A-1 Monthly Public Assistance Statistical Report Family Investment Program, October 2005

A-1 Monthly Public Assistance Statistical Report Family Investment Program, October 2005

A-1 Monthly Public Assistance Statistical Report Family Investment Program, November 2005

A-1 - Monthly Public Assistance Statistical Report Family Investment Program - November 2005

A-1 Monthly Public Assistance Statistical Report-Family Investment Program, December 2005

A-1 December 2005 - Monthly Public Assistance Statistical Report - Family Investment Program

Strategic Plan Iowa Workforce Development October, 2004

For the 2004 strategic planning process at Iowa Workforce Development, Director Richard Running asked for as much input from all staff as possible. As a result, planning staff designed an extensive process to gather input over about a three month period during the late spring and summer: • A Guide to Staff Involvement was drafted and distributed to staff in offices throughout the state. This guide provided a brief explanation of the planning process and quoted extensively from the Vilsack/Pederson Leadership Agenda and the 2003 IWD strategic plan to illustrate each step and to show examples of alignment. The guide also provided suggestions for staff in various locations and work units to conduct their own planning sessions. The structure was designed to solicit feedback regarding elements (vision, mission, guiding principles, goals and strategies) of the existing 2003 plan. Particular attention was devoted to securing non-management staff’s perspective during the internal and external assessment exercises. • Several local offices did conduct their own structured input sessions following the suggested guidelines and sent the results to planning staff in the central administrative offices. • Other work units in many locations opted to ask planning staff to facilitate planning sessions for them. The results of these sessions were also gathered by planning staff. In all, dozens of input sessions were held and hundreds of IWD staff participated directly in the process. Because all the sessions followed similar guidelines, it was relatively easy to combine all of the input received and spot common themes that surfaced from the many sessions. A composite of all the flip chart notes was compiled into one large document (for those who like lots of detail) and another document summarized the key themes that emerged. This information was used in a day-long planning retreat on August 20. Management staff members from throughout the department were invited and each work unit and sub-state region also brought a non-management staff person as well. This group reviewed the themes from the earlier sessions and then addressed each element of the 2003 plan, proposing refinements for almost all sections. Subsequently, senior management reviewed the results of the retreat and made the final decisions for the new 2004 plan. This thorough approach, with its special emphasis on input from line staff, did result in some significant changes to IWD’s plan. Local office staff, for example, consistently expressed the need to step up our marketing efforts, especially with employers. Another need that was expressed clearly and often was the need to beef up staff training efforts, much of the capacity for which had been lost in budget and staff reductions a few years ago. Neither of these issues is new, but the degree of concern expressed by IWD staff has caused us to elevate their importance in this year’s plan.

A-1 Monthly Public Assistance Statistical Report Family Investment Program, January 2006

Monthly Public Assistance Statistical Report Family Investment Program, January 2006

A-1 Monthly Public Assistance Statistical Report-Family Investment Program, February 2006

A-1 Monthly Public Assistance Statistical Report Family Investment Program, February 2006

A-1 Monthly Public Assistance Statistical Report Family Investment Program, March 2006

A-1 - March 2006 -Monthly Public Assistance Statistical Report Family Investment Program

A-1 Monthly Public Assistance Statistical Report Family Investment Program, April 2006

Monthly Public Assistance Statistical Report Family Investment Program, April 2006

A-1, Monthly Public Assistance Statistical Report Family Investment Program, May 2006

A-1 May 2006 - Monthly Public Assistance Statistical Report Family Investment Program

Financing Constraints, Irreversibility, and Investment Dynamics

We develop a model of an industry with many heterogeneous firms that face both financing constraints and irreversibility constraints. The financing constraint implies that firms cannot borrow unless the debt is secured by collateral; the irreversibility constraint that they can only sell their fixed capital by selling their business. We use this model to examine the cyclical behavior of aggregate fixed investment, variable capital investment, and output in the presence of persistent idiosyncratic and aggregate shocks. Our model yields three main results. First, the effect of the irreversibility constraint on fixed capital investment is reinforced by the financing constraint. Second, the effect of the financing constraint on variable capital investment is reinforced by the irreversibility constraint. Finally, the interaction between the two constraints is key for explaining why input inventories and material deliveries of US manufacturing firms are so volatile and procyclical, and also why they are highly asymmetrical over the business cycle.

A-1, Monthly Public Assistance Statistical Report - Family Investment Program, June 2006

A-1 Monthly Public Assistance Statistical Report - Family Investment Program - June 2006

Strategic Delegations in Monetary Unions

In monetary unions, monetary policy is typically made by delegates of the member countries. This procedure raises the possibility of strategic delegation - that countries may choose the types of delegates to influence outcomes in their favor. We show that without commitment in monetary policy, strategic delegation arises if and only if three conditions are met: shocks affecting individual countries are not perfectly correlated, risk-sharing across countries is imperfect, and the Phillips Curve is nonlinear. Moreover, inflation rates are inefficiently high. We argue that ways of solving the commitment problem, including the emphasis on price stability in the agreements constituting the European Union are especially valuable when strategic delegation is a problem.

Firm-Specific Investment, Sticky Prices, and the Taylor Principle

According to the Taylor principle a central bank should adjust the nominal interest rate by more than one-for-one in response to changes in current inflation. Most of the existing literature supports the view that by following this simple recommendation a central bank can avoid being a source of unnecessary fluctuations in economic activity. The present paper shows that this conclusion is not robust with respect to the modelling of capital accumulation. We use our insights to discuss the desirability of alternative interest rate rules. Our results suggest a reinterpretation of monetary policy under Volcker and Greenspan: The empirically plausible characterization of monetary policy can explain the stabilization of macroeconomic outcomes observed in the early eighties for the US economy. The Taylor principle in itself cannot.

A-1 Monthly Public Assistance Statistical Report Family Investment Program, July 2006

A-1 July 2006 - Monthly Public Assistance Statistical Report Family Investment Program

A-1 Monthly Public Assistance Statistical Report Family Investment Program, August 2006

A-1 Monthly Public Assistance Statistical Report Family Investment Program August 2006