• #1 in New York City among public institutions
• #2 in New York State among public institutions
• #3 in New York City, overall
• #6 in New York State, overall
• #34 among public institutions (tie)
• #49 nationwide (tie), among 276 programs

• #2 in New York City among public institutions
• #3 in New York State among public institutions
• #4 in New York City, overall
• #6 in New York State, overall
• #25 among public institutions (tie)
• #36 nationwide (tie)

• #1 in New York City among public institutions
• #2 in New York State among public institutions
• #2 in New York City, overall
• #4 in New York State, overall
• #12 among public institutions
• #17 nationwide

• #1 in New York City among public institutions
• #1 in New York State among public institutions
• #2 in New York City, overall (tie)
• #3 in New York State, overall (tie)
• #11 among public institutions (tie)
• #18 nationwide (tie)

Professor, Dahlia K. Remler; Professor, Sanders D. Korenman

“Including Health Insurance in Poverty Measurement: The Impact of Massachusetts Health Reform on Poverty”, The National Bureau of Economic Research

The professors developed and implemented what they believe is the first conceptually valid Health-inclusive Poverty Measure (HIPM)—a measure that includes health care or insurance in the poverty needs threshold and health insurance benefits in family resources—and discuss its limitations. Building on the Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure, the professors constructed a pilot HIPM for the under-65 population under ACA-like health reform in Massachusetts. The pilot is intended to demonstrate the practicality, face validity, and value of a HIPM. Results suggest that public health insurance benefits and premium subsidies account for a substantial, one-third reduction in the poverty rate. Among low-income families who purchased individual insurance, premium subsidies reduced poverty by 9.4 percentage points.

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Professor, Robert C. Smith

Louis Wirth Best Article Award for “Black Mexicans, Conjunctural Ethnicity, and Operating Identities: Long-Term Ethnographic Analysis”, American Sociological Association

Professor Robert C. Smith was named winner of the American Sociological Association’s prestigious ‘Louis Wirth Best Article Award’ for his article, “Black Mexicans, Conjunctural Ethnicity, and Operating Identities: Long-Term Ethnographic Analysis”, which drew on more than 15 years of research to analyze what he refers to as “Black Mexicans” – observably “Mexican-looking” youth who identified as Black during adolescence, used this identity in the service of their own upward mobility, and then abandoned the identity in early adulthood.

Read more about the award
Read “Black Mexicans, Conjunctural Ethnicity, and Operating Identities: Long-Term Ethnographic Analysis”
Read Robert Smith’s Marxe faculty spotlight

Associate Professor, Bryan Jones

“Exposure of US population to extreme heat could quadruple by mid-century”, Nature Climate Change

Extreme heat events are likely to become more frequent in the coming decades due to climate change. Exposure to extreme heat depends not only on changing climate, but also on changes in the size and spatial distribution of the human population. This study provides a new projection of population exposure to extreme heat for the continental United States that takes into account these factors. Using projections from various regional climate models and a spatially explicit population projection consistent with the socioeconomic assumptions of that scenario, changes are projected in exposure into the latter half of the twenty-first century. The study finds that the US population exposure to extreme heat increases four-to-sixfold over observed levels in the late twentieth century with changes in population of equal importance to changes in climate in driving this outcome. Extreme heat kills more people in the US than any other weather-related event, and scientists generally expect the number of deadly heat waves to increase with climate change. The summarize, the study finds that overall exposure of Americans to future heat waves would be vastly underestimated if the role of population changes are ignored.

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Professor, Don Waisanen; Professor, Dan Williams

Real Money, Real Power?: The Challenges with Participatory Budgeting in New York City

New York City has the largest council-sponsored Participatory Budgeting (PB, a process that empowers the least-advantaged members of the community by providing a way to propose budget allocations through voting) processes in North America. Real Money, Real Power?: The Challenges with Participatory Budgeting in New York City offers an investigative, behind-the-scenes look at New York City’s participatory budgeting (PB) process from the perspective of a city resident over time. To critically examine such top-down assertions, this book researches and navigates its events the way a member of the community would see it and provides a critical review of the experience of the asserted beneficiaries of participatory budgeting, revealing various barriers to actually achieving those benefits. The study reveals a lack of transparency, manipulation by city agencies, the favorable treatment of insider proposed projects, and a failure to reveal the basis of project costs. It also finds that there is no singular participatory budgeting project in New York City. Instead, there are numerous participatory budget projects, as many as there are council members who engage in the practice. Finally Real Money, Real Power provides a ground-level view of these limitations and recommends substantial reform, specifically as it pertains to a lack of transparency, manipulation by city agencies, favorable treatment of insider proposed projects, and a failure to reveal the basis of project costs.

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View the book on Amazon

Associate Professor, Cristina Balboa

The Paradox of Scale: How NGOs Build, Maintain, and Lose Authority in Environmental Governance

Why do NGOs – even the successful ones – have trouble “scaling up”? In Balboa’s book, The Paradox of Scale, Balboa suggests that an NGO’s authority – a combination of capacity and accountability – is an important and often misunderstood factor. She offers insight into how NGOs can build and maintain authority to be more effective. Drawing on case studies of transnational conservation organizations in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, Balboa examines NGO authority, capacity, and accountability to propose that a “paradox of scale” is a primary barrier to NGO effectiveness. This paradox—when what gives an NGO authority on one scale also weakens its authority on another scale—helps explain how NGOs can be seen as an authority on particular causes on a global scale, but then fail to effect change at the local level.

With her research, she offers a framework on how capacity and accountability change across scales. But Associate Professor Balboa doesn’t stop at just defining the problem – her aim is to offer a means to understand the ways NGOs and the broader field of nonprofits can bridge these scales to achieve long-lasting change.

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Read Cristina Balboa’s Marxe faculty spotlights:
2016 Spotlight
2020 Spotlight

Associate Professor, George Mitchell (w. Hans Peter Schmitz and Tosca Bruno-van Vijfeijken)

Between Power and Irrelevance: The Future of Transnational NGOs

Between Power and Irrelevance explores geopolitical shifts, growing competition, and ever-increasing demands for accountability that have been driving the need for change in transnational nongovernmental organizations (TNGOs) as their work becomes more complex. Why does this gap between rhetoric and reality exist? What can TNGOs do to close it? The book argues that TNGOs need to address fundamental changes to the conditions in which they operate by bringing their culture into better alignment with their strategic goals. Drawing on varied perspectives including interviews with TNGO leaders, involvement in workshops, consultancies, training institutes, research, and TNGO organizational processes the book offers insights on how to adapt TNGOs to a changing future.

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Read George Mitchell’s Marxe faculty spotlight