Scott Milliman

Optimal fishery management in the presence of illegal activity

Abstract A simple fishery model is developed with legal and illegal markets for fish, the latter market being combated by enforcement efforts put forth by a social regulator. In response to enforcement, violators undertake avoidance activities to escape detection. The possible impacts of illegal activity on optimal fishery management are then explored, and some policy implications are suggested. Concurrently, optimal regulation is calculated when: (a) only legal surplus is maximized versus (b) when both legal and illegal surplus is maximized. The rationale for these two regimes and their divergence in optimal management policies is outlined.

Small Districts in Big Trouble: How Four Arizona School Systems Responded to Charter Competition

How do district schools respond to competition from charter schools? To explore this question, we examine four small Arizona school districts which lost from a tenth to a third of enrollment to charter schools in a short time period. Districts lost market share to charter schools because they did not satisfy significant constituencies, thus providing demands for education alternatives. District responses to market pressure depend on overall enrollment trends, the quality of the charter competition, the quality of district leadership, and the size of the district. Districts respond to competition in various ways, including reforming curricula, changing leadership, vilifying charter competitors, and attempting to absorb those competitors. Responses suggest that competition improves schools, but that markets do not work quickly or without friction and must be understood in context.

School Choice in the Real World: Lessons from Arizona Charter Schools.

Real World School Choice: Arizona Charter Schools (Robert Maranto, Scott Milliman, Frederick Hess, and April Gresham) Theoretical and National Perspectives And This Parent Went to Market: Education as Public vs. Private Good (L. Elaine Halchin) The Death of One Best Way: Charter Schools as Reinventing Government (Robert Maranto) Congress and Charter Schools (David L. Leal) Charter Schools: A National Innovation, an Arizona Revolution (Bryan C. Hassel) Social Scientists Look at Arizona Charter Schools The Wild West of Education Reform: Arizona Charter Schools (Robert Maranto and April Gresham) Why Arizona Embarked on School Reform (and Nevada Did Not) (Stephanie Timmons-Brown and Frederick Hess) Do Charter Schools Improve District Schools? Three Approaches to the Question (Robert Maranto, Scott Milliman, Frederick Hess, and April Gresham) Closing Charters: How A Good Theory Failed in Practice (Gregg A. Garn and Robert T. Stout) Nothing New: Curricula in Arizona Charter Schools (Robert T. Stout and Gregg A. Garn) How Arizona Teachers View School Reform (Frederick Hess, Robert Maranto, Scott Milliman and April Gresham) Practitioners Look at Arizona Charter Schools The Empowerment of Market-Based School Reform (Lisa Graham Keegan) A Voice From the State Legislature: Dont Do What Arizona Did! (Mary Hartley) Public Schools and the Charter Movement: An Emerging Relationship (Lee L. Hager) Whose Idea Was This Anyway? The Challenging Metamorphosis from Private to Charter (Jim Spencer) Lessons In Lieu of Conclusions: Tentative Lessons From a Contested Frontier (Robert Maranto, Scott Milliman, Frederick Hess, and April Gresham).

Firm incentives to promote technological change in pollution control: Reply☆

Abstract The process of technological change in pollution control is broken into three basic steps: innovation, diffusion, and optimal agency response. Firm incentives to promote these steps are then examined under five regulatory regimes: direct controls, emission subsidies, emission taxes, free marketable permits, and auctioned marketable permits. On a relative basis, emission taxes and auctioned permits provide the highest firm incentives to promote technological change; at times, free permits generate lower incentives. Direct controls, which are common regulatory tools, usually provide the lowest relative firm incentives to promote technological change.

Educational Renegades: Dissatisfied Teachers as Drivers of Charter School Formation

The U.S. charter school movement has expanded rapidly, but this growth is geographically uneven at the school district level. Focusing on Arizona—which has the least restrictive charter school law in the United States—we use district variables to determine the factors driving charter market share in 41 districts. Included in our analysis is an explicit measure of teacher dissatisfaction, which is not found in past work. Like previous analyses, we find that greater private school penetration prompts charter formation. In addition, we find quantitative confirmation of the fieldwork of Hess, Maranto, & Milliman (2001) and others suggesting that dissatisfied district school teachers drive Arizona charter growth by starting and staffing those schools.

Does Private School Competition H-arm Public Schools? Revisiting Smith and Meier's The Case Against School Choice

Smith and Meier (1995a) empirically assess the market hypothesis advanced by Chubb and Moe (1988, 1990), which holds that compettion improves schools. Using Florida school district data, Smith and Meier find that higher private school market share lowers public school test scores; they conclude that competition harms public schools. Hoever, they do not take into account the impact of family income on copetition in traditionally organized education markets: the lower the income, the less likely parents can exit the public schools, which implies less competition. Using their database but segmenting it into low and high income groups, we reanalyze the relationship between test scores and private school market share. We find that private school market share lowers test scores primarily in low income districts, where comptition is least due to low family income. We conclude that Smith and Meiers rejection of the market hypothesis is premature.

Evaluating Fishery Rehabilitation under Uncertainty: A Bioeconomic Analysis of Quota Management for the Green Bay Yellow Perch Fishery

Abstract The fishery for yellow perch Perca flavescens in Green Bay, Lake Michigan, is currently operating under a rehabilitation plan based on a commercial harvest quota. We developed a bioeconomic computer model that included links between population density and growth, recruitment, and fishing effort for this fishery. Random variability was included in the stock–recruitment relation and in a simulated population assessment. We used the model in an adaptive management framework to evaluate the effects of the rehabilitation plan on both commercial and sport fisheries and to search for ways to improve the plan. Results indicate that the current quota policy is a member of a set of policies that would meet most management goals and increase total value of the fishery. Sensitivity analyses indicate that this conclusion is robust over a wide range of biological conditions. We predict that commercial fishers will lose money relative to the baseline condition, but they may receive other benefits from the elimi...

Benefit-cost analysis of fishery rehabilitation projects: A great lakes case study

Abstract Tools of benefit-cost analysis are used to evaluate a project to rehabilitate the yellow perch fishery of Green Bay, Wisconsin. Both sport and commercial fishers harvest from this stock, which has been suffering from much reduced productivity since the early 1960s. The project is composed of commercial quotas and other regulations. Measures of benefits and costs were used that explicitly incorporate uncertainty about the potential level of success of the project. The analysis shows that commercial fish producers will more or less break even compared to where they would have been without the project, but that substantial recreational benefits can be expected. This case study illustrates how benefit-cost analysis can provide useful insights into the potential economic returns from rehabilitation projects. It also dramatizes unresolved research issues, particularly in the area of sport fishing valuation.

Resistance in the Trenches: What Shapes Teachers' Attitudes Toward School Choice?

Choice-based reforms are the most controversial proposals to improve American education, yet little is known about how teachers view choice. The authors present the first systematic analysis of the factors that determine teacher attitudes toward school choice. Using a 1995 national mail survey of 900 public high school teachers (325 responded, a 42% response rate), we found that more experienced teachers and those who identify themselves as Democrats, majored in education as undergraduates, or who have never worked in a competitive educational environment are more likely to oppose public school choice. More experienced teachers and those who identify themselves as Democrats are also more likely to oppose private school choice, as are union members and teachers who teach in school cultures they deem negative. These findings are significant because teachers, both as classroom implementers of public policy and as political actors, help determine the impact of changes in education policy.

How Traditional Public Schools Respond to Competition: The Mitigating Role of Organizational Culture

We assess whether the organizational culture of traditional public schools shapes their response to competition from charter schools in Arizona, which has a high level of charter school competition. We focus on traditional public elementary schools from 1995 to 1998, when charter schools were introduced in this state. We explore this topic by segmenting a sample of 81 traditional public elementary schools into two groups: those with high levels of principal–teacher collaboration just prior to charter competition, and a second group with low prior collaboration levels. We find that threatened entry increased teacher curriculum control for district schools with high principal–teacher collaboration but had no impact for schools with low collaboration. In contrast, actual charter entry did not influence teacher curriculum control for either high or low collaboration schools. These results suggest that organizational culture can modulate the impact of threatened entry on traditional public schools, although the statistical impacts are modest.