On the Go
at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies

Roy Bahl, dean of the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Jim Ledbetter, director of the Georgia Health Policy Center and John Hicks, assistant to the provost for international programs, traveled to South Africa in September to meet with government officials about a proposed program to provide job training to the disabled. Bahl and economics professor Jim Alm visited Indonesia in May on a World Bank/USAID project to evaluate the Indonesian government's decentralization program. Bahl also represented the Young School in Russia, Poland and Palestine over the summer.

Grant Black, a Ph.D. student in economics, was invited to present information from a paper he co-authored with Paula Stephan, associate dean of the Young School, "Bioinformatics: Does the U.S. System Lead to Missed Opportunities in Emerging Fields? A Case Study," at the International Conference on the Economics of Scientific Research Oct. 1-2 at the Universite Catholique in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.

Jorge Martinez-Vazquez, director of the Young School's International Studies Program, and Kelly Edmiston, assistant professor of economics, went to Kazakhstan in September on a World Bank-sponsored trip to provide advice on expenditure assignment to that country's Ministry of Finance. Martinez-Vazquez also traveled to Moscow in August to supervise the Young School's ongoing tax project; to Latvia in July to advise officials on the design of an equalization fund for local governments; and to Ukraine in July to attend a World Bank conference on tax policy.

Karen Minyard, senior research associate for the Georgia Health Policy Center, and Pam Barr of Georgia State's J. Mack Robinson College of Business, recently presented "Identity and Strategy Formulation in a Deconstructing Industry: Observations from Rural Health Care Organizations" at the 19th Annual International Conference of the Strategic Management Society in Berlin.

Felix Rioja, assistant professor of economics, presented "Filling Potholes: The Macroeconomic Effects of Maintenance vs. New Investments of Public Infrastructure" at the Econometric Society's Latin American meeting in July in Cancun, Mexico.

Sam Skogstad, chair of the Department of Economics, recently traveled to Uganda to negotiate an agreement with government officials for the Young School to provide training in taxation and other types of revenue mobilization, including securing grants, along with techniques for programming, executing and monitoring public sector expenditures. Trainees include central government officials with responsibility for fiscal dealings with sub-national governments, as well as officials of local and regional governments.

John Thomas, chair of the Department of Public Administration and Urban Studies, presented a paper on "Public Involvement in Public Administration in the Information Age: Speculations on the Effects of Technology" during a conference on "Citizens and Public Administration in the Information Age" Aug. 17-20 at the University of Tampere in Tampere, Finland.

Photo above: THE REAL THING: Inland Revenue Department Senior Assessor K.P. Kaluarachchi, Deputy Commissioner S.K.P. Anura Fernando and Sri Lanka Customs Assistant Director D.A.I. Daranagama pour over merchandise at Atlanta's World of Coca-Cola. The Sri Lankan officials and 10 of their colleagues traveled to the Young School for a four-week tax policy analysis training program July 19-Aug. 13. The training sessions, conducted by faculty members in the Young School's economics department, were organized by Mark Rider of the International Studies Program.