The Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee works to identify and analyze developing trends and ongoing events that promise to affect the efficiency and safe operation of sectors of the financial services industry; explore the spectrum of short- and long-term implications of emerging problems and policy changes; help develop private, regulatory and legislative responses to such problems that promote efficiency and safety and further the public interest; and to assess and respond to proposed and actual public policy initiatives with respect to the impact on the public interest.

What does 2012 hold, both in terms of policy and politics, for the developing relationship between public-sector workers and taxpayers? What does a proactive reform agenda for 2012 look like? Is a pro-reform platform a winning issue for reformers or their opponents? This event will address these and other questions in two panel discussions.

Response to Jeffrey Keefe’s review of “Assessing the Compensation of Public School Teachers.”

Frederick M. Hess, AEI director of education policy studies and Education Week blogger, released today his second annual "Edu-Scholar Public Presence Rankings." Traditional measures of research productivity, which focus on academic publication, are useful in their own right, but do not offer as much insight into how education scholars influence thinking and the national discourse.

The inherent conflict of science and politics will be the subject of the second-annual "Bloody Crossroads" conference at AEI.

Using fair-market valuation, Nevada PERS’ unfunded liabilities would rise from about $10 billion to almost $41 billion. Shifting PERS to a defined-contribution, 401(k)-type structure would ensure that benefit obligations are fully funded going forward and that everyone is clear regarding the pensions promises the government has made and its ability to fulfill them.

At this AEI event, panelists will comment on the CDC's future with vaccines, drawing from experiences in public health, policy, and industry.