Bridging the Divide between Evidence and Policy in Public Sector Decision Making: A Practitioner's Perspective

While policy advocates can help bridge the divide between evidence and policy in decision making by focusing on ambiguity and uncertainty, policy makers must also play a role by promoting and preserving deliberative processes that value evidence as a core element in leveling raw constituent opinion, ultimately resulting in a better‐informed electorate. Building on existing research and analytic capability, state legislatures can increase the demand for and delivery of relevant information, giving the institution the capacity to keep abreast of research in critical public policy areas. By implementing data and time‐conscious evaluative frameworks that emphasize evidence‐based decision making and longitudinal cost–benefit analytics at critical policy‐making junctures, the institutional culture can become less unpredictable and the “rules of the game” can be more transparent. In 2015, Mississippi's legislative leaders created a system to review requests for new programs and funding using such an evidence screen.     

The Appointment, Removal and Responsibilities of Public Sector Chief Executives in Australia: Some Recent Developments

In the little over the decade since the publication of Smith's Public Employment Law and McCarry's Aspects of Public Sector Employment Law, much as changed in the law of public sector employment in Australia. This article briefly surveys some of the major developments in public sector employment law in Australia during the 1990s in relation to departmental chief executive departmental heads.     

An empirical analysis of aftermarket transactions by hospitals

Almost all U.S. hospitals procure their equipment through group purchasing organizations ("GPOs"). Some hospitals subject the prices secured by GPOs to a second round of competition in an "aftermarket," in which vendors both on and off the GPO contract compete for the hospital's business. To measure the extent of the potential benefit to hospitals from another round of competition, we analyzed a database of approximately 8,100 aftermarket transactions for hospital capital equipment. The transactions data suggest that hospitals were able to achieve average savings of approximately 10 to 14 percent across the entire database (2001 through 2010) and a savings of 15 percent on average for 2010 data. These savings may be attributable to many factors, including the compensation structure of GPOs.     

When do voters actually think “It’s the Economy”? Evidence from the 2008 presidential campaign

Studies linking election outcomes to economics frequently assume that the economy’s salience is constant. This study shows that the economy’s salience systematically fluctuates. The number of voters focused on economic issues shifted dramatically throughout the 2008 campaign as the recession worsened and this change occurred well before the financial markets collapsed in September 2008. However, even during the recession substantial numbers of individuals said their vote was based on non-economic issues and for these individuals there was no relationship between their assessment of the economy and their electoral choice. Consistent with extant theories of issue attention, citizens who were the hardest hit by the recession and those who had the most anxiety about suffering a financial dislocation in the future were most likely to consider economic performance electorally important while secure voters were less likely to be economic voters.