Employment,privatization, and managerial choice: Does contracting out reduce public sector employment?

We examine the effects of governments' use of alternative service provision on public employment using panel data from a nationally representative sample of local governments. We model the effects of alternative service provision on the size of the public workforce and hypothesize that alternative provision jointly impacts both full‐ and part‐time employment. We find evidence of an inter‐relationship between these employment types. Our results from seemingly unrelated and 3SLS regressions indicate that full‐time employment in the public sector declines when additional services are provided by for‐profit providers, while part‐time employment increases. The net employment effect in the public sector is negative when government services are moved to the for‐profit sector. These combined effects result in a compositional shift toward more part‐time public sector employment. © 2006 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management     

Intergovernmental Grants: A Formal Model of Interrelated National and Subnational Political Decisions

Intergovernmental grants are based on the interrelated choicesof: (i) the national government deciding whether to offer thegrant; (ii) the national government determining grant conditions;(iii) the subnational government deciding whether to acceptthe grant; and (iv) the subnational government determining policy,including spending levels, upon grant receipt. Empirically andtheoretically, scholars often study these decisions separately,leading to an incomplete understanding of grant-related behavior.This article develops a noncooperative game theoretic modelthat simultaneously captures all four of these decisions. Thisapproach helps to better explain puzzles surrounding intergovernmentalgrants, including the ‘flypaper effect,’ asymmetricresponses of recipient governments to grant increases and decreases,the grant-acceptance decisions of subnational governments, andtradeoffs between the size of grants and the strings that areattached.     

How much did droughts matter? Linking rainfall and GDP growth in Zimbabwe

Since 2000, Zimbabwe's government, as well as other internationalaid organizations, have repeatedly blamed the country's sharpeconomic downturn on persistent and severe droughts. Indeed,past research has shown strong links between rainfall and maizeyields in sub-Saharan Africa, suggesting that the lack of rainfallis an attractive culprit for the recent collapse of Zimbabwe'sagriculture-based economy. This article probes this hypothesisfurther, by examining primary data from 38 countrywide rainfallstations during the 1960–1961/2002–2003 time-frame,in order to put the recent economic decline in better historicalcontext. The article finds little evidence that Zimbabwe's recenteconomic difficulties were caused by either low or erratic rainfall,suggesting that the recent collapse of the economy is far morelikely a result of government mismanagement.     

Psychology and legal change

From its inception, research in “law and psychology” has had an explicitly applied focus. In large part, psychologists have studied legal issues and participated as experts in the legal process in order to improve law and enhance the quality of its justice. This article examines whether and how this can be done. A taxonomy of relationships between the two disciplines is presented which characterizes law and psychology research in terms of its potential for legal change. The use of psychology of effect legal change requires a bringing together of both psychological and legal paradigms. But important differences exist between the styles and methods of reasoning, proff, and justfication in psychology and law. The implications of those differences for the use of psychological data in legal change efforts are developed, as are other aspects of “legalism” that may hinder or impede the effectiveness of psychologically oriented law reform. Finally, limitations of a “factual jurisprudence” that derived from the nature of psychological data are examined.     

Examining death qualification

The biasing effects of the death-qualification process are structured into the very nature of the procedure, and may be intensified by variations in the manner in which the process is actually conducted. This article illustrates the process as it unfolds in court, discusses the manner in which its basic features can be exacerbated, and analyzes some of the nonobvious consequences of the process for the participants. It also discusses the treatment afforded some analogous “process effects” in law, and evaluates several proposed remedies to the biasing effects of death qualification.     

Productivity ratings of graduate programs in criminal justice based on publication in ten critical journals

This article examines scholarly productivity among faculty members of graduate programs in criminal justice. Studies of scholarly productivity in other disciplines have frequently appeared in the literature. Cartter's early work on “prestige levels” was cited as being the forerunner in this respect. The authors obtained rankings of the “ten most critical” journals from graduate criminal justice program directors. After the list of journals was compiled, these journals were searched for the most recent five-year period. Articles published by full-time faculty members at fifty-two institutions were included in the study. In addition to total productivity, data on productivity adjusted for faculty size was also presented. Problems and controversy associated with this type of work are cited by the authors.