Public Affairs Discussion Group

The Social Effects of Economic Dislocation

Mark Votruba, Ph.D. - Associate Professor of Economics at Case Western Reserve University



Friday March 25, 2011
12:30-1:30 p.m.
Crawford Hall - Room 9
Inamori Center
Case Western Reserve University

The economic dislocation that began in late 2007 seems to be becoming more permanent, for more people. Most of the policy discussion now consists of arguments about how to improve the economy – and often does not focus on jobs.

But the consequences of unemployment go beyond reduced national product. In a series of papers, Mark Votruba and colleagues have been studying the social effects of unemployment – connections including the relationships between plant downsizing and disability claims, of plant closing with the break-up of marriages, and parental job loss with childrens' school performance.

There will be no parking available in the visitors lot next to Crawford Hall from March 29th until April 29th. A few of the handicapped parking spaces may still be available but space will be severely limited. Parking options for visitors from beyond campus include the Severance Hall parking garage on East Boulevard, the small lot on Adelbert Road just uphill from Euclid Ave, and other lots on campus.

More About Our Guest....

How does plant downsizing affect the welfare of employees and their children? Is the use of public support programs affected by use among one's peers? These are just two of the questions Mark Votruba tackles in his research in public policy and health economics. Mark's third area of focus is how medical resources are allocated in the U.S. health care system. He's examined the consequences of referring stroke patients to hospitals that treat more stroke patients; potential cost savings of treatments to reduce premature birth; and influences on insurers' willingness to pay for treatments that could reduce long-term medical costs.

Friday Lunch Upcoming Topics and Speakers:

April 1: Jacqueline Lipton, Professor and Associate Dean of Law: Privacy and Online Social Networks.

April 8: Special Inamori Center Event.

April 15: Mark Naymik, Reporter, Cleveland Plain Dealer: Ohio's Budget Battle

April 22: Jon Groetzinger, Visiting Professor of Law and Director, China Legal Programs: Developing the Legal Profession in China.

The Friday Lunch discussions are held on the lower (ground) level of Crawford Hall. Visitors with mobility issues may find it easiest to take advantage of special arrangements we have made. On most Fridays, a few parking spaces in the V.I.P. lot in between Crawford Hall and Amasa Stone Chapel are held for participants in the lunch discussion. Overflow parking is also available in the Severance Hall parking garage on East Boulevard.

Visitors then can avoid walking up the hill to the first floor of Crawford by entering the building on the ground level, through the garage area under the building. The further door on the left in that garage will be left unlocked during the period before the Friday lunch. On occasion, parking will be unavailable because of other university events.

For more information about these and other Center for Policy Studies programs, please see http://policy.case.edu.

March 21, 2011

Upcoming Events

Getting US-Pakistan Relations Right: What is at Stake

Professor C. Christine Fair, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Political Science at Georgetown University, March 24, 2011, 4:30 p.m., Inamori Center for Ethics and Excellence, Crawford Hall, Case Western Reserve University. This program is co-sposored by the Inamori Center for Ethics and Excellence and the department of political science at Case Western Reserve University.

Professor C. Christine Fair will discuss general policy challenges before Washington as it deals with Pakistan from the optic of the war in Afghanistan, the "Global War on Terrorism,"and other issues of regional and international security.

C.Christine Fair has a Ph.D. from the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations (2004) at the University of Chicago and an MA from the Harris School of Public Policy (1997) also at the University of Chicago. Currently she is an assistant professor at the Center for Peace and Security Studies (CPASS) at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. She is also a Senior Fellow with the Counter Terrorism Center at West Point and a Research Fellow with the National Bureau of Asia Research's National Asia Research Program. Prior to joining Georgetown, she served as a Senior Political Scientist with the RAND Corporation, a Political Officer with the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan in Kabul, and a Senior Research Associate with the United States Institute of Peace, Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention. Her research focuses upon political and military affairs in South Asia. She is a member of the International Institute of Strategic Studies and the Council on Foreign Relations, serves on the editorial board of Studies in Conflict and Terrorism and the Journal of Strategic Studies and is an Associate Editor of India Review.

Creativity, Copyright, and the Universal Library: Romanticism and Writing at Times of Media Revolution

Adrian Johns, Ph.D., Professor of History at the University of Chicago, April 12, 2011, 4:00 p.m., Moot Courtroom (A59), Case Western Reserve University School of Law, 11075 East Blvd., Cleveland, Ohio. Organized by the Center for the Study of Writing in conjunction with the Department of English, the Department of History, the School of Law, and the Kelvin Smith Library at Case Western Reserve University.

Google's ambition to produce a massive online 'library' of digitized books has provoked passionate reactions from the publishing industry, authors, and other groups. In fact, debates over the purpose and possible impact of 'universal' libraries are nothing new, and in the past such debates have had a significant impact on the constitution of the information economy itself. I want to draw attention to a particularly consequential conflict, which raged in the years around 1800. As publishing took on its modern form, and with the advent of new printing technologies, Britain's parliament proposed that copyright law be used to create a universal deposit library. Tying commercial print to the collection of learning would, in its eyes, lead to the climax of Enlightenment. But the project proved unexpectedly controversial. An alliance of poets, antiquarians, naturalists, and publishers fought bitterly against the scheme, arguing on Romantic grounds that it betrayed the very nature of creativity. By collecting the output of an industrial, proprietary publishing sector, it would immortalize mediocrity and demoralize future generations. The outcome of the contest was a critically important change in copyright itself -- one that has survived to play a major role in shaping the Google debate, in our own moment of radical change in media and information.

Professor Johns is the author of Death of a Pirate: British Radio and the Making of the Information Age (2010); Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates (2009); and The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making (1998), as well as numerous articles on the histories of the book, science, and intellectual property. Educated at Cambridge University, Johns taught at the University of California, San Diego, and Caltech before joining the University of Chicago faculty.