Do Elections Always Motivate Incumbents? Learning vs. Re-Election Concerns

This paper studies a principal-agent model of the relationship between office-holder and an electorate, where everyone is initially uninformed about the office-holder’s ability. If office-holder effort and ability interact in the determination of performance in office, then an office-holder has an incentive to learn, i.e., raise effort so that performance becomes a more accurate signal of her ability. Elections reduce the learning effect, and the reduction in this effect may more than offset the positive “re-election concerns” effect of elections on effort, implying higher effort with appointment. When this occurs, appointment of officials may welfare-dominate elections.     

The Impact of Job Characteristics on Private Prison Staff: Why Management Should Care

The number of private prisons run by corporate security businesses has increased rapidly throughout the past two decades. There has been a parallel increase in literature, both pro and con, comparing the efficiency and effectiveness of private and public prisons; however, private prison staff has been largely ignored. OLS regression analysis of a survey of 160 employees at a Midwestern private prison facility showed that the job characteristics of job stress, supervision, and job variety were far more important than personal characteristics of race/ethnicity, gender, age, tenure, education and position in influencing staff job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Specifically, job stress had the largest impact on job satisfaction, while quality of supervision had the greatest impact on organizational commitment.     

Futility Clarified

Futility is easily defined as uselessness. The mistaken appearance that it cannot be defined is explained by difficulties applying it to particular cases. This latter problem is a major goal of clinical training and cannot be solved in a pithy statement.