THE EFFECTS OF ORGANIZATIONAL FORM IN THE MIXED MARKET FOR FOSTER CARE

ABSTRACT ** : This paper uses proprietary quality of care data to examine the consequences of organizational form in privatized US foster care services. The contract failure hypothesis generically proposes that nonprofits should provide higher quality services, relative to for‐profits, when output is costly to observe. Advocates argue that the nonprofits offer important consumer protections when public services are contracted to private agencies. Contrary to expectations, we find that nonprofit firms do not offer higher quality services. We explore the possibility that monitoring efforts by state regulators or competition among foster care agencies effectively mitigate the influence of organizational form in this particular mixed market.     

Aid and Reform in Failing States

This paper reviews the policy implications of research on reform in failing states ( Chauvet and Collier 2006 , 2007a, 2007b , 2008 ; Chauvet et al. 2006 ; Chauvet et al. 2007a , 2007b ). After providing a precise definition of state failure and reform in such states, we present the internal constraints impeding reform in failing states. Élite preferences and insufficient social knowledge seem to be the major constraints on reform. We find that financial aid tends to allow the ruling élite to postpone reform. Technical assistance, however, has some effectiveness in relaxing the capacity constraint to implement reform, notably right at the beginning of reform.     

尝试正式的TCM

Lisa Jack日前接受采访,讲述了她的研究——探索从农民到零售商的食品供给链条中采纳TCM（目标成本管理）的潜在可能性。