-Post Originally Published 2013 In December 2012, when Adam Lanza stormed into the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, with a rifle and killed twenty children and six adult staff members, the United States found itself immersed in debates about gun control. Another flash point occurred in July 2013, when George ..read more

By Vasil Stoynov, Free University Berlin “I don’t need a drill. I need a hole in my wall.”[1] This is the slogan of the various new startups and enterprises that nowadays represent the concept of the “sharing economy.” One of the most successful and prominent examples of these new wave business models is the car-sharing service Uber ..read more

By Johannes Urpelainen (@jurpelai), Columbia University Cross-post, Originally Published February 9, 2015 In environmental and energy policy, business interests often play an important role. Businesses have the resources to invest into lobbying for their preferred positions. Environmentalists often complain about the advantages that polluters enjoy in the political process due to their ability to “buy ..read more

The June issue of JPP is free to download now here and for the next two months. Feel free to share this hefty dose of public policy education far and wide. This issue includes the following:  A defence of participation income by Cristian Pérez-Muñoz Issue expertise in policymaking by Peter J. May, Chris Koski and Nicholas Stramp Explaining styles of political judgement in ..read more