Incentives, Choice, and Accountability in the Provision of Public Services

This paper discusses a theoretical framework to study the issuesof competition and incentives without relying on the standardprofit-oriented ‘market’ model in the context ofthe debates about public-service reform in the UK. It uses theidea that the production of public services coheres around amission, and discusses how decentralized service provision canraise productivity by matching motivated workers to their preferredmissions. Our focus on competition and incentives cuts acrosstraditional debates about public versus private ownership andallows for the possibility of involving private non-profit organizations.We also address concerns about the consequences of allowingmore flexibility in mission design and competition on inequality.     

Citizen views about public meetings

The current study seeks to demonstrate that a citizen views about public meeting structure and related groups matter in predicting satisfaction with public engagement and willingness to attend future meetings. Public health agencies frequently use public meetings to communicate risk information, but relatively little social science research has examined how potential meeting participants view them. Using survey data (N?=?866) collected in seven US communities where health agencies were investigating possible local cancer clusters and holding public meetings to communicate with local residents, the current study replicates and extends an earlier inquiry related to citizens satisfaction with public meetings used for risk communication. Whereas previous research found that expectations, health agency credibility, and risk perceptions predicted satisfaction with public meetings, the current results did not show a significant relationship between agency credibility, risk perceptions, and satisfaction. Further, the results suggest it may make sense to consider ‘views about public meetings’ as a single measure that includes citizens’ structural expectations for meetings. Finally, the current study finds that views about public officials and views about meetings relate to individuals’ willingness to attend future meetings. Additional variable development and modeling research is suggested.     

Unnatural Experiments? Estimating the Incidence of Endogenous Policies

There are numerous empirical studies that exploit variation in policies over space and time in the U.S. federal system. If state policy making is purposeful action, responsive to economic and political conditions within the state, then it is necessary to identify and control for the forces that lead to these policy changes. This paper investigates the implications of policy endogeneity for a specific policy context – workers' compensation benefits. We contrast different methods of estimation and their pros and cons in this context.     

On the computational competitiveness of full-information maximum-likelihood and three-stage least-squares in the estimation of nonlinear,simultaneous-equations models

While full-information maximum-likehood (FIML) estimation has long been considered an important theoretical econometric estimation technique, computational considerations have greatly restricted its use in practice. Recent advances in numerical analysis and in computational software, however, have combined to provide algorithms capable of carrying out the FIML calculations quite efficiently relative to past standards. This paper compares the computational competitiveness of FIML with its most popular competitor, 3SLS, in the estimation of a variety of linear and non-linear (in parameters and variables) models. The nonlinear full-information maximum-likelihood (NLFIML) estimator is described and a computatíonally efficient approximation, TRUNFIML, is defined. Nonlinear three-stage least-squares (NL3SLS) is accomplished by the method of Jorgenson-Laffont. Comparisons are made on the basis of numbers of iterations to convergence, number of function evaluations, and total computer CPU time required, this latter figure being most relevant to a comparison of computational effort and cost.