Dear blog readers, I am pleased to announce that the Spring 2008 edition of the print journal "PolicyMatters" is now up on the blog for your reading and linking pleasure. Read the full issue in PDF format. The individual articles (in PDF format) are linked in the navigation box to the right. Enjoy!...

Public policy is a professional discipline, combining the spirit of academic inquiry with the enthusiasm of political activism. As the year comes to an end and we each disappear into exams, it is easy to forget why it is fun to be a student of public policy. As we launch this semester’s PolicyMatters – today in its fifth year! – I would like to highlight the efforts of some past and current colleagues to both push, develop and challenge their ideas in the classroom and then put them into practice. We are in an election year and several GSPP students...

PolicyMatters latest issue will be officially released this Tuesday, May 8th. All of us at PolicyMatters invested a lot of time and energy into this issue, and we are thrilled with how it turned out. Please click here (or on the icon in the upper right-hand corner of this site) to get a sneak peak. Also, please join us our release party Tuesday night, May 8th, at 6pm. The party is at Berkeley's Gaia Building - 2116 Allston Way. Refreshments will be served....

Have you seen the new calendar feature. It lists all the major Policy events at UC Berkeley. The link is on the right side. Or you can get to it here. It's one of many new changes to the site we plan to roll out in the coming months....

The PolicyMatters Editorial team is happy to announce the publication of the Autumn 2006 Issue. In our Features section this issue, Sonya Blesser examines health savings accounts to see if their professed merits hold up under scrutiny. Renowned feminist economist Marianne A. Ferber and University of Illinois economics professor Michael Brun collaborate to analyze whether the policy choices of female legislators differ from those of their male counterparts. Matthew Steinberg asserts that privately-operated supplemental educational services, which have expanded extensively under No Child Left Behind, are not worth what they cost. Finally, Adam Langton, Hai Guan, and Anne Su assess...

The Spring 2006 issue of PolicyMatters is now available online for your viewing pleasure. You'll notice that the Current Issue icon on the right side of the screen now leads to the .pdf of the new issue. On the left side I've replaced the the table of contents to reflect the current slate of articles. I'll fix the titles in the next few days, so they link directly to individual articles.

Successful conversations involve more than one speaker, and likewise this forum should be a conduit for conversation and debate among the Public Policy community. The PolicyMatters Blog welcomes signed comments from readers. If you feel that you can make a useful observation, engage the debate or otherwise add to the conversation we invite you to leave a comment. But note, it is the policy of the PolicyMatters Blog to only accept signed comments. We think it's only fair to our authors.

PolicyMatters, the student-run Journal of the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley, will shortly be launching the PolicyMatters blog. Just as the journal aims to marry insightful analysis of pressing policy problems with an accessible style, the blog will scrutinize the policy issues of the day. It will be a hub for policy conversations within the GSPP community and the wider policy community.

This Blog marks the introduction of PolicyMatters to the online policy communtiy, producing informative, readable, and energetic debate. Likewise the PolicyMatters blog will be a group effort with up to 10 regular contributors representing varied intellectual interests and fields. Our bloggers will primarily consist of students, professors, and policy practitioners with connections to GSPP or UC Berkeley.