The 'Parent Shift' program: incentives for nurses, rewards for nursing teams

To create new opportunities for nurses to reenter the workforce, a RN p.r.n. program must meet the needs of nurses who wish to make dual commitments to home and work. The Parent Shift program provides an innovative model of attracting and retaining nurses in a hospital workforce. Many nurses who joined the program were away from the field of nursing for many years and were drawn to the program because of the promise of flexible shifts and minimal requirements for participation. In this study, flexible shifts not only encouraged program entry, they were also a powerful motivator for continued program participation over time. Parent Shift nurse presence was perceived by nurse managers to decrease stressors and improve time efficiency of full-shift staff.     

Payments for environmental services in Costa Rica

Costa Rica pioneered the use of the payments for environmental services (PES) approach in developing countries by establishing a formal, country-wide program of payments, the PSA program. The PSA program has worked hard to develop mechanisms to charge the users of environmental services for the services they receive. It has made substantial progress in charging water users, and more limited progress in charging biodiversity and carbon sequestration users. Because of the way it makes payments to service providers (using approaches largely inherited from earlier programs), however, the PSA program has considerable room for improvement in the efficiency with which it generates environmental services. With experience, many of these weaknesses are being gradually corrected as the PSA program evolves towards a much more targeted and differentiated program. An important lesson is the need to be flexible and to adapt to lessons learned and to changing circumstances.     

Heterogeneous effects of merit scholarships: do program features matter?

This paper examines the role of program features in determining the effectiveness of merit scholarships on educational outcomes using data from the 2009 to 2014 American Community Survey. Exploiting the variation in the timing of program adoption as well as program features across states, I find that leniency of academic requirements for initial eligibility largely contributes to program effects on associate’s degree completion, whereas generosity of scholarship amount significantly increases college attendance and bachelor’s degree completion. The estimates also indicate that lower requirements for scholarship renewal appear to positively affect the likelihood of completing a degree in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields (STEM). The findings suggest that leniency and generosity are important determinants of program effectiveness on educational outcomes. It is thus relevant to take program features into account when designing merit scholarships.     

西部退耕农民社会保障问题研究

为退耕农民提供基本的生活和生产保障，才能使其全力地投入到退耕还林工作中去。本文主要从必要性、制度建设和相关配套制度三个方面来论述了如何为西部退耕农民建立一系列稳定的社会保障制度。     

重新评价"以粮为纲"政策及其生态环境影响

深入研究和客观评价“以粮为纲”政策及其生态环境影响,才能真正汲取其中教训。文章从“以粮为纲”政策的历史背景入手,即当时我国正处在“粮食问题”阶段、人口进入新的增长时期、“三年自然灾害”刺激;运用生态学的定律分析了“以粮为纲”政策的时代合理性;探讨了“以粮为纲”政策与生态环境的关系及其在内蒙古伊金霍洛旗的实际表现。结果表明,执行“以粮为纲”政策与生态环境破坏并不是必然的因果关系,之所以出现后来的结果是没有重视农业资源的高效利用、没有走内涵式农业发展道路。由此得到的启示是,必须将政策制定的良好愿望与科学的政策路径结合才能实现政策目标。     

Estimating the long-term effects of utility energy conservation programs: A Pacific Northwest example

The Bonneville Power Administration operated a Residential Weatherization Pilot Program from 1980 through 1982. The program provided free home energy audits to 7200 electrically heated homes in the Pacific Northwest and gave zero-interest loans to weatherize 4100 of these homes. The total cost of the program was almost $11 million.The pilot program and its regionwide successor are intended to provide benefits to the Pacific Northwest region for roughly 30 years in terms of reduced residential energy consumption. Therefore, it is important to determine the durability of the electricity savings due to the program. Estimates of long-term savings affect power supply planning in the region and influence the economics of the program itself (i.e., the level of funding that BPA can justify for the program).This article presents empirical results concerning the total and net energy-saving affects of the BPA pilot program 1, 2, and 3 years after participation. The total annual electricity saving experienced by households that received an energy audit and a weatherization loan averaged 5300 kWh 1 year after participation, increasing to 6000 and 6500 kWh 2 and 3 years after participation, respectively. The net annual electricity saving that can be directly attributed to the program for these audit plus loan households averaged 4500 kWh (15% of preprogram use) 1 year after participation and declined slightly to about 4300 kWh 2 years and 4200 kWh 3 years after participation.The article uses these empirical findings with a simple simulation model to estimate the effects of the program into the future. Assuming that electricity prices remain constant after 1984, total energy savings increase to a level of 7000 kWh, while net energy savings decrease to 3600 kWh for the audit plus loan households. Alternative electricity price scenarios are discussed.     

Coaching,Counseling, Case‐Working: Do They Help the Older Unemployed Out of Benefit Receipt and Back Into the Labor Market?

Intensified counseling, job search assistance and related policies have been found to be effective for labor market integration of the unemployed by a large number of studies, but the evidence for older and hard‐to‐place unemployed is more mixed. In this paper, we present key results for a large‐scale active labor market program directed at the older unemployed in Germany. To identify the treatment effects, we exploit regional variation in program participation. We use a combination of different evaluation estimators to check the sensitivity of the results to selection, substitution and local labor market effects. We find positive effects of the program in the range of 5–10 percentage points on integration into unsubsidized employment. However, there are also substantial lock‐in effects, such that program participants have a higher probability of remaining on public welfare benefit receipt for up to 1 year after commencing the program.     

Accomplice Witnesses and Organized Crime: Theory and Evidence from Italy

We develop an agency model of organized crime accounting for the main trade‐offs involved in the introduction of an accomplice‐witness program. We characterize the optimal policy and identify its main determinants in a framework where public officials can be dishonest. Our predictions are tested by using data for Italy before and after the introduction of the 1991 accomplice‐witness program. As predicted by the model and the earlier antitrust literature, the program appears to have strengthened deterrence and enhanced prosecution. Moreover, consistent with a novel prediction of our theory, the evidence suggests that the program efficacy is affected by the judicial system efficiency.     

医疗保险与消费:来自新型农村合作医疗的证据

本文利用农村引入新型农村合作医疗这一政策变化来研究医疗保险的获得对农村居民消费的影响。结果表明,新农合使得非医疗支出类的家庭消费增加了约5.6个百分点。这一正向作用随医疗保险保障水平的提高而增强,而且在没有医疗支出的家庭中仍然存在。同时,新农合对消费的正向影响在收入较低或健康状况较差的家庭中更强。这些结果都与医疗保险减少了预防性储蓄的假说相一致。另外本文发现,新农合的效果随农户在这个项目中的经历而变化。实际上只有在那些有村民获得保险补偿的村子,保险对消费的正向影响才显著,而且在这些村子中,新农合对新加入农户的消费的影响明显小于对参合一年以上农户的消费的影响。