Pricing Outputs: A Case Study in Law Enforcement

This paper discusses the advantages and limitations of economic evaluation as a measurement methodology within the Australian government's outcome and output framework including preliminary benefit–cost analysis of Australian Federal Police investigations. The results suggest that the Australian Federal Police is returning over $5 to the community for every dollar invested in fraud and drug investigations. It is concluded that benefit–cost analysis is a useful tool for comparing the price of an output to the value of an outcome. The method has limitations. Not all outcomes will admit of easy assessment and the information may be difficult to collect. However, the use of surrogate measures and extrapolation of results may overcome most of these limitations.     

Municipal Capital Spending during the "Boom"

This article analyzes municipal governments, capital spending, and revenue-raising decisions between 1993 and 2000, an era of unprecedented economic growth. It finds that, as anticipated, greater-than-expected revenues allowed many cities to advance projects from their capital improvement plans to their capital budgets. Moreover, the article concludes that growth in cities' own-source-revenue-generating capacity and transfers from carryover or ending balances from earlier years, rather than debt issuances and intergovernmental aid, seem to be the most important fuel for the remarkable growth rate in capital spending.     

The prohibition-repeal amendments: A natural experiment in interest group influence

The pattern of state support for Prohibition (18th Amendment, 1919) and Repeal (21st Amendment, 1933) is analyzed and compared. This comparison is important because Prohibition is the only amendment ever to be repealed. The main thesis is that there was no wholesale change in preferences of citizens. Instead, producer interests failed to mobilize effectively in 1919, and the coupling of moral and economic arguments that worked in 1919 broke apart in 1933. Regression analysis is conducted on state legislatures (for Prohibition) and state referenda on convention delegates (for Repeal), so states are observations in the cross-sectional regression analysis. The results broadly support the main thesis.     

Committee characteristics and re-election margins: An empirical investigation of the US House

Models of legislative organization frequently begin with the premise that the committee system serves the re-election interests of incumbent legislators. Attempts to substantiate this notion empirically have been unsuccessful. Nevertheless, the notion lives on, nourished by a stylized characterization of the committee system. In the standard model committees have jurisdictional monopolies over specialized policy areas and legislators gravitate toward those committees that deal most closely with the policy concerns of their constituents. Contrary to this simplifying characterization, the degree of monopoly control and policy specialization varies across standing committees in the us congress. Some committees have wide jurisdictions and attract members with diverse policy preferences. Jurisdictional overlap and resulting turf battles are common aspects of congressional sessions. We suggest here that these realities warrant a re-opening of the empirical investigation into the link between electoral success and committee characteristics. Our findings indicate that assignment to a committee with a relatively high degree of monopoly control increases a member's vote share, and that assignment to a narrowly focused (specialized) committee does not.     

The State-Local Nexus in Policy Innovation Diffusion: The Case of School Choice

Our knowledge of how policy innovations diffuse in federal systemscould be enhanced by paying greater attention to the behaviorof policy entrepreneurs. This study shows how policy entrepreneurshelped stimulate the diffusion of state school-choice plansby collecting and generating evidence of workability of thisinnovation. Importantly, these policy entrepreneurs have oftenused evidence from local experiments to promote state policychange. Thus, a state-local nexus exists in the diffusion schoolchoice. This analysis suggests that there is value in conceptualizingpolicy innovation diffusion a federal system as both a horizontal(that is, state to state) and a vertical (that is, state andlocal) phenomenon.     

Moderating effects of adolescent social orientation on the relation between social support and self-esteem

The study assessed whether the impact of social support on self-esteem is moderated by the adolescent's orientation toward the source of aid. Questionnaires were administered to 84 Israeli adolescents regarding self-esteem, perceived level of support from parents and peers, and preference, or orientation, for support from these sources. Regression analyses indicated that the positive effect of social figures' support on self-esteem increased as a function of interest in receiving aid from the specific source. Correlational analyses also revealed that heightened orientation toward parents was associated with higher levels of perceived parental support, whereas heightened orientation toward peers was associated with higher levels of peer support and lower levels of parental aid. These findings were consistent with self-evaluation maintenance and social provision theories, which suggest that the individual has an active role in selectively seeking out and filtering external social influences.His doctorate in educational psychology is from UCLA. Current research interests include stress and coping across the life span, social sources of adolescent self-esteem, and intergroup relations in the junior high school.Her doctorate in clinical psychology is from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Her research interests include family relations, social and emotional development in children and adolescents, and developmental psychopathology.Her research interests focus on social support in the family.