Faculty Bio

Mildred Warner

Associate Professor

215 W. Sibley Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853-7801
Email: mew15@cornell.edu
Phone: (607) 255-6816

Training

Ph.D. 1977 Cornell University
M.S 1985 Cornell University
B.A. 1979 Oberlin College

Areas of Interest

» community economic development
» governance
» public policy

Research

Mildred Warner's research interests focus on devolution and privatization in local, state, and national policy and their impacts on community and economic development. She is a research associate with the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. and a member of the editorial board of the Population Council's SEEDS series (gender and economic development). She has been a consultant to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Child Care Bureau and Smart Start, as well as the U.S.D.A.'s Community Development Division and USAID in Slovakia. Warner is a national expert on the privatization of local government service delivery and is a key collaborator with the International City County Management Association, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, and the National Association of Counties. Her work shows potential for market based solutions in public service delivery but also raises cautions about the uneven impacts of privatization and devolution in core metro and rural areas. She has won major competitive National Research Initiative grants for her work on privatization and devolution. She also directs the Child Care and Economic Development project - funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Child Care Bureau and several foundation grants. Her research on the economic impacts of child care explores the potential of an economic development framing to increase public and private will to invest in human development. Prior to joining the department, Warner was associate director of Cornell's Community and Rural Development Institute for nearly a decade, and a program officer for the Ford Foundation's Rural Poverty and Resource Program.

Selected Publications

Warner, M.E. and James E. Pratt, 2005. "Spatial Diversity in Local Government Revenue Effort Under Decentralization: A Neural Network Approach," Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, forthcoming.

Warner, M.E 2005. "The Threefold Importance of Child Care: The Need for a New Economic Framework," Background paper for the Cornell Workshop, Articulating the Economic Importance of Child Care.

Liu, Zhilin, Rosaria Ribeiro and Mildred Warner, 2004. "Comparing Child Care Multipliers in the Regional Economy: Analysis from 50 States," Ithaca, NY: Cornell University

Warner, M., Adriance, S., Barai, N., Halla, J., Markeson, B. & Soref, W. 2004. Economic Development Strategies to Promote Quality Child Care, Cornell University Department of City and Regional Planning: Ithaca, NY.

Warner and Liu, Zhilin. 2004. "The Importance of Child Care in Economic Development: A Comparative Analysis of Regional Economic Linkage," Presented to the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, Oct. 21, 2004, Portland, Oregon.

Warner, M and Christine Weiss Daugherty 2004. "Promoting the ‘Civic’ in Entrepreneurship: The Case of Rural Slovakia," forthcoming Journal of the Community Development Society Vol 35, No. 1.

Jennifer Gerbasi, Jennifer and Mildred Warner. 2004, "Is There a Democratic Deficit in the Free Trade Agreements? What Local Governments Should Know," Public Management 86:2 (16-21).

"The Child Care Industry: An Integral Part of Long Island's Economy," L. Stoney, M. Warner and K. Klockowski, Child Care Council of Nassau and Suffolk Counties.

Warner, M.E. and Jennifer Gerbasi. 2004. "Rescaling and Reforming the State under NAFTA: Implications for Subnational Authority." International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 28(4): 853-73.

Hefetz, Amir and M. Warner, 2004. "Privatization and Its Reverse: Explaining the Dynamics of the Government Contracting Process," Journal of Public Administration, Research and Theory, 14(2): 171-190.