Minimum wages and the economic well‐being of single mothers

Using pooled cross‐sectional data from the 1992 to 2005 March Current Population Survey (CPS), this study examines the relationship between minimum wage increases and the economic well‐being of single mothers. Estimation results show that minimum wage increases were ineffective at reducing poverty among single mothers. Most working single mothers were not affected by minimum wage hikes because they already earned wages above state and federal minimum wages. And less‐educated single mothers who were affected did not see a rise in net income because of negative employment and hours effects. For this low‐skilled population, a 10 percent increase in the minimum wage was associated with an 8.8 percent reduction in employment and an 11.8 percent reduction in annual hours worked. © 2008 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management     

Police leniency in traffic enforcement encounters: Exploratory findings from observations and interviews

Despite the volume of time officers spend on traffic enforcement encounters, there was limited research exploring how they used their discretion in such interactions. Issues relating to police decision making patterns in the enforcement of motor vehicle laws were particularly salient in light of the on-going debate over racial profiling. This study examined how officers made decisions (in particular, to stop and to sanction) in the course of traffic enforcement. Using field observations and interviews with officers in a small midwestern agency, the authors described the factors and forces that officers used in making discretionary choices. The findings indicated that leniency in sanctioning was very common and that officers expected citizens to be contrite and acknowledge responsibility for their infractions. Implications for larger and more systematic observational studies are discussed.     

Post-injection hybridization of complementary DNA strands on capillary electrophoresis platforms: A novel solution for dsDNA artifacts

Several laboratories have reported the occurrence of a split or n − 1 peak at the vWA locus in PowerPlex^® 16 and PowerPlex^® ES amplification products separated on 4- and 16-capillary electrophoresis instruments. The root cause of this artifact is post-PCR reannealing of the unlabeled, unincorporated vWA primer to the 3′-end of the tetramethylrhodamine (TMR)-labeled strand of the vWA amplicon. This reannealing occurs in the capillary post-electrokinetic injection. The split peak is eliminated by incorporation into the loading cocktail of a sacrificial hybridization sequence (SHS) oligonucleotide that is complementary to the vWA primer. The SHS preferentially anneals to the primer instead of the TMR-labeled strand of the vWA amplicon. In addition, the n − 10/n − 18 artifact that may be seen at the vWA locus was determined to be due to double-stranded amplicon formed post-electrokinetic injection into the capillary. This was also eliminated by adding in two Complementary Oligo Targets (COT1 and COT2) in addition to the SHS oligonucleotide into the loading cocktail. These three oligonucleotides are complementary to the 33 bases at the 5′-end of the unlabeled vWA amplicon strand and the 60 bases at its 3′-end and therefore compete for hybridization to the TMR-labeled amplicon strand. Incorporation of these three oligonucleotides in the Internal Lane Standard 600 (ILS600) eliminate both the split peak and n − 10/n − 18 artifact in PowerPlex^® 16 and PowerPlex^® ES amplification products without affecting sizing of alleles at the vWA locus or any locus in the PowerPlex^® 16, PowerPlex^® Y, PowerPlex^® ES, AmpFlSTR^® Profiler Plus^® ID, AmpFlSTR^® Cofiler^®, and AmpFlSTR^® SGM Plus^® kits.     

Do Competitive Examinations Promote Diversity in Civil Service?

The representative bureaucracy literature provides a growing body of empirical evidence that a representative public workforce enhances the efficacy and legitimacy of public services. However, little attention has been paid to the capacity of civil service competitive examinations to give equal opportunity of access to public jobs to equally competent citizens. To fill this gap, the authors use French databases to analyze whether competitive examinations comprising both written and oral tests ensure equality of treatment for all candidates regardless of gender, place of residence, or place of birth. The results challenge the capacity of these examinations to treat candidates equally, identifying inequalities in the written tests as well as evaluation biases in the oral tests. However, oral evaluation biases tend to offset inequalities in the written tests. Therefore, selection boards take a sort of affirmative action toward the sole successful members of groups suffering such inequalities.     

Is a problem shared a problem halved? Shared services and municipal efficiency

It has long been argued that shared services represent an efficacious means of securing efficiencies for municipalities. Indeed, pressures from fiscal austerity, taxation limitations, and the specter of forced amalgamations have resulted in an increasing uptake of shared service arrangements. However, the extant evidence is rather inconclusive and is largely restricted to analyzing the nett efficiency outcomes for the specific service shared. We broaden this evidential base by examining the association between shared service production and the efficiency of entire municipalities. Our analysis, employing a 5‐year panel of data, suggests that shared services are associated with a statistically significant reduction in overall municipal efficiency. We conclude by explicating on the public policy implications arising from our prima facie surprising results.