Recent Articles

Why Oklahoma is losing Medicaid funding (Guest post: JeVonna Caine)

JeVonna Caine,one of OK Policy’s 2013-14 Research Fellows,  is pursuing a Masters of Public Health in Health Administration and Policy from the OU Health Sciences Center, while also working at the State Department of Health in the Health Planning &… Read more [More...]

Do economic development incentives “crowd out” expenditures on public goods? (Guest Post: Jia Wang)

Jia Wang, one of OK Policy’s 2013-14 Research Fellows, is a fourth year PhD student in Economics at the University of Oklahoma. Her research interest lies primarily in public economics, especially government expenditure/taxation policy and economic development incentive programs. Policymakers… Read more [More...]

The eggs have it (Guest Post: Shauna Struby)

Shauna Lawyer Struby is the co-founder of Transition OKC, a catalyst for healthier, more resilient and sustainable communities. She lives in Oklahoma City with her family and two remarkably affable cats.  After decades of relative obscurity, urban agricultural practices that… Read more [More...]

Reducing Economic Inequality: It’s about wealth, not jobs (Guest Post: Mark Funkhouser)

Mark Funkhouser, a former Kansas City mayor and auditor, is the director of the Governing Institute, where this post originally appeared.  It is reposted with permission. Inequality of wealth and income in the United States is as high as it… Read more [More...]

Flawed A-F school grading system won’t help to improve schools (Guest Post: Ryan Miskell)

Ryan Miskell is an OK Policy Research Fellow and a research associate with the Oklahoma Center for Education Policy. He is working on his Ph.D. in Education Leadership and Policy Studies from The University of Oklahoma. He is a contributing… Read more [More...]

Department of Corrections audit won’t fix Oklahoma’s incarceration woes (Guest Post: Adam Banner)

handcuffs Adam R. Banner is founder of the Oklahoma Legal Group and a criminal defense attorney in Oklahoma City. Governor Mary Fallin recently requested an audit of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections (DOC). I fully support a careful examination of issues… Read more [More...]

A strategy to combat urban sprawl and fund local services (Guest Post: Greg Burge and Trey Trosper)

Greg Burge is an Associate Professor and Trey Trosper is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Economics at the University of Oklahoma. Both are members of the Scholars Strategy Network. This blog post is based on a paper they… Read more [More...]

Oklahoma’s improbable victory over big tobacco (Guest Post: Michael Givel and Andrew L. Spivak)

Michael Givel is Professor of Political Science at the University of Oklahoma. Andrew L. Spivak is Assistant Professor in the Sociology Department at the University of Nevada – Las Vegas. This is an edited and abridged version of a brief… Read more [More...]

How the incentives arms race is a lose-lose for cities and states (Guest Blog: Cynthia Rogers)

Dr. Cynthia Rogers is  Associate Professor in the Economics Department at the University of Oklahoma, where she served as the Graduate Director from 2006-2013. This is an edited version of a brief originally published for the Scholars Strategy Network, of… Read more [More...]

Taking out the trash

This post was written by OK Policy volunteer Zoraya Hightower. Zoraya completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Tulsa, and this fall she will begin a Master of Environmental Management program at Yale. Trash is a surprisingly controversial topic.… Read more [More...]