Editor’s Notes Lee S. Friedman

)PAM CURRICULUM AND CASE NOTES SECTION

Richard F. Elmore has stepped down from the position of Curriculum and Case Notes Editor. It is difficult to overestimate the importance of his contri- butions to this section over the years, and I would like both to acknowledge, and to thank him for, his exceptional service. I shall greatly miss working with him.

I am pleased to welcome Jonathan Brock as the new Curriculum and Case Notes Editor, effective with this issue. Jon is Associate Professor at the Gradu- ate School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington. He is also the Chair of the Cascade Center for Public Service, the executive education and case department arm of the school. Please see Jon’s introductory remarks at the start of the section for his thoughts on its future, and his invitation for submissions.

THE NBER-FORD FOUNDATION CONFERENCE ON STATE AND LOCAL TAXATION

The articles section of this issue presents the results from a conference on state and local tax policies sponsored by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), organized in consultation with JPAM, and financed by the Ford Foundation. Bob Inman and Jim Poterba, the conference organizers, approached JPAM with the idea that the NBER scholars and the larger policy- analytic community might mutually benefit from a collaboration on this issue. The NBER scholars hoped to benefit from the thoughts of policy-ori- ented discussants and reviewers, and to have their work reach a more policy- oriented audience. In return they hoped to offer the policy-analytic commu- nity the results of technical research with greater speed, improved accessibil- ity, and more attention to practical policy issues. JPAM has tried to help achieve these goals through its preliminary advice to prospective authors,

Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Vol. 12, No. 1, 1-2 (1993) 0 1993 b the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management Publisheiby John Wiley & Sons, Inc. CCC 0276-8739/93/01000 1-02

2 Editor's Notes

suggestions for discussants, and of course through the review of papers sub- mitted to P A M following the conference.

I would like to thank the NBER and particularly Bob Inman for their work on, and support of, this unusual collaboration. Bob was not only a primary organizer, but was involved in the review of all papers from their earliest drafts. The substantive results begin with his introduction.