The puzzling case of Jimmy “the Greek”

His previous contribution to Society,“Sexual Harassment and the Law,” appeared in the May/June 1991 issue. The author wishes to acknowledge the generous support of the Sarah Scaife Foundation and the John M. Olin Foundation.     

The Dutch parliamentary election of May 1986

After a rather uneventful election campaign, the results of the May 1986 Dutch parliamentary election were a surprise to virtually all involved. Since the introduction of regular opinion polling in the 1960s, no election has taken place when the polls were ‘wrong’. However, in 1986 last minute shifts that were stronger than had ever occurred in the Netherlands produced results that differed significantly from the predictions based upon the polls published immediately prior to the election.     

Truth-telling,dominant strategies,and iterative Groves mechanisms

Public Choice - This essay demonstrates that if an organization uses a price-decomposition algorithm to solve a decentralized resource allocation problem, in which rewards are those of a Groves...     

Decentralized planning in Kenya

In 1983 the Government of Kenya embarked on an accelerated programme of decentralization known as ‘District Focus’. This exercise in devolution is aimed at promoting more effective and efficient use of scarce domestic resources through efforts to strengthen planning capacity at the district level, improve horizontal integration among operating ministry field agents, and expand authority to district heads of operating ministries for managing financial and procurement aspects of local project implementation. Given the importance of this initiative to the economic growth of Kenya and the current search for administrative reforms that could help accelerate rural development in Africa, District Focus merits close attention by development experts. This article reviews the historical background, content, and implementation progress of District Focus.     

The effect of child support on welfare exits and re‐entries

Much of the literature on welfare dynamics has focused on the effects of recipient characteristics and state‐level characteristics such as welfare benefits and economic conditions; there has been very little analysis on the effects of child support. This paper, using the 1979‐1996 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, examines whether child support affects the likelihood of leaving and re‐entering welfare. The results indicate that strong child support enforcement is important in helping young mothers exit and stay off welfare. Women with $1000 child support payments in the previous year were 18 percent more likely to exit welfare and 12 percent less likely to re‐enter welfare. Compared with women in states that pursued child support least vigorously, women in states that had passed extensive child support enforcement legislation and that spent more money on child support enforcement were 79 percent more likely to exit welfare and about 60 percent less likely to re‐enter welfare. © 2002 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.